Raspberry pi in classic impreza
 

Hi I am not totally geek tech savvy and therefore was wondering if any of you guys could shed some light on whether this is a good idea / possible or not.

I am thinking that simply for the fun of it I was going to install the aforementioned PI into the car to run my evoscan and therefore allow me to datalog without a laptop and also to display my virtual gauges on my popout dvd screen. The PI has output suited for input to a tv not computer monitor so should work in that respect I think.
Also I am hoping to input my wideband as a permanant install, again I don't know if it will work really the tech is a little beyond me at the moment.

Now I have no Linux experience at all so perhaps a steep learing curve but I have been watching a few PI tutorials on you-tube and it seems I may be able to use something called 'virtual box' to emulate windows on linux which should allow it to run. I have found that evoscan works on a desktop pc using this linux method.

I assume I will still need a mouse and keyboard although my popout dvd player is touchscreen, can I convert to using the touchscreen (onscreen keyboard?) when in PI input? Maybe this is a step too far!

My popout wont play divx from a memory stick because the format is not supported and my home theatre film collection is in this format. I am hoping to put some of my divx films onto an SD card to play them through the PI so I dont have to faff around making dvd's which seems to take me ages on my laptop. Can I do this do you reckon?

I looked at carputers but they seem very bulky, expensive, and couldn't display onto my monitor.

Lastly with regards to booting up, what I really want is to turn on the ignition and the gauges appear on the screen! Can I gat a pc to boot & run things straight after turning on do you reckon, with a reasonable delay of course but without button pressing?

Just buy an EEBox, twelve volt, silent and slim. You'll never get the PI working, only spotty teenagers with a year to kill would manage it.

http://event.asus.com/eeepc/microsites/eeebox/en/

Few answers,
Yes u can get pcs to boot up and loads apps with no input,
No it prob wont play divx, the pi wont have the power to decode and transfer the video file it might do it but will be jerky and framey ,

I doubt you can use the touch screen on your dvd player to input the pi or any carputer as im pretty sure it doesnt have way of connecting to an external device for input ,
(mite be wrong will have to check your unit to see if it has a a usb out or ps2 out to connect to a pc)

Yes will be steep learning curve as although you can get virtual box to run on linux you still need linux to recognize what your inputting into it for it to translate it to the virtual box.

Other than that can be done.

yeah I had thought it was probably a bit ambitious and the computing power of the PI is low.

The EEbox looks very cool but its expensive where as the PI is £30, (prob for a reason!). It seems fairly straightforward to install an operating system onto the PI which seems to reduce the code stuff so was hoping it wouldn't be too hard tbh.

I wont be spending out £300 or whatever to get it going although something like the EEbox would be a dream to own it seems, was hoping to basically do it for free with the PI as I have all the other bits. Perhaps I will have a play when it arrives as I haven't actually got one yet, could be waiting a while it seems! I probably have less ability with computing than most spotty teenagers although the impreza is now a hobby car not a daily driver so I do have time on my side!

Donsjapwrx;

Thanks for those answers you have really clarified what is possible & what is not.

I dont know what a ps2 is so i will look that up but I assume touchscreen is a no go anyway because... well its just a stupid idea on a 7" screen!

I had read that people had got virtual box to run external devices such as printers etc fairly easily and because a lot of people run linux on their laptops over windows there does seem to be quite a lot of info on how to make evoscan run on linux as its been around for a while now which is a bonus. I will have to learn all this as I only saw the linux platform in operation for the first time 2 days ago although I was aware what it was at least!

As for playing video on the PI I totally see what you are saying. The PI is aparantly engineered to provide good 'multimedia' processing whatever that means but I had wondered what that meant in the real world.

I know I use handbrake program to recode videos to a suitable format & size for my phone which takes seconds *edit forgot its the divx conversion that takes seconds, mp4 conversion takes like 30mins per film but still I do it for my phone* and is really no hassle so was hoping to do the same with the divx videos because as they will be played on a 7" screen/s then I thought it might help playback & decoding if the file was smaller? Of course in the process I could actually change the file format if that would help too, MP4 perhaps (I think thats what my phone uses). I am just a bit fed up having dvd's all over the car and having to use & buy disks.

Thanks for your help mate.

Grab one of these if your in car screen runs VGA

http://www.amazon.co.uk/mini-HDMI-ca.../dp/B006HI07UC

The touchscreen should be USB, and emulate a mouse so that should be pretty simple if you can set the machine up outside the car to autoload an onscreen keyboard or some such.

It'd be a laugh, but a bit of a learning curve if you've not used linux before.

Why not use a mobile phone? I used an old Windows Mobile with my Evo IX and wrote my own display and datalogger in Visual Basic. I modified a TomTom cradle and an OBD to serial cable to get it to charge and work. I had it recording logs to SD, map switching etc.

I see the appeal of the Raspberry Pi, and am on the list, but also wonder whether a cheap mobile phone would do most things better apart from give an interface for programming that is simpler.

Worth looking at, the Pi can play HD video so DivX shouldn't be an issue. Maybe look at app inventor.edu to see what you could come up with for Android?

There are actually a lot of people over on the RPI forum discussing doing this I have found.

I nearly bought a micro pc called a Viglen MPC-L yesterday that was on e-bay. Its drastically underpowered with regards to processing speed but has an 80g hard drive, is 12v, and is the size of 3 cd jewel cases stacked up so might just fit in the centre cubby? It sold for £50. This can run WinXP which is a bonus but I think its slow! With a usb powered VGA to TV converter box for £10 it should connect up. They were on sale at £60 plus VAT new a while back so certainly cheap enough. If I can get one very cheap I might give it a go.
I have changed dvd head unit this weekend to one with an sd/usb slot so will try ripping videos to that and see how it goes. Still want to get the virtual gauges working though!

to John Banks & BlueBugEye thanks for the ideas. With regards to John you are obviously far cleverer than me if you were able to do that! Same applies to Blue really. I have an android phone that I use but beyond that dont understand any more.

When I get the RPI then curiosity and being forced to use linux to be able to get it going coupled with the huge online discussion & help may mean I am able to do something with it!

Second hand iPad, Velcro it to the dash, job done.

or a desktop pc and a really long extension lead :lol1:
On a more serious note if anyone knows an easy way of getting what I am calling 'virtual gauges' to display on the dvd screen using data pulled via the diagnostic port on a my00 subaru ecu then please let me know.

I'm on the Pi list, so will be watching this thread with interest.

Basically I guess what I am asking is would it be possible (for someone not me obviously!) to make the pi into a flashier version of the PSI3 SECS monitor (if anyone remembers those) maybe with added functionality such as, I dunno, satnav or wireless internet, bluetooth, parking sensors, wideband / data logging, DVB-T,*edit front/rear camera input with record function, decibel meter to test stereo loudness, exhaust (any) temp. input, lateral G meter with 0-60 & 1/4 mile timer like g-tech, my personal favourite a choice of visualisations for the screen to sync with the music!*, and whatever else people can think of I suppose?

Maybe the PI hasn't got the power for this I cant tell to be honest.

If I think about it would it be a case of just selling an SD card (or download for user to write to SD card) with the software programmed on so that people could then simply insert the SD/software into their pi & connect a car screen, connect up whatever stuff they want like wireless/3G dongles, obd plug, aerials, hard drive with music/media. and hey presto! :idea:

Considering people still pay £100 plus for an old SECS unit, and predicting that within a short while the PI unit will basically be free or incredibly cheap (as confused 9 year olds chuck them in the bin!) could this be doable?

I do see the android apps like Torque already exist doing much of this for OBD2 vehicles but I like the idea of a permanant install on a big screen. The media say the RPI has "double the performance of the i-phone4" does this mean PI could kick androids ass regarding performance for the time being anyway? RPI have aparantly had over 350000 pre orders for the unit!

As for user interface I might as well go all out and suggest Voice Command screw keyboards & mice lol!

the problem with the pi for what you want is the lack of inputs. Also at present things are in their infancy so drivers aren't neccessarily the greatest. Processing shouldnt be a problem though to be honest and people have even been overclocking them as well! (although this will invalidate their warranty and it can be checked).
Your movie playback again wont be a problem, they can play 1080p. We get a load of the pi's in today so our warehouse is going to be busy sending them straight out again!

If you can't afford the iPad then a cheap Android tablet will do everything you want and more. Unless you're doing it because your bored.

There's a warranty! For the price & form they are I didn't expect that, what happens if you short it out because it hasn't got a case on it I wonder? Is that the users fault or yours!

don't know, I can check on monday when I am in work