Great to see you back LLoyydy, cant wait to see the new skins your making.
I bought a Silabs USB radio from Azzuri @ azzuri.com I think enforcer or another user has tried it and made a skin for it, I only received mine yesterday so haven't looked at integrating it yet or checking out available skins, its a nice simple .exe that runs from anywhere, might be worth a look.
I used FreeFone to integrate my mobile into my carPC, works well but I have my mobile on O2 so I get free internet access, I use the blue tooth to get internet access but this then blocks FreeFone from accessing the phone using the bluetooth port (still looking at this one, may try xport).
I removed the TV icon and replaced it with a 0 lux webcam, this then opens the Philips capture software, I was planning to have this record a small video & audio file and email it should the wrong access code be entered more than twice. Main reason for this was I couldn't get any TV reception using a pinnacle USB TV/Radio tuner and gave up after a short time.
I removed the DVD icon and replaced it with a WiFi button which then opens NetStumbler for plotting access points using the GPS. I didn't plan on a DVD drive in my install so no need for the button.
I did add the petrol skin to the radio button only to find that there's not plugin for the UK available at present, so the plan is to "switch" the skin back to the radio skin now I have my silabs USB radio.
GPS, well I'm having mixed success with MapMonkey, I have the latest UK maps and surprisingly my house is on it (normally it doesn't show up as its only been built 5 years) but other addresses which have been around longer than me don't show? I'm now looking at iGuidance to see if it's more reliable, I'm used to good old TomTom who's never really done wrong by me, if iGuidance fails I may look at using the free emulator from Microsoft to get TomTom running on PC.
I really like the idea of using SD card to run the OS, I've lost 2 100GB 2.5" drives in my 1st CarPC I assume due to vibration, both drives were mounted on rubber feet to reduce the effects of the car moving but still they didn't last long and my latest PC seems to be going the same way. I might move the OS to a 4GB flash drive and have the media on a removable 2.5" HDD in a mini caddy.
This is my 2nd real CarPC install and TBH, your skin gives the whole CarPC install an OEM "professional" look to it, many thanks to you for starting the project and a big thanks to everyone who contributed to it in this thread, many of the things I wanted to implement some one else had already done the work, making my install a lot easier.
I would post my work on the skin but its mainly slight variations on whats already available in this thread.
Looking forward to the new skin (try not to make us wait too long
) and GL with your Uni stuff.
PS: Just a thought! do you think with the new skin you could also provide a "blank" skin with no icons or text for the buttons so we can map the buttons add text and icons as needed for our builds?
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