Heather, Rob and Sean from the mp3Car team are in flight to Las Vegas to attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. We will bring CES 2010 video coverage to you via ustream live videos and HD videos on our blog. Tell us what and who you want to see on video by sending @mp3Car tweets which will text our mobile phones.


We are looking forward to meeting up with forum members such as Greg Planthaber, the recent subject of a New York Times article, for a meet up Saturday night. If you are at CES 2010, join our meet and if you have YouTube videos add them to our Community Videos page for everyone to see.

Could the Linux community have a fully featured alternative to Windows based in-vehicle front ends? The answer could be Yes.

The OpenICE organization announced the release of LinuxICE 2.0, codenamed "Anino." LinuxICE is based on the Ubuntu operating system. However, thanks to a team of international developers it looks nothing like it and it has been heavily modified and optimized for use in a vehicle environment.

Some of the features of LinuxICE include:

• Build-in Navigation
• Media Playback
• Support for many add-on devices, ex. OBDII Scantools, HD Radion, Touchscreens, etc..
• Designed to be stable, fast, efficient and easy to setup and operate

Here is a screenshot:

If you want to find out more about the OpenICE project go here.

If you are interested in LinuxICE (read, install) go here.

For those interested we will post a review of LinuxICE 2.0 in the next few days.

UPDATE:

Official Press Release here.

At the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) Boston Rob Wray from mp3Car spoke to representatives from the PC manufacturer MSI which makes this ultra thin computer.

This computer packs 4 usb prots, laptop hard drive, 2 lan ports, 3 mini pci slots, and 2 wireless antennas into a case less than an inch thin. Wow!

CNX-P2140 Overview and Installation


Goal

Demonstrate what all the input and output wires (J1 and J2) on the P2140 do and where to connect them. We'll also provide a quick overview of the jumpers that control how your primary and secondary output rails behave.

Learn

Understand where the input and output wires connect to. Learn how to connect the P2140 to a bench battery for testing purposes and measure the output voltages. Also a quick introduction to multimeters.

Equipment

CNX-P2140, a bench battery (or an extra vehicle battery), a multimeter (optional)

Next Time

How to splice your AC/DC brick to power your laptop/mini computer.

**Goal
Demonstrate what all the input and output wires (J1 and J2) on the P2140 do and where to connect them. We'll also provide a quick overview of the jumpers that control how your primary and secondary output rails behave.

**Learn
How to quickly wire and configure the P2140.

**Equipment
Screw driver, electrical tape, multimeter (optional), wire strippers, p2140

**Next Time
How to splice your AC/DC brick to power your laptop/mini computer.