Linux Based CarPC

Uber-Review writes "If you have been looking for a Linux based car PC. One man has made this a reality and documented putting together a Linux based car PC. Some of the features of this on board car PC is it can automatically sniff and record locations of wireless access points and plot them with GPS. You can watch a movie, browse the internet, get weather forecasts and stream Direct TV from your house right to your car. For an added bonus, you can remote start the car, and connect to it from inside the house and use SSH in, and transfer files without even getting off the couch."

Comments

No Carputer (tm) is complete without this....

[Goyuix]

Mp3car MTSVO-SC Fully motorized VGA Touch Screen
http://www.mp3car.com/store/product_info.php?cPath =25&products_id=120

(not affiliated in anyway)

Re:Too much work

[superpeach]

Truthfully, theres so much support and info out there to set a carputer up with windows, I find very few reasons to make me want to spend more time with linux for it.

The hardest part of getting a computer into your car is the getting the computer into the car part, not the installing of the OS. Once the hardware is in there you can install whatever you want on it.

That might just be me though, trying to do it cheap :) I found that just getting an old laptop and sticking it in the glove box was easiest. It even shuts itself down nicely when you turn the engine off thanks to acpi telling it when the "AC adapter" is disconnected.

Been doing this myself.

[shotgunefx]

I've been working on this for a couple months now. Though I used a laptop mounted in a docking station bolted to the top of the trunk using a VCR bracket.

Outside of the lilliput 8" touchscreen, most of it has been pretty cheap. The laptop was a Dell CPTv I had. Slow but fast enough. I got a docking station,dvd, dc adapter and some more memory for around $150.

I use a lilliput 8" touchscreen molded into the double din radio slot. Dumped my head unit totally. Put a small Sirius Skymate radio and embedded it into the dash. The Starmate goes to the laptop which goes to the amp.

I found some Hitachi Endurastar automotive 2.5 HDD s on ebay for about $60 shipped a piece. Good deal. A little slow but I got them working at zero degrees.

For input eventually I'll finish my indash keyboard, (A hacked up Traveler PS3100), but now I'm using a Dreamgear mini usb keyboard made for the PS2. I hacked off the cord and replaced it with a retractable usb cord.

Mostly everything has been pretty easy as far as setting things up, but bluetooth connectivity with a sprint phone has been problematic. As this is my first linux install on the laptop, (and more multimedia than I've set up in the past), I was suprised how easy it's been going.

Nice

[interstellar_donkey]

I have something similier in my car; an older 600mhz dell laptop connected to a power inverter in the seat and a Garmin handheld GPS. I have an 802.11b Orinoco card with a 5dbi mag-mount antenna connected to a pigtail to the card, and another 803.11b/g card with internal antenna. This setup can do just about everything the setup in the article has, with the exception of the live TV (though I can stream mpg video over the wireless lan), the cell phone interface (I have Sprint... ugh), and my system is not connected to my car stereo (though, in a pinch, I can burn a CD-R with MP3s and throw it in the car player).

The main difference though, between his setup and mine is, mine looks like garbage. When it's setup the passenger seat has the laptop (making it unusable) and there are wires running everywhere. To me, that's what makes this guys setup so friggin' cool. When this guy goes out on a date, he doesn't have to spend 20 minutes packing everything up and storing it in the trunk (because, believe it or not, most girls are not impressed by a car full of lose computer equipment and wires running everywhere).

I think when someone gets around to making custom kits for various vehicles for mobile computer installation--that blend in with the interior of the car like this guy's setup does--they'll do pretty well. While I wouldn't really care for streaming video (how am I supposed to watch TV while I'm driving?), I would like to see systems that made it easy for the car computer to connect to your wireless network, and from your desktop computer copy whichever mp3s (or OGG or whatever) you felt like having in your car's library.

I could imagine going over to a friends house, and him asking me "Have you heard XYZ's new album?" "No.. any good?" "It's great. Here, I'll burn you a copy" "Don't bother. I noticed you don't have WEP running on your wireless, so my car has probably already negotiated a connection and is on your LAN." (clicks on 'my network', and my shared folder configured through samba shows up) "There it is. Just drag and drop the music files into there".

Again, this all could be done using existing technology. The only hurdles are getting the dang thing configured for what you want it to do, and getting it installed into your car so it looks nice.

Re:Scary.

[kd5ujz]

its pretty easy to hack together a car/garage door lock key fob "cracker". Just find one of the many user setable devices. If it is set with dipswitches, you can use a 4040 binary ripple counter (all of the ones I have are 12bit), and use a 555 as your clock/pulse for the ripple counter. Tie the outputs to the dipswith outputs, and let it run through the codes automaticly. Might take awhile, older ones were 8 bit, but some new ones are getting up there. If you need more than 12 bits, tie two together for 24 bit.