The Mp3Car Blog

Designed with the supprot and feedback of our community, the fusion brain guys have done it again – At midnight EST today they released version 4 of their fusion brain control center.  

Improvements over Brain v3:

• 16 Digital Outputs
• 13 Analog Inputs
• Selectable Power Source (USB or 12vDC Jack)
• 30% smaller form factor (70mm X 45mm)
• Better power filtering and protection
• Ability to update firmware via USB
• Ability to update firmware via ICSP header in event of bootloader corruption
• Improved signal routing for analog inputs
• Pulse Width Modulation, 256 steps with 42uS minimum pulse width (may need firmware update, provided free and uploadable over USB)

Previous versions of the fusion brain have been used for:

• Christmas Car
• GPS Steered Tractor
• Steering wheel controls
• HVAC control

Buy Fusion Brain Version 4
Fusion Brain  Version 4 Manual
Discussions about Fusion Brain version 4 on our forums



The Fusion Brain guys give us a video demo of their version 4 product.

Now what would really be cool is to have an accelerometer or some other sensor built into the steering wheel so the image always rotated and was rendered based on the steering wheel position.   I bet there is a patent there.  :)   That woudl sell some dual core CPUS.   Talk about it here.

 

 

 

We thought the forum members of mp3car made the first car computer in the late 90s. Wrong. Done by the ghostbuster guys first in 1984. See our video for 20 seconds of ghost busting fun.

 

Who made the first car computer? If you made the first car computer, tell us about it. Help us document history.

 

Talk about this post on our forums.

 

Mp3car typically focuses on mobile computing applications. The reason why this fits on our blog is that Brian from Palmer Performance has ported his car PC OBD and performance application to the iphone. This is a two part interview. The first part is going to be a tour of his new iphone application. We will follow this up later in the week with a tour of his carpc installation and the features of his car computer software. Brian has made some interesting hooks in his windows application that will allow for integration into roadrunner, centrafuse or other applications.  Talk about this on our forums here

 

Everyday, members of Mp3Car’s forum seem to come up with some amazing solutions to everyday problems encountered in the car computing world. Seeing that we have a pretty steady blog going on, I figured that it is about time to highlight some of these solutions a little more publicly. This gives opportunity for outsiders to see what we are all about here and give due recognition to those who demonstrate their skills to turn something ordinary into something extraordinary. In turn I hope this inspires yourself and others to innovate your own solutions to whatever troubles come your way.

---

 

Forum member AvWuff has come up with an interesting solution to adding phone support to a CarPC . Handsfree bluetooth is a touchy subject when it comes to car computers. There are so many complications. Software support only seems to work half the time (if at all). Limiting factors include: Phone manufacturer, Bluetooth stack, Bluetooth hardware, Microphone, Sound card, echo cancellation, frontend integration… the list really could go on for a while. Meanwhile AvWuff, dissatisfied with software based solution, went a slightly different route.

Using a Parrot Ck3000 evolution, an Adruino board and some other odds and ends, Av hacked together a new system to interface with his custom home-brew software. He took apart the Parrot device and soldered some wires on for relay control. Using the Parrot mute box, he used the speaker outputs to connect to the Adruino board to determine the state of the bluetooth and trigger commands on the computer. Though not as intuitive as the software, this rendition works. Read on to see the pros and cons.

To get the full explanation, read up on it here . Or check out his project page. If you're interested in this, I highly recommend you drop by Av's website to see some other stuff he has worked on. www.avbrand.com

Thanks Av for contribution!

 

Discuss this in the Blog Talk Section  

Suggestions? Send me a PM

[...]