car box

Christopher Chisholm christopher.chisholm at syamsoftware.com
Tue Mar 28 14:56:00 EST 2006


Hey Everyone,

Over the past few months as my 90' celica has been inching steadily 
closer to its ultimate demise, I've been thinking a lot about where we 
are with certain technologies, and how I could obtain them in a future 
car.  One thing I've always wanted but had never been willing to spend a 
lot of money on has been a GPS unit.  Recently I've been made aware with 
a sort of peripheral vision that there are an increasing number of 
software-based GPS solutions, utilizing a pretty cheap receiver that can 
be plugged in through USB and used in conjunction with some sort of map 
software.  This got me thinking... why not set up a small microATX 
system to serve as a music player/GPS navigator/notepad/anything else i 
wanted?

Right now I'm calling the design idea CarBox 0.1.  I picture one of 
those really small boxy mATX cases sitting (mounted would be a better 
word probably) under one of the seats, with a touchscreen LCD either 
mounted in the glovebox or somewhere along the dash or front panel.  I'd 
get a decent soundcard so it could output to the amazing stereo setup 
I'll be obliged to install,  and power it with inverters and wires 
carefully hidden to make it look decent.  I'd opt for a setup that 
generates as little heat as possible so the box wouldn't melt in the 
summer, but I'd also want the system to boot as quickly as possible (I 
don't want to wait two whole minutes for my precious, precious tunes).  
It would also be cool if it could be hooked in to the 
speedometer/odometer/tachometer for statistical purposes (and to damn 
myself with evidence should the police stumble across the system when I 
accidentally slide into a convenience store in the winter).

what do you guys think?  does anyone know anything about touchscreen 
LCDs or GPS software?  Any comments on the idea in general?  Would 
temperature extremes render an LCD useless in the winter?  I'm confident 
with the right setup the CPU temps wouldn't be too much of a problem.  
I'd also want whatever OS I'd use to handle hard shutdowns fairly 
gracefully.  Are there any linux file systems well-suited to this task 
as well as quick boot-ups?

-chris

"that fellow at radioshack said i was mad... well who's mad now?!"



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list