Slow down in the forum?

[chris350]

Anyone else notice that the forum has slowed to a crawl? Is it cause it's winter in the northern hemisphere?
Or just no one is interested in carputing?

[soundman98]

the overall member ship swings a lot-- this is the first day in weeks that there has been 2 pages of new posts.. but i do think the cold temps of winter has a huge effect on what people are willing to do to their car..

[Lankin]

Just throwing this out there, since I have also noticed how much it has slown down compared to 4 years ago....but I think it's android/smartphones.

When I first built my carputer it was because I wanted a solid platform to manage my media. Now android does all that in a much easier, smaller package. And for a majority of people they don't have to buy anything, they already have it, with there phone.

After my carputer, I switched to a 7'' tablet tethered to my phones internet. That was just an necessary step for the extra 3 inches of screen. I now just rock a mount for my phone next to my steering wheel. Its the most practical, reliable, and usable solution I have found yet......and I didn't have to come to a forum to figure out how to do it, its pretty easy to do with a bluetooth head unit and a car mount.

I still check the forums everyday just because of the plethora of information and innovation, but I can tell the carputer as it was seen 4-5 years ago is coming to an end.

[sebberry]

Hopefully with phones becoming illegal to operate in a car in more and more jurisdictions there will be a resurgence in the car PC hobby.

The other thing is the increasing availablity of technology in all but the most entry level car models. When you can get a Ford Focus with a better infortainment system than any car PC can offer...

And one more thing - the prices of aftermarket head units has fallen steadily over the years. And unlike car PCs they work properly most of the time.

[lamaii]

I think you also have to think about the economy, CarPC's are not the cheapest or easiest systems to build and you can buy aftermarket car radios that have integrated BT, USB input and even video for under $200. OK they may not be the best of systems but when money is tight your always going to find the cheapest option.

[dmcdlrn]

Kinda sad. You are probably right about the phones/tablets killing off the traditional PC. As I remember the forum 5-6 years ago, there were 2 groups of people; people with simple LED displays and an mp3 player of some sort (thus mp3car) and the other group was ambitious individuals with spare money or poor priority that had full fledged pc's.

At this point, the economy is a bit dragging, people are investing tons of money into smart phones & tablets as they are socially expected now and if you don't have one you are an outcast. Cars are also disposable now. Putting all this time and effort into something I'm going to sell or trade in in a year or two is pointless.

There is also the matter of cheap aftermarket double din nav units, dash mount gps and factory units with all the above or simply mp3 and or iPhone/iPod integration. (this is where I was for the last 5 years... I only came back as I have a convertible and the aftermarket units cannot compete with the sun)

I think there will likely still be the 2 groups of people, there is just a shift in their categories; people with new technology such as phones and tablets and the hardcore techie people that want all the tweak able settings a PC offers.

I'm waiting to see a raspberry pi install. If I could program for linux I would be all over that.

All good things must come to an end... there may be a day when mp3car ceases to exist but I think we have many good years left in her. It is depressing to see some of the greats from this forum missing... not sure what happened to them.

[sebberry]

I agree about the economy. I have seen slowdowns in other forums catering to hobbies that rely on disposable income.

Not only are people not investing in the car PC hobby, but they've switched to other means of in vehicle entertainment.

I think this has a compounding effect on the hobby. Alternative devices are cheaper, fewer people are investing in car PC hardware/software and as a result fewer people are engaging in development for the car PC platform.

As a result, car PC options are becoming more limited, software such as front ends are being developed at a slower pace and are often released full of problems (Come on Centrafuse....) and that in turn drives more people away. It's a downward spiral.

[lamaii]

One problem I see is that is that the forum is not making things easy! The DFX 5.1 thread is over 200 pages long and it's difficult to find information when it's not broken down into threads, and people keep asking the same questions like why is the youtube skin not working, when about 20 pages back it stated that an change in youtube caused the problem and the skin needs to be fixed!. This is not a dig at the DFX creators, it would just make more sense that skins like DFX get there own section/folder on the forum.

Another problem is that most of the skins appear private sources. I would be glad to help develop skin files in my spare time but you need access to the psd files, trying to hack the png files is not easy (well I don't think it is)

When I started looking into car PC I was at the point of giving up, there were so many options and a lot of the projects were either abandoned or lacking hardware like DAB, I know people are working on it at the moment which is good news but it's difficult to justify buying a PC rig when you cannot get a radio to function, also there appears to be a lack of basic FM/AM solutions, sure you can make your own but there is very limited off the shelf hardware available, I've had to order an FM radio from the US as I cannot find a know working off the shelf solution in the UK!

One thing that put me off Centrafuse was the amount of complaints on the forum, would you invest close to $149 (with maps) for a products that's appear to be full of bugs and they charge for minor upgrades (bug fixes)....

[dmcdlrn]

I know for me, I tried last season to use my iPhone as my in car entertainment/navigation. Needless to say it was very trying. My suspension is too stiff (stock bilstein suspension) and the thing bounced around on a windshield mount so bad that in addition to not being able to read it, it would rotate back and forth because the accelerometer was confused. There were tons of other reasons too but that isn't what this is about.

What this is about is that there is huge value in carpc to the right people but because they are relatively confusing, only the most techie get them right and can keep them going. Selling a car with one in it is basically not an option as the end user would be screwed.

lamaii, I 1000% agree with you. I try to use the search feature but get discouraged as it returns so much junk. 107+ page threads are impossible. I enjoy my forum time, I don't mind reading lots of info but I cannot read 107 pages of posts... I just don't have the time. I try not to complain about things I'm not willing to help fix but I have no idea a solution to this issue.

[Fiberoptic]

great conversation. I'll write more thoughts on this later. Also - I started a thread here. Maybe we shoudl split DFX into it's own forum?
http://www.mp3car.com/rr-released-sk...own-forum.html