Thread: PocketPC FrontEnd in the making!

I will be rolling out an interface design shortly to get a "view" of the whole thing.

It's not my purpose, but the last game I wrote for a PPC, only needed a few minor changes work on a PC, so this should work on a PC aswell.

JuJuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!

I'm very interested in this proyect!

In my opinion it could be:

- Scaning wifis in order to import how PDI to TOMTOM.
- Integration of TOMTOM

Come on you can!!!!

what about this??

Anakin78 : What, about "what"? ... your question is a bit confusing.

mrobert - great idea, think you're onto something

I have ipaq 3715 (i think that's the model - hard to tell...) - 802.11b, BT, IR - I velcro to my dash in landscape mode with audio out interface to alpine hu aux in. interfaced to etrex gps via ups & power cord, running mapopolis, that worked good (til dog stepped on power adapter and broke it). I run Conduits' Pocket Player 2, which is skinnable, great UI, includes equalizer, overall very good player imho, will pay for this one when free period expires. I take ipaq out of car at night, just to play with in house, including synching up any rips or updates from base system in house. It goes back into car in about 2 seconds. It's always on in the car, even if car is off. I don't have to worry about power surges and gently powering down after car is powered off. I don't have to worry about setting up touchscreen to work - all this stuff just works.

In my prior car setup, I had epia-in-the-glove-box mobo, lilliput touchscreen velcroed to dash, powered by opus 90w smart psu (which they now tell me is obsolete after what, 6 months!?), and plain ol' harddrive hanging out in glove box near mobo. wifi in pci slot, antenna with magnetic base, whoever was riding shotgun had to stick out the window (this was during warmer months last spring) - was advised not to drive by airports with this setup - it was fun, til I shorted out the hu one day, but it was always a lot of work ...

But now that I've had some experience with PPC, I'm hooked. I mean think about it - under $300 and you get a complete, functional, turnkey system, with integrated touchscreen, wifi, bt, good set of windows apps, battery power, and decent extendability. You can do GPS, Audio, Internet, Video, Wardriving (WiFiFoFum is a neat little tool). And I don't spend any time fussing around with it - it just works. I'm now focused much more on audio quality, better amps & speakers, etc - instead of tweaking XP and installing drivers etc. Seems like a better place.

So what would make it better?

1st, a clean interface ala roadrunner or any of the others. big buttons, prob no more than 6 or 8 per screen. Easy navigation screen to screen. etc. Ability to add user apps. Prob need both landscape and portrait modes - I prefer landscape in the car.

Second, some way to more easily and reliably connect to outside world. wifi on this thing seems weak - not sure if it's the 802.11b, or the hardware in device, or the absence of antenna, or the software, or all of above - but it's definitely worse at snagging and keeping signals.

Third, interface to bigger device - use PPC as front-end to Windows based device that's tucked away somwhere. Things I've tried so far in this vein include MSTSC (sucks), VPN (good for file access only), UPnP style media interface (works pretty reliably, but the user interface is clunky at best). There's prob a bunch of ways - I know Winamp has a Web plugin, so you could control via browser. You could run winamp on "server", then control from IE on PPC. Again, might be clunky.

4th, bigger screen. Understood not your problem. But a bigger footprint would be awe-some. Like even 25% larger. Have looked into tablets - not the same.

Well, I guess you have at least one fan here - let me know if you need anything tested, happy to try any software.