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I thought about building a CarPC a few years ago.

I priced touchscreen LCD's and embedded motherboards, drew designs for metal boxes and a power supply to run the thing, thought about how I was going to set the thing up in the car without destroying the interior, then got frustrated with it all and gave up.

Now I have also gigs of music at my fingertips, but with much less fucking around.

http://www.riocar.org/

You can get these old things for quite a bit cheaper than you can build a CarPC - mine cost $200 from a guy on empegbbs.com, plus $50 for a 80 gig laptop hard drive.

It doesn't do GPS, album art, drive-by wifi or anything fancy like that. It plays music and that's pretty much all it does, but it does that well.

There are a few pain-in-the-ass things about it - the "fastest" way to get music on it is 10BaseT ethernet, it doesn't have a built-in amplifier, and it only fits in cars which accept an aftermarket radio in one of those bendy metal DIN cage things. But if you don't mind those things, it's a pretty sweet solution for having music in your car.

And yes, it runs Linux.

The Empeg (admittedly car only) came out around that time, perhaps even slightly before.

http://www.empeg.com/
http://www.riocar.org/

I STILL have one in my car, use it every single day. Interface is far better for in-car use than any ipod or clone I've ever used. Newer stereos are finally getting "OK" ipod interfaces, but the empeg still blows them all away. Mine came with 10Gig, and cost - gulp - $1500. It now has 160GB (1 120GB and one 40GB laptop drive).

Gotta love technology.

The empeg/Rio Car player is a Linux-based, HDD pullout car stereo (I've had one for years and love it). Although the product was discontinued in 2003, there are still units available on eBay and user-supported sites like riocar.org. According to the FAQ on riocar.org, there is a 3.0 beta version of the software that added .ogg support. I don't know if it's easy to find the image for the beta, but the folks in the user community are very helpful and can probably help you find it.

The empeg/Rio Car player is a Linux-based, HDD pullout car stereo (I've had one for years and love it). Although the product was discontinued in 2003, there are still units available on eBay and user-supported sites like riocar.org. According to the FAQ on riocar.org, there is a 3.0 beta version of the software that added .ogg support. I don't know if it's easy to find the image for the beta, but the folks in the user community are very helpful and can probably help you find it.

Jeff Sylvester, in a discussion on the Unofficial Empeg BBS, wrote a program to graph this very phenomenon. With this program, you can clearly see how a truly random distribution will produce exactly these kinds of perceived "patterns".

Jeff Sylvester, in a discussion on the Unofficial Empeg BBS, wrote a program to graph this very phenomenon. With this program, you can clearly see how a truly random distribution will produce exactly these kinds of perceived "patterns".

Jeff Sylvester, in a discussion on the Unofficial Empeg BBS, wrote a program to graph this very phenomenon. With this program, you can clearly see how a truly random distribution will produce exactly these kinds of perceived "patterns".

This product is developed by the folks at empeg. I've been using a car player they built (now discontinued) that was marketed by sonic blue (Incidentally, I got the 60GB version for just over $400 when Sonic Blue was cleaning out their inventory!).

I haven't played with a whole lot of digital audio players, but the player software in the Rio Car (Player software 2.0) is simply awesome. The Karma will be using the next version (3.0 -- then us Rio Car owners should get it too!). With 2.0, everything is organized how you expect it to be. Playlist management is easy, yet highly customizable. Playlists organization allows nesting (I think this is pretty common) and allows files or playlists to reside in multiple places, so when I rip the new Plumb album, I create a playlist at "Rock\Plumb\Beautiful Lumps of Coal" and also "New Albums\Plumb\Beautiful Lumps of Coal", but of course there is only one copy of the audio on the drive(s).

There are plenty of "wouldn't it be cool if..." features like: multiple insert modes (Insert, append, enqueue) while queueing up music, multiple (customizable) randomizer algorithms (Least recently played, Least often played, Newest additions, Just plain random), plenty of shortcuts (Navigate 5 playlists down to find some album and queue it up... re-enter playlists and hold the button down; it re-navigates the 5 playlists so you can choose one of its siblings), 10-band parametric EQ, "Wendy" filters (filter all gangsta rap from the playlists when your girlfriend is in the car), Bookmarks (Store your current queue of music/audiobooks to one of three "bookmark" positions, play something else when your friends are in the car on Friday night, then jump back to exactly where you were within your original music/audiobook queue), and a bunch of nifty visuals.

Then, install Mark Lord's Hijack kernel, install Debian (if you want) and other apps that use Hijack, you get stuff like telnet access, ftp access, khttpd for web-based streaming (over ethernet) of .m3u/.mp3s, text-to-speech audio clocks, pacman, compression (not the space-saving kind... the audio level adjusting kind), and a bunch of other user-developed stuff.

The designers are regular posters on the bulletin board. You may have noticed a couple of them posting in this thread.

Before I profess my undying love for my Empeg, allow me to point out why Sony will never produce the in-dash dream audio dream device: they are a music publisher.

The MEX-1HD is a fixed single DIN unit that can rip music from a CD in situ and store it to an internal and, I believe, non-upgradable hard drive.

The Sonic Blue RioCar/Empeg, one of which I was fortunate enough to obtain some two or so months ago, is a Linux-based pull-out single DIN device that supports up to 2 2.5" laptop hard drives with a maximum supported capacity of 128GB total.

The MEX-1HD could never hope to compete with the Empeg... except that Sonic Blue decided that they couldn't break into the good ol' boys club that is the car audio market with such an expensive (at the time, $1200 on up) device.

However, as Sonic Blue has ceased production of Empeg devices, you can now purchase them on E-bay. Many of the Empeg vendors on E-bay bought the last of the Empegs/RioCars (the name is virtually interchangeable in that Empeg Mk2 == RioCar) during a fire sale from Sonic Blue and are selling them in brand new, still in the packaging, condition.

If you choose to get a RioCar/Empeg, be sure to check out the Rio Car Site

The best tech I know of anywhere-- online or elsewhere-- comes from the makers of the (now EOL'ed, but availible through other cahnnels) Linux-based Rio Car (formerly Empeg). All questions are personally answered by the people who designed the hardware and software within a few hours. Seriously. They are also very open to third party development and will help anyone with any issues they are having. There is also an incredebly extensive FAQ maintained by a member of the community. The user forums are also frequented by the hardware and software designers as well as massive number of Linux gurus who jump at the opportunity to answer your questions. Its a tech support dream. John

http://riocar.org/cd/ for the 7 I have returned to date.

The sad reality is that most people listen to their CDs in CD players, regardless of how many Slashdotters reply to this telling me something like "oh not me! I only listen to my CD collection on my computer using Linux!"

Au contrare, I listen to all my music on my car stereo running Linux!

I don't know what you use to play your music, but I don't think I could survive without playlists.

I have an empeg MP3 car player which holds 60GB worth of music. If I didn't organize this into playlists, it would be impossible for me to find the music I wanted to listen to. So, I create playlists based on artist, album, genre, etc. Then, depending on what mood I'm in, I can select the proper playlist. A particular song on the drive might exist in multiple playlists.

This becomes even more useful with my Rio Receiver, which allows me to play music off my HD in a similar fashion as the empeg. Again, I can select the different playlists (artist, album, genre, etc) and go, without having to build a custom playlist every time I want to listen to a bunch of songs.

Your KIDDING? For a company that constantly reported being backordered on the Rio Car, that's sooo stupid.

If they gave the Rio Car ANY marketing, it would have done well.... Look at XFM, everyone want's MP3 in their car or a new Cell Phone, and XFM is marketed out the ass... The ONLY reason XFM is being sold is marketing. If Sonic Blue had a marketing division worth a shit, they would have owned that market.

I always wondered why they never cut a deal with Circut City or Best Buy, I guess now I know, because they are MORONS who don't know MARKETING. Good product, bad marketing, sad loss to the Linux World (so, what's new?)

What I would like to see is a complete car package that offers:
* Large Capacity with standard drives

Car Rio will take up to two standard laptop drives. That's up to 120G of storage using easily avalible IBM Travelstar or Fujitsu drives.

* Radio and CD player

Car Rio offers an radio tuner option (might want to get an antenna signal booster, reception is "average" and if your in a remote location, it can matter, most people it doesn't). As for the CD player, if your so sad you have your 40G to 120G full and STILL don't have the songs you want, CD player isn't going to help you.

* The CD player doubles as a ripper

Why? I'd rather rip and sort at home, FOR the drive, not WHILE driving. And at what speed? 16x laptop CDROM speed? I'd prefer my home 56x CDROM and Athlon XP 1700 for ripping than a 16x CDROM with a Strong Arm processer, thanks anyway. Your thinking of tech that's 5 years off (to be avaliable at a reasonable price commercially). I'll take the real, today alternitive thanks...

* Wireless Access

Abso-frigging-lutely! But I see hacking a 802.11b USB device into a Car Rio much more likely than a commercial head unit that has integreted wireless. War Driving anyone?

* Car 2 Car IM

And you thought talking on a Cell phone made for bad driving!!!! Shit, I would RATHER see this on a cell phone than in a car stereo ANY DAY. Yes it's there, sort of.... So why bother? In the US, it's lame, and we need to cetch up to the EU. But, anyway...

If you really want it, at LEAST on a Cell phone, you can hold the phone in your hand while doing it, and still sort of hold on to the steering wheel. NO WAY do I want people to be trying to IM people from their stereo head unit! KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD. And as long as it's already in the phone, what's the point?!?!?

* Easily Navigable

Any unit is easy once you get use to it. There are no "standard ways" to navigate 60G's of MP3's in your car anyway... so it's more practice than progress... If I can simply have 10-20 play lists to pick from, that's MORE than enough. That's all I need for navigation.

Now, I don't OWN a Car Rio (yet), and I sure don't work for them. But, given that it's Linux based, hackable, and been around longer, I'm strongly leaning towards that.

Between the two, I'd pick the hackable Linux one, for several reasons.

It's been around longer.

It's hackable.

There is a community support forum

Looks way cooler

Basically, since the above mentioned review of the Dension DMP3 MP3 doesn't make ANY comparison, it doesn't help 99% of the people in the GENERAL consumer electronics market, because there is no frame of referance at all. Maybe someone could write a useful review comparing the two?

When I first heard of the Phatnoise, I couldn't wait for it to come out. But I did. I waited, and waited, and waited. I have a very popular Pioneer headunit, but they still don't support it, and probably won't for a while. Also, I realized that due to CD Changer limitations, I would only be able to create 99 playlists. That seems like a lot, but I have more than 99 CDs. Furthermore, my headunit doesn't do the best text scrolling, so I wouldn't be able to have the full ID3 tag info.

With the RioCar, however, I can see Artist, Album, song title...even year. Plus the menu interface COMPLETELY blows away the Phatnoise box. And now that the RioCar has been discontinued, the price for the 10GB dropped to $699. That's cheaper than the Phatnoise. Oh, and don't think that since it's discontinued that you shouldn't buy it. There's a huge underground community that is continuing software development.

Anyways, you should definitely check it out before deciding on the Phatbox.

And just to help make up your mind, I highly recommend checking out the demo movie here.

You can indeed connect multiple receivers to the same server. The guys that designed the software and hardware (empeg, the same people that designed the empeg car MP3 player) installed 64 of them in a hotel.

Check out the install of 64+ Rio Receivers at the Ministry of Sound hotel in Ibiza: Install Photos...

Ahh, here we are, the prototype player.

Our UK team (9 developers) regularly socialise - perhaps because most of us were around when we were a startup, or perhaps because there's so much great beer around here. Anyway, here's the evidence. Rob