Thread: New Linux Project (windows maybe)

The screen shots are sweet. Hat's off to bigb for the work he's done so far.

Is the first screenshot a picture of Linux loading? What distro did you use by the way?

It also seems like there are a lot of programmers who have been waiting for something like this to come along which is really cool. How long till this thing could be put up on sourceforge so other people can have a look?

Originally Posted by adamis

The screen shots are sweet. Hat's off to bigb for the work he's done so far.

Is the first screenshot a picture of Linux loading? What distro did you use by the way?

It also seems like there are a lot of programmers who have been waiting for something like this to come along which is really cool. How long till this thing could be put up on sourceforge so other people can have a look?

I'm hopefully going to commit v0.01 tonight.. lol.. just cleaning some things up to avoid some errors, and commenting a bit more.. (some of my code may get a little crazy at times)..

Things it WILL do when up on CVS :
Play movies, loaded via local directories.
Launch external applications, get a Wid handle, and Pid for later positioning, and removal.
Auto-Dim after 2 minutes of non-use(when not playing a movie only)..

Things that need to be done :
Create "setup" screens.. to setup directories, auto-dim, and various other things..
Keep extending the plugin module.
Drink more beer.

And no, that's not the distro loading, that's the application starting up. (It's actually quite quick to start, but I slowed it down so I could take a screenshot.. ) My application(in my car) requires alot of things to happen before an application can take over. Commands need to be sent to the serial ports, to tell circuits "The Applications is up!!", and they report back, so this screen will be there waiting for my return commands.

Alot of these things won't matter to any of you, so you'll just see that screen "flash" before the app loads, but I am trying to think of every case..

Originally Posted by kevlar

I'd love to join in the development. I currently work on MythTV so I have some QT development experience. And in some ways, MythTV is very similar to this project.

My goals very closely match yours, and here is a hilight of some features I can't wait to see and develop:

1) GPS integration

I wish we could come up with a good way to do this. See previously in this post for many ideas concerning thing..

2) Bluetooth phone support to manipulate the address book and calendar, make/receive phone calls through the computer to the phone, and route internet traffic through the phone to the GPRS.

That'd be great. I think most people wardrive, but this is how I get my PC in my car on the net. (using direct cable though)

3) Music and video metadata support and easy navigation of content. Categories, genres, etc.

I have a pretty good method down pack for Mp3s, though I am still up in the air about videos. Alot of "useful" information is not stored on them, as they are with Mp3's..

4) Game emulator support, to allow playing games on trips, etc. (MAME, snes9x, etc)

Right now that could be done. Buttons can be made to launch applications(just by use of the skinning engine). No coding would need to be done. Simple <bExecute>/usr/myemulator mygame</bExecute> on a button, and it'll launch that game..

5) Phone home support (update a server or home computers with the location of the vehicle)

Problem is most people don't leave a connection method in their car(such as cell phone, etc) when it's parked. I do, but I am not everyone.. lol

6) ODB-II interfacing to get vehicle statistics and other real-time data.

Already have me a copy of FreeDiag, and ready to kick some *** on that.

7) Seperate multi-touchscreen support, and the ability to choose to broadcast a movie to all screens at once. The ability to hear music on three different screens using headphones would be nice too so that each person can choose what they are listening to.

With your MythTV experience, do u have experience w/ Arts, Alsa, or OSS in a multi output/input senario? I'm not even sure where to begin with that one.. lol

8) 802.11abg support with a custom set of protocols on top supporting intra car messaging (broadcasting, car2car, etc), the ability to transfer files/music/video between vehicles, etc.

I will be implementing a program I wrote for my current unit to sync between car and host, so I guess that could be modified to handle this type of thing as well. Great idea!

9) Voice prompting to respond to touchscreen events
10) Voice recognition, to avoid even having to touch the touchscreen while driving.

Slightly tricky on Linux, but very well doable.

There's plenty more features I'd like to see, and even implement.

Let me know how I can start getting involved. I can host a website, etc too.

Kevin

We'd love to have you help out. We're going to be @ xcar.sf.net though as of right now, I have not commited anything.. still working on it as we speak. Will be hopefully tonight.. If not, at the latest, tommorrow..

You guys can add another Kevin to the list if you like.

I just got the equipment for my car system and am currently working to get it installed into a case and powered up. I had originally thought about running MythTV and gradually modifying it to meet my car needs. However, I think there's more potential here to get everything that I want from MythTV and end up with a more tailored system for car use. It appears that there's a wealth of information available to us from projects like MythTV. In fact, I think it would be extremely cool to be able to use MythTV at home, to record programs (tv, or radio) and upload them to the car (via WiFi) for use on the road. Imagine hopping in your car and finding that it has already downloaded pre-recorded copies of your favorite radio and/or tv shows.

Anyway, before I invite myself to work on the project, I should give a little background: I've been a programmer by trade since 1997. I'm fluent in C/C++, Java, and Python. And I have done a little QT programming on my Zaurus.

--Kevin K

Originally Posted by hijinks21

ya i think that would be a kick *** idea. You could watch your myth saved programs in your car.

bibg, any news on cvs.. i just got a nice QT book in that i've been reading over and would like to look at some code. i might grab the mythtv source and take a look around

I think I'll get the source for mythtv and look at it. We know that it's split out into a backend and frontend, so there's got to be some good separation between the different parts of code. With any luck, they've split out all the UI stuff from the backend and h/w support code. If so, we can pick and choose which parts to use.

Okay, I just had another thought. It looks to me like we've got some differing opinions on what to use for the UI on this. So, what if we incorporated all the functionality here into more of a service, and separated out the UI completely. This way anyone can develop their own UI in whatever language/widget set they want to use. Also, it would allow for remote access to the server using PDAs, etc. Furthermore, it would be possible to have multiple displays running different UIs even.

Picture this:

The core of the system is a server that accepts client socket connections. Over these socket connections, it sends and receives validated XML strings. The DTD will tell the client anything it needs to know to communicate with the server. Clients would be extremely lightweight and could even be written in J2ME for iPaq's and Zauruses and used wirelessly. Also, if you had more than one computer in the car, one could house the server and the other one(s) could simply run clients.

What does everyone think?

--Kevin

Originally Posted by bigb

I wish we could come up with a good way to do this. See previously in this post for many ideas concerning thing..

Well, the last 2 years I have been doing a lot of GIS work too, so add that to the list of skills I have to contribute. I've played with MapServer, it's excellent. and Postgres+GIS functionality is nice. MySQL has the capabilities as well now. Although, MapServer is really only so be able to manipulate and store geographical information, you still need to find a way to inject the more important data, i.e. the states, roads, interstates, etc. Getting that data comprehensively might be a more difficult task than you might think. It might be possible to scrape the info from government websites (i.e. USGS, etc) but, in all reality, I doubt it will be in one complete archive file. But we might be able to extract it from a commercial product, but if we go that route, then anyone who used XCar would have to buy the commercial product, and run our extraction tool. From there, we still need to write a graphical interface from the data, and I'm sure we could grab functionality from other open source projects to display the information.

I really believe we need an integrated solution, not just a link to an external program for the mapping, etc. Too many car systems now just link out, and I hate the ugliness of most mapping/gps programs.

Originally Posted by bigb

That'd be great. I think most people wardrive, but this is how I get my PC in my car on the net. (using direct cable though)

Sure, maybe most people do, but I like to have a constant connection up. I want to be able to receive important emails, IMs, or get realtime traffic information, etc. I can't always rely on wardriving. Plus, many people don't like the legal issues.

Originally Posted by bigb

I have a pretty good method down pack for Mp3s, though I am still up in the air about videos. Alot of "useful" information is not stored on them, as they are with Mp3's..

As long as we offer the ability to manage the videos (perhaps by directory structure) and have the ability to associate each video with an IMDB or tvepisodes id number, then we can grab the data off the net, and fill in that information. So it wouldn't be a completely automated scenario, but it would work.

Originally Posted by bigb

Right now that could be done. Buttons can be made to launch applications(just by use of the skinning engine). No coding would need to be done. Simple <bExecute>/usr/myemulator mygame</bExecute> on a button, and it'll launch that game..

I'd like to see us take it a step further, and provide an interface like MythTV does. It should autodetect the rom files, and provide a list of them, things like that. It wouldn't be difficult to do.

Originally Posted by bigb

Problem is most people don't leave a connection method in their car(such as cell phone, etc) when it's parked. I do, but I am not everyone.. lol

No reason we can't still provide the functionality Making it optional to the end user is great.

Originally Posted by bigb

Already have me a copy of FreeDiag, and ready to kick some *** on that.

I've been looking into finding a safe way to split the ODB-II connection in my Audi A4 so that I can have a permanent cable go to my car computer. I haven't had a chance to get an ODB-II cable yet, but I'll get one soon.

Originally Posted by bigb

With your MythTV experience, do u have experience w/ Arts, Alsa, or OSS in a multi output/input senario? I'm not even sure where to begin with that one.. lol

I don't have any experience with sound on linux yet. But I guess we'll be learning that soon huh?

Originally Posted by bigb

I will be implementing a program I wrote for my current unit to sync between car and host, so I guess that could be modified to handle this type of thing as well. Great idea!

Yeah, I've always dreamed of being able to send messages/files to other cars on the road. It would be great to be able to send messages to people that ****ed you off on the road, or if you were a single woman you could send a love note to a guy you liked in another car, or for road trips, you could send music and video files back and forth between cars in your caravan. Or, if you're travelling, you could send out a "broadcast" message, much like leaving a message on a forum, but just to the cars in the nearest 0.25 mile, asking if there's any good restaurants in the area... things like that... the possibilities are endless.

Originally Posted by bigb

Slightly tricky on Linux, but very well doable.

I imagine we would use festival/festvox for speech out, but what would we use for speech input?

Originally Posted by bigb

We'd love to have you help out. We're going to be @ xcar.sf.net though as of right now, I have not commited anything.. still working on it as we speak. Will be hopefully tonight.. If not, at the latest, tommorrow..

Great, could you add me to the sourceforge project? My username there is "Zanoryt". I'm looking forward to jumping into the sourcecode!

Originally Posted by bigb

Launch external applications, get a Wid handle, and Pid for later positioning, and removal.

What method are you using to accomplish this? I found that some programs save the window manager property _NET_WM_PID, which can be used to find the PID associated with a particular WID, but a lot of programs do not do this.