(CONCEPT) WinCE carputer with digital dashboard.

[AntBoy1979]

I have had the idea for a while now to replace my stereo with a touch screen and car pc, The idea has evolved into a 7" double din WinCE 6.0 based unit, probably like this unit on eBay, Item number 220548195489
and utilize the 2 dual zone video outputs for twin 7" LCD's in the dash replacing the instrument cluster for a fully customizable digital dash. the data would possibly be acquired through an OBD2 to Bluetooth adapter if it was to allow 2 way comms so I could also reprogram the eeprom on the fly. All the hardware side is pretty straight forward. It's the software side I have been stumbling on!
I have found this program WolfNCU http://wolfzone.u-stor.net:20001/~wolfz ... u_download to be a fantastic little frontend for displaying GPS data and accessing programs and apps. It is also insanely simple to create your own skins and gauges from scratch (I've already made 3 with speedos and compass). It's almost the perfect solution. The big problem? It doesn't appear to have the ability to utilize ALDL. Any websites referring to it or it's development are in Korean, It's freely available but no signs of it's source code. Multiple attempts to decompile it's .exe with a multitude of decompilers have been fruitless. It's implementation to use an individual .bmp to represent each of the 360 degrees of a compass or each Kph the speedo needle moves seems like a simple enough concept, it's just that my programming skills are below simple. I am learning the basics of c++ from online but it's going slow and I don't think I'll be capable of writing a program like this by myself anytime soon.

If anyone is interested in giving advice or have ideas or lending a hand with the programming, I'm all ears.

[jacomms]

Have a look at :

www.centrafuse.com

and also google "Road Runner" car PC software

Very nice......

[AntBoy1979]

I've played with Centrafuse for a while but it's only available for x86. I see they have development tools and systems for arm, but how do you get hold of these? and is there a centrafuse auto version written for arm?
I was originally going to use centrafuse on an x86 carputer. but theres no ability to run TomTom successfully, which is an absolute must, as I have a bit of money invested in the software, maps and premium voices. That and I just like it!
Is it possible to run a TOMTOM PND version navcore under linux? or would I still need an ARM emulator?

[antus]

I was talking to a mate about a similar concept the other day. If I was going to do this my choice would be Android for the os. Pure Linux doesnt have much in the way of GPS software. Ive had copilot, navigon and sygic running under android in Australia (ive also heard motonav/igo works here too). Im already using my phone like its a carputer (nexus one), with it plugged in to the stereo and the cig lighter for power so might just stick with that, but those archos 5 android tablets look interesting. The show stopper there though is the gps is pretty crap and the newer ones dont seem to have a gps. The very latest is win 7 based, which may suit centrafuse, but they arnt cheap and im a bit anti on windows in general.

[AntBoy1979]

Android seems like an interesting way to go, but! Wouldn't that require an exceptional amount of programming to achieve?
Looking at Linux, I found a nifty program here http://icculus.org/obdgpslogger/ it allows OBD2 and GPS data to be collected from serial or serial blue-tooth and interpreted. Now just for a front-end like WolfNCU (which also has a x86 version as I found out today!) and an emulator that doesn't just plain suck to run tomtom. There are that many hacked navcores getting around that surely someone has ported it from ARM to x86?
I'm only guessing here, but, wouldn't the process of writing an emulator to interpret the software be similar or just as hard as rewriting the software to run on the host? Again, I'm only speculating.

[antus]

obdgpslogger looks interesting.....

tomtom is under development for android: http://phandroid.com/2009/08/20/tomtom- ... n-the-way/

not sure when it'll be out but in the mean time there are other GPS options.

OBD2 might not really be what you want if your running an ECU with ALDL which I think is OBD 1.5. There is an obd2 scanner for android called voyager from gtosoft, although first impression is that it has good potential but is a bit immature. They have some vids on there of it logging obd2, and also interfacing GMLAN and operating car peripherals. Could be something to watch. Their blog makes quite an interesting read: http://gtosoft.blogspot.com/

if you go x86 then you can swap between windows/linux/android although i dont know how difficult that'd be. If half the fun is building the system then you can do it 3 times over

[Dec_head]

I have a full screen speedo only for my win ce based gps if it is of any use to anyone

[AntBoy1979]

What's it called Dec_head? Take a look at WolfNCU to see how they compare.

TOMTOM on Android? but will it run on x86 or only ARM/MIPS?
Got a VN Berlina Series 1, going to mod the ECM with some of vl400's goodies at some stage down the track, assuming I can get that VR V6 bin working first!
I think booting between 3 OS' would be a pain! maybe XP running VMware for Android and Linux? It would save having 3 sets of drivers and could use all three at the same time. XP having the best driver and hardware support would make the best host OS I think?

[antus]

android is usually on arm devices, there is an x86 build that runs in vmware but its not the norm

[Dec_head]

I am not sure what it was called it is on my other computer i would have to go through a lot of crap to find it
Their are a few great gps software sites likehttp://www.fixmygps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=54
Their was one called navsoon.org and underground gps wich had heaps of software etc it helped me out making custom menus getting into the usually hidden windows ce and changng it to english making custom menus and running games and i had about 6 different versions of gps software running at one stage but found igo8 to be my favourite so now that is all i run.