Well I've got a ton of ideas of my own too... I'm more than happy to toss them out as things go along. As far as programming goes... outside of html and pascal, I'm all thumbs, but as I have an over abundance of freetime at the momement, I'd be happy to learn C# and maybe even VB.Net if needed. Let me know if I can be of any help...

 

Actually voice control only requires you to write or buy a program that does that for Windows and add that to your machine. There was a mention of that on mp3car.com in the media engine or media car threads...

Between the two, I find media car to be very slick. You get full audio equalization...even radio through winamp. Everything except video is pumped through winamp so that you can take advantage of that. Gamma correction by timer so that the display "dims" at night. And the reviews had set the newcomer, Media Car, as the best you can get right now. I haven't installed and tried them out yet, but reading specs, bug reports, etc. I tend to agree with this opinion.

Not to tell you not to make your own or discourage the work you're doing... I had thought of doing it myself too... but now it just seemed almost like remaking the wheel... especially since I like that one skin on media car. So I wasn't going to bother with it... and then I come across you working on one... :roll:

 

I've just installed Media Car and tried it out. Trust me when I say that this is nothing compared to what I've planed. Besides, I'm programming a shell replacement and not a program that runs on top of windows. At least I don't want it to appear this way. I want it to appear as this is a media unit, not a personal computer.

At first I thought I might cancel the coding part if there are too many equaly like programs. But I know my limitations and I know for a fact that those are nothing compare to what I have planed.

But keep 'em coming, I'm interested in seeing more

 

A shell replacement. Excellent. That is exactly what I want... much prefered to something that runs over the standard NT shell.

You forgot to mention DVD playback in your specs. You know... you can request the SDK for Destinator (I like this GPS software... it looks like one of the best ones) so that you can embed it into the system... I'll take this to the other thread.

 

Oh...BTW... as I am pretty tall and not very small... the center console works better for me to be honest. I have fairly long arms so I could reach the stock nav position, but it'd be a PITA. I just can't figure out what I'd do with the slot-in DVD player if I mount the 7" touchscreen w/ the CPU in place of the HU. What I really want is a 6.5" touchscreen and to motorize it like the ones I've posted before from clarion or kenwood...

Well we'll see when I finally get my 8 (planned late 04/ early 05) and I can take a good look at the space. Maybe it'll fit right under the vents where the buttons (tuner, CD, etc.) are now...

 

I'll eventually have to wait on this project until my screen gets here. There is no point in designing the interface if it won't fit later.

I just ordered the TFT, as soon as it gets here, I'll proceed on the project.

 

As far as I know...

Computer motherboards use 0/5/12V+ power. The 12v power can be taken from the car's power supply, which could probably be hooked into a Uninterruptible Power Supply [after a series of proper voltage regulators] which only needs to be large enough to supply power to the computer for say 1 minute at most. Upon shutdown of the vehicle, Windows will notice it is running on temporary battery reserve, which will then cause the computer to automatically go into standby. Stand-by mode uses 5v (or less) to provide power to the board's logic and memory while the vehicle is shut off. The amperage used to maintain motherboard memory should be insignificant in comparison to a car battery's capacity, so you won't need to worry about the computer draining the battery when you're away from it. The benefit of this is that standby mode only requires about 3 seconds to resume in comparison to a cold boot (checking bios, hardware, loading drivers, etc.) and you can resume exactly where you left off before when the car was shut down.

On the matter of hard drives - I think you can get away with using laptop hard drives, as they are built to be sturdy enough to be carried around and operated in moving vehicles, even race cars and trains. Suspension mounting would be cool too I guess..

What would be ultra-cool is if you could find a way to interface the computer to the car's ECU [which would require some knowledge of CANbus interface and programming] and use your TFT as a gauge cluster display or live diagnostic report...:D

 

GiN,

Acutally the Opus PSU that I mentioned in the "Startup/Shutdown" thread monitors the ignition and battery... it stops you from killing the battery, and it will startup and shutdown/standby/hibernate your machine when the key is turned off... it supplies power to the CPU for how long you specify (jumpers in the PSU) and at the end of that shuts the CPU down.

You have to have a power regulator in a car even if PC Mobo's run at 12V, because a car alternator does not put out a very stable 12V and a computer requires a very stable 12V power supply. Thus people buy the Opus unit which has that and the above features...

 

Very interesting posts. I totally agree with you GiN. I didn't think of using an UPS. That's a very good idea but I might as well get the Opus unit if it has this built in. It's expensive, compared to what I had in mind, but it's almost twice as strong. That'd give me some room to daisychain usb devices :p

The screen is 16:9 so, I'm way off with my 1024x768. If anyone knows the exact screen resolution of an 7", please let me know. It'll make my life a bit easier until I have a development unit

edit: I'm thinking of the ECU but I'll get everything else out of the way first. It'll be tricky, never done that. Sounds like an adventure tho

 

The native for the Xenarc 7" unit is... 800 x 480... check out the specs here...http://www.xenarc.com/product/700ts.html. Also see the link Ihad for the skin for Media Car... the guy posted it in two sizes... one for the Car PC 7" of course...

 

odd, but ok. Sounds pretty standard, it's the 2nd time I'm hearing from this resolution. Just wonder why they are advertising the unit as 4:3 (1024x768).

I'll go with the flow, 800x480 it is. thx

 

You've got me on that one too. I suppose the screens can display 4:3, but it's no good for using as a in-car touchscreen (too hard to read and touch)... hence the 800 x 480 resolution....

 

As you mentioned in the LCD thread... going with a shell replacement is a good idea. Media Engine offers this option, but it looks like it only works for Win98SE... which sucks. Who is going to use that "blue screen of death" POS instead of Win2k or WinXP??

Anyway here are a few things that came to mind...

I noticed that you didn't mention DVD movie playback in your specs. Just an oversight? How would you go about running this? I mean would you use somethign like WinDVD and embed that into your "media center"?

As far as button size goes... from using Japanese ATM's (they are all touchscreen) I'd say to make sure that your buttons are big... especially since you will have to fiddle with them while driving... (get a RF remote!)... at lights, etc.

I like the looks of your background, but... do you think it'll be ok to look at while driving? I mean... not to difficult to make out the icons at a glance? How about at night... not too... flashy as so to distract the driver?

You're going to need to add gamma correction via push button and timer to adjust the brightness for nighttime driving.

Don't forget to have a "tools" section to tune/adjust the shell you're writing.

I'd recommend doing something like Coyote did with Media Car for audio. By pumping it all through Winamp he can use Winamp's eq to tune all your music except for videos (whose audio doesn't go through the same way). I think having an eq beyond "treble and bass" is important.

GPS software... I like Destinator and the SDK is free! CoPilot Live... no SDK it looks like... hmm... routis 2004 looks pretty good... but I can't find anything on SDK for them either. I don't see why anyone would want to use MapPoint other than the tools it comes with... feature wise it's not a Nav system really. I guess that covers the major ones...


OH... BTW... for those of you who plan to remove the HU entirely and would like to have radio functionality still... a lot of people are using Dlink USB FM receiver, but it looks like crap to me for inside the beautiful 8. I've found this solution instead...Cadet PC Radio.

 

Oh, DVD playback is supported, as long as you have codecs installed, it'll be launched within my program.

I've reduced the size to 800x480, looks better. I just hope the buttons are big enough (what do you think?) Btw, the contrast of the buttons (main menu) change on hover. I'll also add a click state when I'm all done.

All the "fine tuning" of the graphical elements has to be done once I have a unit I can test it on. Otherwise it's pretty hard without visual feedback.

<snip: images removed in favor of new version>

Still working on the playlist and stuff. You see the little arrow button on the headers (VISUALIZATION and PLAYLIST) ? With those you can switch the panes around, so you have big visualization and small playlist. Or click on visualization and get fullscreen mode.

One after the other, but some good ideas/info are coming down with this thread

 

The main screen looks like it'll probably be fine. The media player... well the "delete" and "reset" buttons are too small. Those arrows/triangles you're talking about may be too small.

The Volume level "Volume 95" looks like it may be difficult to read when driving or at a glance. I also wonder (but not sure) about type like "Play, stop, etc." and "playlist" and "Elapsed, Length, etc."

Coming along well... keep up the great work!

 

The delete/reset button are probably big enough because I don't expect anyone to manage their playlists while driving. I'll have to see about that when I have a test unit.

The Volume description (Volume 95) changes color to white if the volume is in use. it returns to red after 2 sec idle. The Play, Stop, Etc are only for design purposes, you all know what these buttons are for, but it looks better with a little description but yea, defeats the purpose if it's not readable later on.....

Appreciate your feedback and comments!!

EDIT: Give me another 5 hrs today and the first version of the audio player is done. I'll be doing the preview release tonight.

 

Hi,

Great thread, the media center looks quite promising. One thing I want to bring to attention... I'm pretty sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that all the data for the LCD panel comes from the factory HU, so if you remove that you will lose all your vital info. Reverse engineering that looks like a PITA too. Given that, I'm not sure where the best placement for the TFT would be.

mohrt

 

Uh mohrt, you confused me, what are you talking about?

 

I meant to say LED... the red LED that says "mazda rx-8" when you start the car, shows you radio station, outside temp, vent controls, etc. Although I'm not 100% sure, I *think* that is all driven by the factory HU.

 

No... OverLOAD and someone else looked at it while he was working on the AUX unit. It APPEARS that the climate control signals are separate. The climate control plugs into the HU board and the HU to the red LED, however... the EE's on the board think it'd be too convoluted to have the signal actually "decoded" and the LED controlled by the HU.

Reverse engineering this may be a PITA, but very necessary. Not everyone wants to keep the POS stock HU in the car... some want aftermarket HU and some want carputers...

 

As far as resolution goes, you should check the specs of your display, but... the popular Xenarc and Lilliput screen are XGA (1024 x 768)...

 

As promised, here is the first version (0.03.1)

RELEASE NOTES

This release contains only the Audio Player.

Known bugs
- no SHUFFLE, REPEAT
- playlist does not advance (found out after releasing)
- ADD SOURCE [File] only works
- Identifying song length during load is n/a (song has to be played to retrieve info)
- Pane-Switcher (visualization <-> playlist) disabled.
- bitrate n/a

THE GOOD STUFF

This is really premature but I thought I'd share it.
Work in progress, 'nuf said.


What you need is the following:
Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Files
Windows Media Player 9

DOWNLOAD

v0.03.1 RAR-Archive
v0.03.1 Self-Extracting RAR-Archive

Please post any errors you may run into. Thx

 

u mentioned that you are Greek...thats cewl...have a look at this site www.carnavigation.gr ...i think is a nice idea have many features and costs 1.500 euros with a free nav map


the only problem is where to put the screen

 

yes, I know. I'd prefer to have it in-dash too but for the time being, there is no alternative to using that 1-DIN slot.


The Audio Player is almost done. Adding folders (and subfolders) is implemented now. Song duration are retrieved when the song is added to the playlist. NOTE: This feature is very slow at the moment. In my test run I am adding 3000 songs, I don't even want to mention how long it takes (Athlon XP Barton 2600+, 1024mb ram, 10000 RPM HD)
(10+ minutes!)

I'll look into optimizing this for the future, I'll also move that stuff into an database for save keeping.

Playlist advancing is still not working. I yet have to figure that one out (I killed that function with something else, I'm confused!)

I'll be working the entire weekend on this, once I"m done, I'll tackle the Movie Player.

When the basics are out of the way, I'll start looking into ODBII scanning. If I can't get it up as I want, I'll have to rely on someone (piggy back manufacturers) to provide some sort of integration help to their own unit. I have already contact Ric Shaw in regards to software. It would be very cool if I could read out the values of his piggy back and display them from within my program.

<edit> My C++ knowledge isn't that great but I think it's time to flip the switches. Besides, I'd like to make this Linux compatible as well. Might take longer because I'm practically learning the language first. So, definately not in time.

 

How is it coming along? Sorry I haven't had a chance to install and check it out yet... a bit of drama going on in my life at the moment...