In car computing

I've been fascinated by the mp3car.com community which started off by simply installing computers in cars and has evolved over the past few years into a place where you can buy a complete car PC to install in your car which runs as smooth as any plug and play device. No need for 12V to 220 V inverters, no need for extra screens, complete in car PCs are available that anyone with basic knowledge of electronics can install in their cars.

As usual with everything else in Pakistan, getting these systems is expensive and definitely unaffordable for me. So I wanted to install something that did not require a lot of tinkering with my cars electronics and would give me everything that an in car PC has. When the Raspberrry PI a $35 Linux computer came out I got very excited and ordered one. I also used it to develop a product prototype for a company. The one I bought was simply lying around unused so I installed it as my Carputer! 

I have installed a touch screen windows XP based handheld computer (UMPC, an ultra mobile PC, these were popular before the iPad came out) before in my car. The problem with this is it takes too much time to boot into Windows and even shutting down takes time. Refer to the following picture. 

It was never the perfect solution. I needed something that was quick to boot and quick to shutdown. I also changed my car from my CJ-5 jeep to a modern honda city sedan. This car belonged to my father who had changed the stock stereo to a chinese made touch screen based system that includes a DVD player, Radio, USB input, a TV and Aux input. It lacked a GPS and any navigation software which is bad.

Since I had a Raspberry PI lying free, I decided to install that in my car. The car already had a screen that had an Aux Audio/Video port that I was using up till now to connect my iPod shuffle. In order to use the PI as a multimedia device, Raspbmc is a great piece of software which is a port of XBMC for the Raspberry PI. I followed the following steps to install the Raspberry PI in my car.

Step 1:Download raspbmc from http://www.raspbmc.com/download/ 

 

A setup file can be downloaded for Windows 7/8 which can be run to install Raspbmc on an SD card. This is the route I followed. I used a 4gb sd card which was formatted by the setup. 

 

Step 2: Connect the SD card in the raspberry PI and connect it to a network

 

I did this by connecting the Raspberry pi to my TV  and let it run. It took about 30~45 minutes to download the Raspbmc from the internet and install it on the SD Card. The setup is completely automated so no intervention was required and in the end the system was running Raspbmc. 

Step 3: Add media to your USB device 

I added some sound and video files to test

Step 4: Install it in your car

This step turned out to be the most easy one and that took the least possible time. Since my Aux port in the stereo was readily accessible through an extended Audio Video cable, all I needed to do was connect the video and the audio ports to my Raspberry PI which was enclosed in a 3d printed box. Two pieces of paper tape at the back of the casing and the PI readily stuck to the carpet beside the center console, easily hidden and out of sight. I powered the PI using my 12-220v inverter which outputs 220 v as well as 5v through a USB port. A simple turn of the car keys and the Raspberry PI booted into XBMC within 20 seconds. I've connected a mouse to interact with the XBMC. 

Step 5: Improvements

Some of the improvements that I plan to make include

• IR Remote interface with the PI, which will help me do away with the mouse
• Internet connectivity using either PTCL's evo dongle or using my mobile's internet as a hotspot. In this case I will need a USB wifi adapter for my PI.
• I have a warid connection and my phone is not 4G so I'm waiting to see whether I should be porting to a 3g network.
• Touch screen. Maybe when I have enough money to spare, I would like to replace my existing touch screen with a one that is compatible with a Raspberry PI

Enjoy the pictures!

 

3d Printed Arduino Robot

After discussing for months and brain storming different ideas on how to develop a locally made robot that can be used by teachers like me to teach, students to learn and researchers to experiment with, we've managed to make our first 3d printed mobile robot. For start we took a design from thingiverse and got it 3d printed. We added an Arduino, did some programming and it turned out pretty good.   

The main idea behind this is to have affordable "Made in Pakistan" robot kits that are affordable by everyone. We have a few research labs that have the latest in robots such as the NAO humanoid, the People bot and other kits. Unfortunately these have been acquired after spending large sums of public money or donations. What we wanted was to start making robot kits that can be used by not only these research labs but but by high school kids, college students and hobbyists. This mobile robot is a first in that series. We will also be developing quad copters, humanoids and other forms. 

This mobile robot at this stage has the following features:

- 3d printed design

- An Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller

- A Sonar Sensor Module

- A bluetooth Module

- Completely hackable design

Here are images and video of the developed robot kit

3d printed parts have arrived

For our mobile robot for teaching and learning, we got the 3d printing done from our friend Syed Ali Ahsan in Karachi. Ahsan bhai runs the facebook page 3d Printing Pakistan and is a wonderful guy. He is very supportive and not only prints but guides people if they need help. This robot was also printed by him using his deltabot 3d printer. In the previous post we had a look at some of the videos that he sent us of the parts being printed. Today we received the parts in Islamabad. Exciting times! Here are some pictures of the 3d printed parts

The Package!

Everything wrapped in plastic bags

Part of the base

The other side

All the 3d printed parts

Here is a video of unboxing my 3d printed parts. I will soon be uploading more material when we assemble the robot and make it work.

Building a Mobile Robot for teaching and learning

In my lab I'm developing a mobile robot for teaching and learning. The idea is to have a 3d printed small programmable robot that students can play with to learn programming, electronics and robotics! Following is a part of the base that is being 3d printed. Following is a link to the video of 3d printing one of the parts of the robot. I'll be sharing some more pictures and details about the design. The 3d model is from thingiverse and I haven't designed it. We will use this design as a starting point to design our own robot.

http://tune.pk/video/2857856/3d-printing-of-my-mobile-robot