MP3 player - on the NAV screen (TV-AV related)

1C00lVC · 5th March 2001, 16:33

I always wanted to get an MP3 player in the car. There are many ways of doing it, none are integrated into the car's NAV screen.

Now, since we figured out how to get AV in/out to teh car's audio/video system, I got this idea of taking a laptop with a composite video adapter, and connect it to the AV in. This way I would be able use it with an IR remote and the NVA screen to play MP3 files. If you set the video resolution on the laptop to the lowest, the output should look usable on the NAV screen... Oh yes, I have wireless LAN at home (802.11), and I could sit at home on Napster and load music files into the car while it is parked in the driveway. Could be cool, no?

your thought?

Arie

5th March 2001, 16:41

Ive allways wanted one too. Ive been reduced to burning CD's. I would use sony's mp3 player walkman,and atempt to hook that up. a loptop would be too big in a 5th.

1C00lVC · 5th March 2001, 16:45

I thought of keeping the Laptop in the trunk permanently connected and "alway on", and use an IR "Blaster" ($10) to transmit the IR commands to the laptop in the trunk. Once you have a working computer connected to teh car, there are other interesting apps I could think of..

ijam · 5th March 2001, 17:24

that's really interesting Arie - lots of possible apps we could run... I wonder how shock resistant laptops are these days (not anywhere near as much as other portable stuff like CD players I'll bet - but maybe just enough)

in the old days I thought about doing this to do satnav - no need for that anymore... but the cost of a portable DVD player makes the dedicated laptop (with DVD) seem a little less expensive - especially since the laptop can have a crappy cheap screen and poor battery life.

a power-supply for the laptop which runs off 12V shouldn't be too hard to work up - so long as its regulated and can cope with the surges from a car battery (any of you automotive experts out there know about this stuff?)

and as long as the screen can actually display 640x480 we should be OK as we can rework the apps to suit the screen size (eg skin winamp with really large buttons, etc)

hey Steve/INVICTO - if you've got a laptop handy, can you try hooking it up to your brand new setup and seeing how it looks on the small screen?

we still need to fix the motion-lock though...

ciao

Ian

AndyMenard · 5th March 2001, 19:29

I hear you man... I would love one also. How about this ---> www.empeg.com thing inside of the glove box?... connected to the AV input ... I assume this has two audio channels?? left and right?? for stereo?...

I would forgo the need to have TV on the screen to make this setup work?...

I will investigate this asap and let you all know what I find out?..

Cool:

I also have wireless in my house...and the empeg has an Ethernet as well as a USB port for downloading. Wouldn't it be nice to burn new music while the car is parked in the garage??!!!

Details to come?...

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Andy

2000 Imola M5 / Black Nappa - Titanium Trim

greg · 5th March 2001, 19:43

I think if you run your laptop while under way you will stand a strong chance of ruining the hard drive. These machines can handle typical car shock loads when OFF, but they are designed to be stationery while on -combined gyroscopic/shock loads on the hard disk can be tremendous.

ijam · 5th March 2001, 20:38

actually greg I would think it would be OK - although it would be worth checking the model of drive used as the amount of shock a drive can withstand varies enormously (even among 2.5" laptop drives which are designed to withstand higher shocks than desktop units)

you're correct that the drive can withstand much higher forces when off - this is because the heads are safely parked and in no danger of touching the platter. but remember that a laptop with any reasonable amount of RAM would cache large pieces (if not all) of the MP3 file in memory so the HD will only be spinning up occaisonally (laptop drives are very aggressive in this respect to save power)

for example:
IBM 2.5" laptop - 150G operating, 700G parked
IBM 3.5" desktop - 55G operating, 225G parked

although those sound high, a drop of just a couple of inches represents enormous G figures. I've got no idea how violent the shocks would be to something firmly attached in the boot of a car - presumably the largest forces would be in the vertical direction as the wheels bounced...

if I can sort out the display end, I'll gamble a laptop drive on a trial

ciao

Ian

oops - forgot to mention that products such as the Creative Jukebox and the Empeg car player both use 2.5" laptop drives

[This message has been edited by ijam (edited 05 March 2001).]

Jester · 5th March 2001, 20:45

The solution might be better fixed if you used a smaller more efficient system like a handheld for this. It has the IR feature, but I think its too slow for moving major files like MP3s.

My suggestion would be to build a customized embedded Linux distro/app for the handheld.

Now the one problem off the top of my head is memory card limits. But Sandisk just released with Toshiba its 512 MB card. So if you loaded them on there as data and not in .wav format you could squeeze quite a few on there.

What about using a handheld hooked up to a seperate (whatever size) gig hard drive that resides in the trunk? Since the HD will hold apps and the customized linux distro on the handheld. You could use a plethora of mp3 players. Not to mention the idea of checking email over the cellphone?

This way you would have the handheld in the front so you can use other apps too (internet access). The Harddrive could be used for holding mp3s. Hook up your handheld to your desktop computer transfer the mp3s via usb. Take the handheld and plug it in the car. Unload the mp3s to the harddrive. viola.

Actually the handheld idea could just replace the phone in the car as well. Since a handspring could probably be wired to the bmw antenna?

Anyone a *nix programmer that could build such a customized embedded distro?

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'00 NBM Vette Convertible Pic #2
'00 ///M5 Titanium Silver/Caramel

johann · 5th March 2001, 22:00

I have used several laptops in cars, on trains, on plane, on sailing trips and even in my speed boat.

There has never been any problems with them, and if you place it on piece of medium hard cell foam, I am sure it will work just fine.

Regarding using a laptop as a DVD player it will either need MPEG2 decoding in HW or be a pretty fast laptop with SW decoding. Are there any cheap laptops with MPEG2 decoding HW?

If you use HW MPEG2 decoding you will need to rely on the OS ability to cache data in advance which in most MS OS s-cks. If you use a SW decoding you could have the "DVD player" cache lots of data which is perfectly feasible but I do not know of such a player.

However if you use any laptop you can use it for a lot of other more or less useful applications.

Can anyone find out how to enable the TV picture when the car is in motion on newer cars too, please?

Cheers,
/Johan

alpina andrew · 5th March 2001, 22:48

In car MP3 players are availible, they work as a CD changer does. I can not remember who makes them but they are about £500. You would hook it in to the same conection as the CD changer and use the supplied remote.This would be the proper way to do it?