Cheers guys...

I mentioned this to a couple of mates last night..

There replies were "Why don't you just buy one?"

Then "oh yeah well you are a muppet and seem to enjoy spending hours working on something that you could walk into a shop and buy over the counter".... hhhhmmmmm...

I think the wife would be alright with it as the cost is low :)

Cheers

JGM :)

yep - everyone i know reckon i'm a muppet already ;)

There replies were "Why don't you just buy one?"

responses:

1) Cost - utilizing cheap / free parts
2) Fun - making things yourself is much more enjoyable
3) Kewlness (espiecially if you get visualisation working :D
4) Practicallity - taking a laptop into your house and dumping mp3's onto over a lan connection is a bit easier than the usb/serial port ways of Rio's or other Head units.
5) environment - actually use some old kit and not let it rust away
6) an escuse to be away from the misses ;)
7) repairable/upgradeable - all fixes you can do
8) do i need more reasons?
9) cant think of any more

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

http://elm-chan.org/works/mpc/report_e.html

^^^ I've almost gone and made this too - looks really fun :D - now if only I can interface a hdd with it ;)

...then you could call it an ipod ;)

one thing i can think of whick might be an issue is how to turn the laptop on - remotely - i know there must be a connector which lets you do it as if you put the laptop in a docking station there is a button on the Docking station which powers on the laptop - so there must be an external connector/connection somewhere to make the laptop power on.

Also powering it could be an issue... as its a laptop.. so i might have to get a proper power convertor from 12v to normal PC power.. so i can plug the laptop power lead into it...

apart from that not many issues ;)

Has anyone heard about the Kenwood 10 disc changer that can play MP3s from CD? Should be in sold in England in May I think.

I am considering this as it seems to present a combined solution to my current two ICE problems - no CD changer, and no mp3s!

(And doesn't require me to think about voltage converters etc to power antique computers!)

Would be nice to hear any comments.

I think that MP3s on CDr is not the way to go. I don't get the logic behind ripping all your CDs to PC, then burning files onto another medium to gain capacity.

Although I've got a vested interest in HD-based solutions, I think that the logic behind them is much better. Hence the vested interest!

Cheers

Lee.

I suppose that with a wireless lan card in the car you can easily load new files to it.

However I tend to use CDs for storage with my desktop computer anyway - when I bought the CD writer it was cheaper per MB. And they are more easily portable than HDs.

Don't forget that CDDAs sound a little better than MP3s, and a single box solution sounds a good idea.

(And I have a vested interest in CDRs as I have a pile to use up...)

In-car WLAN - fantastic!

That's just the start...

You could connect a standard GPS to the in car computer (NMEA is easy to decode...) to use in a cheap, reasonably easily maintained speed camera / road hazard database.

The processing capability is there in the computer , so why not use it?

(And to push CDs a bit more, with a sensible buffer size, a CD drive can be used for CDDAs etc..)

Tell me about it - I'm still pestering NavTrack to release some details of their connector so I can get a GPS positioning out of it...

As for WLAN, cards are coming down in price and will be less than 100 quid for a pair soon :)

You can see the NMEA sentence formats etc at http://home.mira.net/~gnb/gps/nmea.html
To summarise, NMEA is RS232 (or maybe RS422) data at 4800 baud with no parity check or handshaking. There are several versions.

The Navtrak could use this, unless they have gone to the expense of developing their own interface for a standard single chip GPS receiver.

Would be interesting to find out, but I think we are straying from the MP3 subject...

lol -

chiark you should start another thread e.g.

what you can do with a pc in your scoob:

1) ecu monitoring/adjustment (e.g. Fast and the Furious ;))
2) in car mp3
3) in car dvd
4) web browsing/email/palm sync
5) digital radio (DAB)
6) GPS = autoroute directions planner
7) GPS = Gatso/radar detector
8) security system - e.g. have a webcam in yer car and if someone moves the cam takes photo of offender and emails it to you :D
9) wireless lan
10)use word | voice-activated

....

;)