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Reply With Quote2. Use NaviVoice... you will be able to control your music player with it
I currently have a 99' Mazda 626, and am interested in beggining a carputer project. I would only like to spend around $200 at the moment, so no monitor in this installment. The computer needs not be anything special, for the time being I just want something that can play mp3's. I already have a 200gb hdd lying around, so I have that part covered. I have been scanning the boards all day now and am very interested in getting my project started. I was thinking of buying an old computer online for around $50, just something with a Pentium 3 or so. Like I said, nothing fancy as I do not yet have much disposable income. I am sure later I will upgrade though.
But back to my topic, the main two problems I am having are:
1.) Inputing the sound.
2.) Controlling the PC.
Keep in mind, I have never worked with anything of this sort, and have just been toying with the idea for a bit now. I know I am a noobie, and I have been searching. But god knows I suck at picking search terms. The current HU is stock, and I do not believe it has support for a CDC. So I was thinking that I would purchase a PC, FM modulator, and then on to controlling the PC.
I was thinking of just having a mouse or something that I could click to change songs until I can afford a touch screen LCD, and then I saw this thread:
M-Bus CD changer adapter for car pc integration
This idea struck me as very interesting, and I am wondering is this is new, or if it is possible with other brands than just Alpine that this one person has worked with. Looks are important to me, so having a mouse lying around and clicking it to change songs seems kind of lame. Being able to control my PC from the HU seems like a very interesting idea.
So I'm wondering if HU control is just a dream, or if not would I actually have to get a M-bus modeled Apline HU for it to work. Any suggestions or ideas would be great. Please tell me what you use for input of sound, and control of your PC.
First post here, so please be nice. I did try searching, and I read a decent amount. Thanks for any help, hopefully this all made sense.
2. Use NaviVoice... you will be able to control your music player with it
I saw that in your profile many times, and kept forgetting to click it, checking it out now.Originally Posted by 0l33l
2. Use NaviVoice... you will be able to control your music player with it
Yeh... it can control media players, navigation, etcI saw that in your profile many times, and kept forgetting to click it, checking it out now.
"I've got a logitech 1/8" (non-usb) MIC that is noise-canceling. I'm happy with it. cost me $20."
I read that in a post from you, and I am wondering in what conditions you use it. Someone said it can have problems with the music loud and windows down. Noise-canceling would obviously help, but could you give me an estimate. Say driving at 60mph, windows down, would you have to yell if the mic was mounted at sayh the armrest?
By the way, from what I am reading so far it sounds like a very cool program. I'll download it tonight and test it out. I have an el-chepo mic I can play with at the moment.
There are MUCH cheper alternatives. Just make sure that it has noise-canceling."I've got a logitech 1/8" (non-usb) MIC that is noise-canceling. I'm happy with it. cost me $20."
I read that in a post from you, and I am wondering in what conditions you use it. Someone said it can have problems with the music loud and windows down. Noise-canceling would obviously help, but could you give me an estimate. Say driving at 60mph, windows down, would you have to yell if the mic was mounted at sayh the armrest?
By the way, from what I am reading so far it sounds like a very cool program. I'll download it tonight and test it out. I have an el-chepo mic I can play with at the moment.
You need to to mouont it in "sight" of you voice. So maybe on top of your gauge cluster (speedo, tach, fuel, temp, etc). Or mount it under your rear view mirror.
Don't forget to train SAPI, and get SAPI6 from the MS office 2003 CD (search for SAPI6 for the complete instructions).
With the windows down and music loud it won't recognize a thing. But that shouldn't stop you. Get Girder and an infrared remote control or if you have steering wheel radio buttons, you can hack those to control the computer.
On the other hand, if you have $200 and want to play only music, what's wrong with an iPod or a hard drive based mp3 player?
Want to:
-Find out about the new iBug iPad install?
-Find out about carPC's in just 5 minutes? View the Car PC 101 video
Because I may do more with it eventually. But at the moment this is all that I have to spend. And I have an extra 200gb laying around, so I want something to do with it. I hate iPods, they look nice, but are horribly impractical, and ewxtremely overpriced. I'm a little ocd about fingerprints. There is no point in me getting a designer mp3 player if im just going to put a black sheet over it because I'll be cleaning it non-stop otherwise.
I don't have steering wheel radio buttons, but I do have cruise control buttons, which would be really sweet to hack, I'll have to search the forums for possibiliyies. If you have any specific threads in mind, a link would be wonderful. I think a solid remote of some sort would be better for me since I like the windows down and music loud. Still deciding how though.
I'm doing the exact thing you seem to be doing. Although I am definitely not the best person to ask about car computers in general, here is what I'm doing for my setup:
I'm using a cheap 166-mhz AMD k6-2 Baby AT motherboard out of an old computer. Just about anything from a 486 to a pentium 3 will work for decoding MP3's. If you opt for the low-end setup like mine, you'll want to run an MP3 decoder in DOS. A good such program is MPXPlay (http://www.geocities.com/mpxplay/). Also, under dos, you can only use ISA or PCI sound cards. This means either a cheap Sound Blaster 16 ($5 off ebay) or a PCI Audigy 2. Either will provide great sound.
As far as control goes, I'm using a mangled keyboard controller with pushbuttons hooked up to it. I have MPXPlay programmed to scan these keycodes only. I have 4 buttons (next, prev, play/pause, shuffle).
For a display, I'm using a small 16x2 character LCD. These are very cheap ($10 from www.allelectronics.com) but you will need some soldering skills to wire them to your parallel port.
MPXPlay supports any HD44780 - compatible LCD or some serial LCDs(less wires).
All this however assumes you're just playing mp3's. If you want to have like a dvdplayer, GPS navigation, then go for a mini-ITX board, and run windows XP.
It's your choice, but if you're aiming to be able to continually add more stuff to your computer, get the above setup. However, if you're cost-concious like me and want to do things as cheap as possible, the old-computer method works fine.
Marshall
That sounds like an interesting setup, but I would like to have playlist control. I just want something like Next/Back for songs and for playlists. I am pretty good at soldering, but unsure if I want a LCD. I think I may just want to put a recorded segment of me saying the band name and the album title at the beginning of each CD. Though I have over 200 CD's, so this could take some time. I am thinking about upgradability, so I think I will get an old Pentium III, and run something like Windows 98 Lite. I saw an interesting idea that a guy had, instead of opening the explorer shell, he labeled Winamp as his shell to reduce boot time. I would currently say no I'm not going to add to my computer, but looking at my Xbox I know that isn't true.
http://www.ratemyxbox.com/gallery/B10h4Z4rD
I still added more and more after I put all of those picture up. And, when I finished I did about 5 more for my friends. And it all started just to see if the "hacks" were a hoax. Turns out they weren't
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