NetRemote CCF for use in Car with a Mobile PC

[mrchivs]

The majority of the time I spend listening to my music is in the car, so had anyone thought about designing a CCF that combines a NetRemote running on a standard wifi enabled PDA mounted on the dash with a dedicated 'custom built' PC in the boot with all the music stored and accessed through JRMC. The PC would boot when the car is started, and NetRemote would control the tracks played - there is now kit available that enables you to build a PC that will withstand the vibrations of the road. The sound card on the host 'mobile PC' could simply connect into the AUX jack found on some headunits. Some thought would have to go into how the buttons are laid out, and how to easily browse music while driving (could be dangerous?) without using the stylus. If anyone has any ideas or have started similar projects, please post your thoughts and comments (and any CCF's) here.

[Jlee]

Mastiff's your man. He's done the carputer thing pretty much as you describe.

[Mastiff]

So I have. I have even expanded it a bit: My system has three zones (would have to with me, eh, J.Lee? :wink: ) for the headunit and the two kids in the back seat. Acutally this weekend I drove for four hours Friday and again yesterday with my son, and he listened to the audio book of Lord of the Rings all the way while I was listening to gangster rap and heavy metal! :D My CCF is very simple, it has large fonts and buttons, but I'm not really satisfied with it, I'm gonna have to make something better. This one took around 20 minutes to cook up, based on my regular CCF. A good one would be nice...

[Mastiff]

OK, here's a translated version of what I've got so far, if anybody's interested. It has three zones, Headunit, Kevin and Lisa.

[mrchivs]

Had a play with Mastiff Car CCF - can see how the various screens link up in Tonto, but looks like it has a few bugs, i.e. the Home Head unit button doesn't do much on my PPC :(

Anyway, this will be enough to get me going on how to develop my own CCF - one I want to have purely for browsing music. I am planning on building custom PC(designed to withstand the road vibrations) into the car boot which will start up when I start the engine. I just want to easily browse, search, or select a random playlist all while on the move (so the buttons will need to be nice and big), no fiddly scroll bars to move about, just tap and select up/down arrows to navigate around. Thinking of ipod simplicity here, but with the added power of JRMC to play the music.

Anyone out there thinking along the same lines as me here, or am I the only one wanting to have around 120Gb of music on the move???

[Mastiff]

120? Wimp! :wink: Try 270 gig, 53 000 + tracks! And you don't need anything special to make it take the vibrations unless you're riding a Ferrari F-50 off-road. I have mounted a regular system inside a tool suitcase (wooden panels with a thin layer of aluminum on the outside) and I haven't had any other problems than the one time I hadn't secured it and it fell down from the place it is (in the back of my Suburban that meant falling around two feet!) and messed up one of the hard disks. Except for that I haven't had any problems. But you'll need some inventive circuitry to make it stop when you stop the car, if not it will be like pulling the plug every time it happens. Then you need to think about PSU - 12 V regular or inverter 12-220 volt outside the pc (which is what I have done, so I can use the PC as the music player in my cabin by the sea).

[mrchivs]

Yeah, I guess 120 is not a lot when price per GB is falling so much, but I will upgrade my disks when I need to (and when they're half the price) - was going for 2x60Gb laptop drives to start - can always add another two later. As for the power supply I think someone has done the hard work already here, check out http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.A/id.300/.f and http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.A/id.258/.f - looks like these will drive the PC and cope with the PO/PO cycles. I'm purely at evaluation stage here, piecing together what I need for this project (hardware and software) - looks like NR would be the right tool here. And with a wireless enabled PDA, this can be passed around to other passengers if they want to browse what to play next - no need for it to be tied to the dash any more.

[Mastiff]

Not bad! Those weren't around when I first built my system three years ago. And anyway it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference since I prefer to be able to take the "MediaSUV" PC into the house or the cabin. But NR certainly is a great solution. I'm considering expanding my system with a roof mounted 17" LCD monitor (they're coming down in price and luckily most LCD monitors are 12 V) so my kids can watch movies or play games - imagine them killing each other peacefully in a deathmatch on the road! :D I actually drove from Texas via Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada to California (LA and then up to San Francisco) with a laptop running DVD-movies when they were 4 and 5 years old (4 years ago), and they never complained!