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!