Thread: MOBILE IMPACT - All New Front End

Just tried your front end and am impressed with your approach and the stability. I use a 640x480 which is great too and I agree that this gives the best interface for fat fingers like mine!

I'm just in the process of putting together my system and have played with pretty much all the software available. This one looks good. So I'll get playing with it and let you know how I get on.

Just a couple of things that I had difficulty with. My music is located in the root of a second drive but I coudn't seem to point to it. Also once freedrive was launched I couldn't go fromn the main screen back to Freedrive by touching the GPS button - i.e. Freedrive wouldn't go back on top. I just got an error message saying Freedrive was already running.

And a couple of requests - full Freedrive integration would be good for all those of us who have Destinator, and a USB camera interface too.

Keep up the great work - I will try and do a skin or two when I get chance.

0l33l -> My decision to incorporate iGuidance into the program is not final. I would like to be able to embed all of the destinator based programs, and also be able to incorporate any others, but it has been proving to be very challenging. I want to get everyones reactions regarding the embedding of iGuidance. If I do embed it, I will embed it into the front end completely; and not make its own front end skin like iGSkinner. I definitely dont want to step on anyones toes or copy someones ideas. I will say that it is very easy to embed iGuidance in visual basic. The program takes keyboard commands for just about everything in the program, so it is just a matter of capturing it into a picture box on a form then use send keys to operate it from the button_click functions. I use alot of API strings and I am working on a way to bring it to fullscreen using the built in button menu, but so far I have been unsuccessfull.

If you're in a vehicle going at the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights ?

I just updated the Nintendo 64 Emulator. It is now very touch screen friendly. The user can select up or down in the rom list and then play or stop playing using buttons on the mini toolbar.



I also fixed a small issue with the media player visualization. The visualization stays at full screen between songs.

Lets see some alternate skins!

I had a chance to mess with this last night a little bit. So far, it's pretty good. My only question (for now) is how can I play a DVD from the HD? All the player ever shows me is a "Search"? Is there a way to make it browse and play a DVD from a folder? I have almost all of my DVD's Archived onto my main server for use with my HTPC. It would be nice to be able to just copy whatever DVD in a folder I want to my CarPC and then play them. Is this possible?

Originally Posted by reddeath30

If you're in a vehicle going at the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights ?

Nothing.

Originally Posted by reddeath30

I figured that was about the minimum processor that I would run Windows XP on. I developed it in Windows XP, and have tested it on Windows 2000 on a p3 866 and it ran pretty well. You could try it out on a lower Operating system, but you may run into problems as it requires Windows Media Player 9 or better.

nope, I've been running my pc off of a celeron 500mhz/256mb ram setup. No problem with XP, mediacar, iguidance, dvd, obdII.


(I'm upgrading now cause my power supply died and I've decided I wanted usb2.0)

Originally Posted by Tragik

I had a chance to mess with this last night a little bit. So far, it's pretty good. My only question (for now) is how can I play a DVD from the HD? All the player ever shows me is a "Search"? Is there a way to make it browse and play a DVD from a folder? I have almost all of my DVD's Archived onto my main server for use with my HTPC. It would be nice to be able to just copy whatever DVD in a folder I want to my CarPC and then play them. Is this possible?

Wow you must have like a 300 gig hard drive? Heh Heh, thats at least 4 gigs per movie. I made the program to just play DVD movies from disk, then any other format(mpg, avi, wmv, etc) can be played through the video module.

I use this program to convert my DVD's to AVI and it doesnt lose any of the quality: http://www.pqdvd.com/index_palm.html


This program cuts them down to about 500 megs at high quality, and they look outstanding on my 7 inch screen. Thank you for trying my program out. What other features would you like to see?

Originally Posted by Pentode

Just tried your front end and am impressed with your approach and the stability. I use a 640x480 which is great too and I agree that this gives the best interface for fat fingers like mine!

I'm just in the process of putting together my system and have played with pretty much all the software available. This one looks good. So I'll get playing with it and let you know how I get on.

Just a couple of things that I had difficulty with. My music is located in the root of a second drive but I coudn't seem to point to it. Also once freedrive was launched I couldn't go fromn the main screen back to Freedrive by touching the GPS button - i.e. Freedrive wouldn't go back on top. I just got an error message saying Freedrive was already running.

And a couple of requests - full Freedrive integration would be good for all those of us who have Destinator, and a USB camera interface too.

Keep up the great work - I will try and do a skin or two when I get chance.

Sorry to take so long to answer a couple of your difficulties right away, I have been working on integrating a gps more into the program.
There is now way to point the program to a different drive. Because of the DVD player typically using a drive letter, typically D: and the main partition using C: I made the program point to C for musing and video and to D for the DVD's. I picked a model that I thought would be the most typical car pc, C: drive for data mp3s, videos, etc. and D: drive for DVD. In my purpose to simplify; this allowed me to cut down on the interface by removing the function of selecting mulitple drive letters.
Regarding the proglem with Freedrive. I have noticed that it doesnt stay on top, and makes it difficult to switch focus to it if you have clicked on the lower portion of the screen that shows. I you set Freedrive to 640x480 and the top and left settings to zero then you wont have anywhere to click except to close Freedrive to get back to Mobile Impact, this is particularly the reason why Im working on integration of GPS programs into the program rather than having it open as an external app.