Thread: Iphone in car navigation - The Death of your PND

Originally Posted by skusa93

Now, lets pick this apart.
Do you have surround sound capability on you iPhone? Didn't think so.
Chalk one up for the CarPC.

Who needs 5.1 surround sound in a car? But ok, if you have a center channel speaker then yeah a CarPC wins.

Originally Posted by skusa93

Does your iPhone support playback of 1080i? Cause my CarPC will if I buy a Blu-Ray DVD Drive.
That's two.

Really think your eye's can see the difference in quality on a ~7 inch 840x480 screen from 2.5 to 3 feet away? You must have 20/10 vision and super upconverting eyes.

Originally Posted by skusa93

GPS? Are you kidding me? Clearly you know absolutely nothing about the iPhone, which runs off of triangulation and not GPS.

Are you kidding me? Clearly you know absolutely nothing about the iPhone which runs off of GPS.... yes GPS.

And your list of errors continues...you need to take a 2nd look at the iPhone 3G. It sounds to me like you had an original iPhone and you never Jailbroke it. A 3G Jailbroken iPhone has far more capabilities than the original.

-Jim

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

1. Touchscreen control. A way to control the software from the screen is required. While the setup in the video is a relatively straightforward display of the iPhone on your screen, what we need is a way to control the phone from the touchscreen. The software on the iPhone that relays the picture to the screen already has a built in mode that allows you to display the picture in a browser and control the iPhone from the browser. Perhaps there's a way to do the same with a hardware gizomo. Any engineers got any ideas on that?

The iphone has a serial port and so someone needs to write a driver for a serial touchscreen interface and problem solved. Love the progress and can't wait until the day that my cell phone is my pc is my car pc is my gps is my credit card. F the cloud i want it all in my pocket.

When sweettooth gets up and operational, the iPhone will have full Bluetooth capabilities. Think of what that will do for the CarPC application. OBD II, wireless keyboard, mouse, touchscreens, etc...

-Jim

It's a bold statement to make. If you watch the market carefully, you'll see that Pioneer, Sony, JVC, etc. are all making headunits with 7" touchscreen LCDs, USB ports, iPod control, DVD player (possibly Blu-Ray now), HD radio, and some even have hard drives built-in. These are simple car PCs in their own right. We're going to reach a point of convergence: what we car PC enthusiasts have been doing for years will eventually meet up with the new models from the likes of these electronics giants. At that point, most headunits will be car PCs without people realising it. As it stands, many car makers have the radio, a/c, OBD stats running on a common interface and sometimes one screen, so the convergence is inevitable. It's just a matter of time before we find all cars coming with 120GB hard drives, full internet capability, etc. and these will be available in new cars as well as aftermarket units.

Instead of encouraging you to use the phone as the car PC, the electronics giants would rather build a headunit with all the bells and whistles, and add a phone control module so that you can use your phone as the bridge to the internet cloud or whatever service your phone can offer that's not already in the headunit.

It's not dead. And if it is dying, it will take years upon years to fully extinguish, after which it will simply reincarnate itself as the standard system in your new car.

Originally Posted by chronoguy

What is with the a/c dash mount? This set-up involves too much work - jailbreaking, etc..

I think my solution with the HTC Touch Pro is a whole lot easier. It is pretty much supported out of the box with only a $20 cable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjnABOFkJZw

I saw your video - it is very cool! A very nice solution.

As for what hardware will work or won't work, the main problem with phones now and likely into the future is that the manufacturers insist on crippling them so you can't get at the innards very easily.

As proprietary as the iPhone is, it come loaded with a bunch of apps that do most of what you need and you can develop for it. If you jailbreak your phone, you can put any app you want on it, so you've got a shot at making it work like you want. Plus, there is so much energy around it that there are tons and tons of new apps being developed that do nearly everything you want.

Beyond that, the Android phone is quite interesting. With the OS being open source, it should be a hacker's delight. I need to find a forum that is extending and hacking it.

Why the mobile device will replace the car PC

For those complaining that a phone based car PC doesn't do everything the car PC does today, of course it doesn't. I'm certain that we'll see it grow and mature into a pretty good platform for in car computing. Here's why I think so:

1. Installed base. The installed base of even the iPhone is so much larger than the in car PC market. As soon as someone develops a consumer level product that extends the functionality of the phone into the car, regular people who aren't hobbyists like us will begin to use it.
   
2. Price. It's cheaper and portable. Your configurations are carried with you and reside both on the phone and on the net.
   
3. Functionality. It does almost everything you want a car PC to do except for some very interesting stuff at the margin that will remain the province of the car PC for some time.

The in-car aftermarket products like the AVIC will continue to draw consumers who want excellent quality sound and more flash and bling, but when the average consumer looks at the price difference and the functionality I think they'll choose to extend their phone rather than add another device.

Do you not realize that your idea of having a complete frontend supported by any old phone is basically a PC using a phone simply as an I/O device for internet? How is this beneficial at all?

Yes, I do realize that. What is beneficial is eliminating the need to spend money for a car PC, carrying it in your pocket to reduce the possibility of theft and the install footprint, and breaking the requirement to develop an app for each and every phone or operating system by substituting some type of 'display program' for lack of a better term.

Just don't understand why your promoting this as such an innovative product, when it really isn't anything new at all, just an iPhone display being rendered on a head unit. Sure it's cool and all, but you can't really expect an iPhone to come even close to what a full PC can do, not even Apple would be stupid enough to make such a claim.

No need for name calling. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Let's check back in 2 years and see where the momentum is.

And I agree - you're right about this prototype not being innovative. What it does is demonstrate how a more integrated and finished product will work in the future.

This topic is going to get ugly. This could have been prevented or thread come across more professional if it focused on the solution and not opinions revolving around it. You will never look like a fool if you just stick to the facts. Only time will tell I suppose...

My 2 cents-

Touch:
How about 3rd party touch? Why would Apple enable such a feature? Without it, this is not a viable solution for carputing. If it was enabled somehow you would still require an LCD with a USB input- the headunit on board doesnt have an output and hoardes its touch panel for its own use.

Connection:
I do not forsee this video connection becoming wireless anytime soon! That means I would have to plug an iPhone into my car just so I can have a SLIGHTLY bigger screen without touch function? This works for the people who already plug this device into their car but others prefer a cleaner look.

Video:
-The refresh rate in the video noticeably sucks.
-You have to navigate thru sideways menu because it is cloning the screen. I will guarantee you Apple is a far cry away from realizing a purpose or having an on-board GPU capable of discrete video output.
-Without discrete video output that has a descent refresh rate- this is not a viable solution for most carputing.



Conclusion: When taken with a grain of salt- this is a very cool approach but has a long way to go. If I had the choice between this hacked configuration and even my first p4 carputer- I would still choose carputer FTW.

My opinion: The hacked setup in videos is ugly and will probably remain the only way you can "get the job done" for the next two years. In two years- I imagine most phones will look and feel like the iPhone so by the time this becomes a reality, it might not be on your beloved iPhone. In short, I think we are all aware of what the iPhone can and can't do so until there are some major revelations- you are only sharing an opinion.

On a closing note- I already know the defensive replies to my post... "this is beta and relies on alot of advances on Apples end yadda yadda." Well, That's my point- I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket just yet!

This HTC just knocked my socks off comparing it to the iPhone videos!!!


Sweet work! Right side up menus and touch function means you rivaled this iPhone post before it was published IMO!

Originally Posted by chronoguy

What is with the a/c dash mount? This set-up involves too much work - jailbreaking, etc..

I think my solution with the HTC Touch Pro is a whole lot easier. It is pretty much supported out of the box with only a $20 cable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjnABOFkJZw

I just have my phone inside the side console refrigerator (I never use the fridge). Everything is pretty much hidden from view. I can pull out a Logitech DiNovo Mini keyboard to interface with it. About 10X better than the iPhone.

The problem with the iPhone (I have a 3G model) is that it doesn't have a front end or one you can get from the app store. Playing video is a bit of a hassle. I have my iPhone in my car as well and you can't really play videos by playlists. If you have 50 music videos, you have to exit out of the current one to play the next one. I don't have this problem with the regular IPOD. I use a Ipod Classic 80 just to play videos in my car.

Also, the Iphone doesn't support third party HID devices. You can't use a bluetooth keyboard or touchscreen HID from the LCD.

Phones are getting there. I use my HTC Touch pretty much over the standard Nav I already have.

Don't discount PNDs. You can buy a Mio and hack it pretty much; install a new front end, add multiple GPS apps - Garmin XT, Tom Tom, IGuidance, IGo, Oncourse,etc... All you need is a SD card and the proper boot executable. if there was a PND with Video Out and GPS built in, I would totally do that.

Originally Posted by skusa93

Now, lets pick this apart.
Do you have surround sound capability on you iPhone? Didn't think so.
Chalk one up for the CarPC.
Does your iPhone support playback of 1080i? Cause my CarPC will if I buy a Blu-Ray DVD Drive.
That's two.
GPS? Are you kidding me? Clearly you know absolutely nothing about the iPhone, which runs off of triangulation and not GPS.
Yet again, CarPC wins.
Phone? I have a cell phone with a $20 bluetooth adapter in my car. I'll throw you a bone and call this a tie.
Internet? How in the world do you call what the iPhone has as a browser internet, sure you can use it as a browser, but that's like saying I use my car for the radio, the internet has an infinite amount of possibilities, only one of which the iPhone takes advantage of. Pretty sure I'm stickin with the PC on this one too.
Why in the world is email important in your car? Are you really going to type a response on your iPhone mounted to the air conditioning vent while driving? If so I'm hoping you live nowhere near me.
Maybe I'm blind, but where does OBDII tie into any of this?

Wait...you don't want email capabilities in your car, but you want 1080i?

Also, the 3G iPhone DOES have real GPS. I'm not sure what your beef is with the iPhone's internet capabilities either, it has internet access that can be used by any application, not just its browser.

I have At&t's version of the touch pro...and a 3g iphone. Decisions decisions! Where did you get that TV out cable for the HTC?

In a few years this iPhone thing may take off...but in the meantime I still feel the carPC is the way to go. If the casual user comes along, they can still purchase a Pioneer and be on their way. It's the customization of the carPC that keeps me trucking along