# In-car media player + wireless



## houston1981 (Mar 6, 2006)

Hi guys, My first new thread *grin*

Im about to undertake a project and think i have basically thought everything through but just wanted your oppinions (and maybe i have forgotten something).

I'm planning on building a car stereo out of a broken laptop i have. The system will be setup as follows:

Laptop in boot (Centrino 1.6 / 256MB ram / 40 gig internal - 200 gig external *broken screen* (external still works which is why im using it for this))

7.5 inch touch screen monior mounted into the console

This was basically to play music and xvid movies but i am also waiting on a USB tv tuner and GPS system to arrive to hook into it.

I will be running Windows MCE because i want it up and running quickly but might move to Linux later on.

Now to the part where i think i might go wrong. With the power, i was thinking of hooking it up though an inverter etc (not to constant power) and setting the standby time out for battery to zero, and adding a power button on the console. Can anyone see any fault with this? 

In my mind it would funtion like this - The car is powered on, i push the power button to boot the laptop. Do what i gotta do. When the car is turned off, the laptop would revert to battery power and because the timeout is set to zero it would instantly go into standby mode. Does this sound right? BTW im not electrical genius but one of my brothers is in electronics and the other two are electricians so that should be a problem =D). The battery on this laptop lasts a loooooong time on standbye, probably over 2 days so that should be no problem and therefore wouldnt be messing with the car battery, and would also allow for a faster startup time!

The second part of this that im stuck with is that i want to automate the scyncronize with the music directory on my server. This runs through the wireless in my house and should be no problem with reception as it seems to connect fine from the boot. The problem i have is automating the copying of the files when in range of my home network (ie when i pull into the driveway). Anybody have any knowledge / experience with this. Maybe a script set to run on network connection or similar?

Anyway thats my basic idea ATM any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks


----------



## Sarge (Oct 25, 2002)

good luck


----------



## fcnetwerxs (Apr 7, 2006)

I think that rsync would be the way to go -- there is a windows version.

If it were my setup I would like to add and delete files on my home server then the 'media' directory would sync with the car. I guess that would mean that the laptop would have to be 'on' 24/7.

Are those hard drives going to be okay with the constant abuse, bouncing around with every bump in the road?

Cool idea, how are you making out?


----------



## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

> I will be running Windows MCE because i want it up and running quickly but might move to Linux later on.


I really wouldn't recommend a linux system for your car pc. Wireless connections are a real pain to set up in linux, there's no zero-configuration for linux yet.
No linux drivers for most cards (especially 802.11g cards), there are window's driver wrappers, but they can be a pain to set up. And only certain tuner cards work with V4L, even less USB tuners.

Now if you wanted to set up a car PC independantly, without a tuner, just to play media off a hard drive, compactflash, or usb key, linux would be great.

Anyway, for power, there was a post on Hackaday for building a automatic shutdown controller for a car pc that should be useful for you. It uses a serial port connection, appears as a UPS to the PC, and turns the PC off and on as needed. It uses very few components and looks very easy to build. http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=383433&postcount=21
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000700073626/

I'm using a regulator and a itx power supply for my car PC, and manually switching it off and on, but I plan on using this post's design to build a automatic on-off power system in the future.



> Maybe a script set to run on network connection or similar?


I'd probably set up a static IP on the home network for the home PC, then use a ftp server on it with resume capabilities. Then I'd set up a automatic ftp client transfer on the laptop. That way, if the network goes out, the car pc shut's down, or whatever reason the connection is lost, the file transfer resumes when it's connected again without having to start over for transferring large media files like movies. A movie might take a few days to transfer since the system may get a few MB now, a few MB then, but eventually the whole movie would transfer.


----------



## ydef (Dec 16, 2006)

gotrootdude said:


> No linux drivers for most cards (especially 802.11g cards), there are window's driver wrappers, but they can be a pain to set up.


You don't sound like a linux user. How'd you say you got rewt?

On the contrary, open source drivers exist for all major wireless cards, 802.11g being no exception. And no, I'm not referring to NDIS wrapped windows drivers.


----------

