Help Bugbyte kill his car PC with an iTouch/iPhone install - Page 8

tdub24 · 03-20-2009, 06:16 PM

Www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19654 that's the Bluetooth Screen digitizer

tdub24 · 03-20-2009, 06:20 PM

I think that makeing the phone controlable across all apps would be possible due to the fact that sb settings and other programs can pull up anywhere right. I would give the jailbreak community 4 days to figure that one out

Bugbyte · 03-21-2009, 05:25 PM

I fashioned a mount for my iPod in the car and used it in conjunction with ScreenSplitr in the car for a 600 mile roundtrip this week.

All in all, the solution works just fine.
- Music sounds great. At least as good or better than the Mac Mini.
- Starting and stopping the car does not cause the iPod to restart
- No crashing or freezing

On the disadvantage side, there are a few problems.
- Controlling the iPod using the touchscreen is very difficult. The iPod interface appears simple and easy to use but requires you to look at it while using it and its small size is bad news for the car. I found using it in the car to be much more difficult than a PC front end. This would be better if you could use a touchscreen or rotary controller to navigate.
- xGPS doesn't display properly when you rotate the iPod sideways. Instead of rolling over, landscape style, you still get a vertical screen and the map turns sideways. You're stuck with just a vertical screen.
- Screen dimming works on the iPod but if you were dumb enough to embed the buttons in the bezel when you fabricated the screen enclosure (that would be me), you can't easily dim the screen when it gets dark.

[No time to finish this. Will post more later]

meagain · 03-23-2009, 01:44 PM

Erica Sadun emailed me back regarding upgrading AppFlow to work with the latest firmware. She did it and it will be on Cydia today or tomorrow.

Nice of her to do that given I'm sure she's working hard on 3.0 right now.

Crinos · 03-24-2009, 03:55 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Bugbyte

- Screen dimming works on the iPod but if you were dumb enough to embed the buttons in the bezel when you fabricated the screen enclosure (that would be me), you can't easily dim the screen when it gets dark.

with SBS-settings you have a dimmer app where you can adjust settings.
Surly there are others as well, but SBS-settings is a must have for all Jailbroken iPhones

Bugbyte · 03-24-2009, 10:11 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Crinos

with SBS-settings you have a dimmer app where you can adjust settings.
Surly there are others as well, but SBS-settings is a must have for all Jailbroken iPhones

Thanks for pointing this app out to me. It looks useful.

The issue I have is not with the iPhone screen - the autodim feature works pretty well. It is with the external video display screen I am using (Xenarc 8"). That does not auto-dim.

The original screen comes with a single button dimmer that selects low-medium-high brightness. However, to fabricate it into my car I had to discard the bezel and fab a new one. I moved the buttons and the only access to them is via tiny pinholes I drilled to allow them to be pushed with a paperclip. This works fine with a computer because you can auto dim the display via software. With the iPhone, you can't.

jusjake · 03-24-2009, 02:43 PM

I played around with appflow, It looks good on my screen but anytime you open an app and then return to the spring board it will resort to the normal springboard and appflow has to be restarted.

Bugbyte · 03-24-2009, 05:09 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by meagain

May I jump in with a quick question?

Bugbyte - do you think it prudent to hold off on all this till 3-4 months from now when the accessory floodgates open, new firmware, probably new iPods/iPhones, boatloads of bluetooth items, perhaps new cords, etc? I'm leaning that way. I'm also fully buying into the rumor of a multi-touch tablet and and the possibilities with that (and it talking to the iPhone/iPod) with full touch control all over the place.
I just got myself all excited.

Probably. They're almost certain to introduce something new on the iPhone. I guess I've been hearing the tablet rumor for years but one could theoretically scale the iPhone UP to netbook size I think. Still, I don't see Apple playing in the low cost netbook space. I've been wrong before, but if they did, it would have to be something unusual and almost certainly would add up to an expensive netbook but an inexpensive Apple laptop.

As for bluetooth, almost certainly there will be a number of new devices out there to make things much, much easier to put this in the car. I was listening to my iPod as I got into the car today and was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if when I turn the car on, it would stream the song to the audio system. Don't see why you can't do that.

As for me, I'm going to order that touchscreen bluetooth device and see how it works.

I'm starting to get a handle on the types of problems that have to be solved to make the iPod a great replacement for the car PC. I just need to give it some more thought -especially on the software side.

Bugbyte · 03-24-2009, 05:09 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by tdub24

Www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19654 that's the Bluetooth Screen digitizer

Nice find! I'm going to check it out. Thanks!

Bugbyte · 03-24-2009, 09:34 PM

Okay, I ordered a the bluetooth touchscreen controller. Hopefully, I'll find a way to get it to work with the new bluetooth features in iPhone SDK 3.0. Meantime, I'll test it out on my Mac with bluetooth built in and see how it works.

There's not much info on it on the site - if you know anything about this controller or how it works, let me know. I'm sure I'll need a hand.

tdub24 · 03-25-2009, 12:24 AM

I would rumage through the msi wind forums. That is where I found it. I actually have a wind that iwas thinking or doin this to. I think there are a few posts about it. Looks sweet tho. I wonder if it'll be controlable with the new 3.0

Bugbyte · 03-25-2009, 09:36 AM

The ultimate would be if you can somehow calibrate and map locations touched on the bluetooth screen and have the iPhone respond to that as if you were touching the iPhone screen. However, that just sounds a little unlikely. It would be too perfect.

I'm thinking that I may have to write some kind of app that runs on the iPhone for the car - an iPhone front end, that can receives and respond to the cursor location from the big touchscreen.

Anyhow, we'll see. It wasn't a terribly expensive device so it isn't a giant loss if it won't work.

tdub24 · 03-26-2009, 04:06 AM

let me know

meagain · 03-26-2009, 12:34 PM

BugByte - I didn't realize you knew programming as well. Have you considered grabbing the 3.0 SDK to play around with? Or maybe you're not at that point yet.

I found this site interesting. Bluetoothy all over the place. Doing interesting mods, etc.http://www.ubiqkom.org/blog/ Type in iPhone in the search box. Not sure if you've seen this site but you might find a few things worth your reading time?

Bugbyte · 03-26-2009, 03:25 PM

Oooh! He's got an external apple bluetooth keyboard working with an iPod touch, running a bluetooth stack from researchers at ETH Zurich and a BT module he's built himself for the Touch.

That is proof of concept that it is possible to have the iPod talk to other devices over BT.

I'll be reading some more. He doesn't provide a lot of detail about how he's doing this stuff.

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