The Saga of a Carputer

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek | 2008-08-11, 19:34

As technology advances, soon you find that your homegrown solutions are readily available in prepackaged purchasable form. Almost 10 years ago I started building carputers. They were exactly as their name sounds, a computer in a car. Back then it was absurd to think of mp3s in a car as many people didn’t even know what mp3s were. The only real in-dash product on the market back then was the Empeg Car, a linux based unit that payed mp3s off of a laptop harddrive to the tune of $1,000+. Rather than save up the cash for one of these units I decided to build my own based on what I had laying around. My carputer started as an old Packard Bell 66mhz machine that used DOS and a command line mp3 player to supply my car with tunes. It had no display and instead I had a list of songs in my library, and typed them in with memorized keyboard commands. It wasn’t fancy, but the fact that I could take me couple of gigs of music on the road with me was exciting.

Over the years, I watched as the mp3 + car community grew. MP3Car.com exploded and soon was a wealth of knowledge as others around the world had similar ideas. My carputer also grew and morphed as I upgraded things, still refusing to spend a ton of cash on it, and instead using what I could find laying around. Laptops, desktops, inverters, multiple cables, power inverters, and more random equipment passed through my car. At one point I had an old eMachine 400mhz machine and an 10″ IBM PS/1 monitor that I think may have just been able to support 640×480. When I turned on my car, the chorus of beeps from inverters, monitors, and computers was kind of ridiculous and the number of fuses I went through must have had the local auto shops wondering.

Of course all this hardware was sitting in plain view in my Honda CR-V along with a rather large bandpass box, and as to be expected my car was eventually broken into and someone made off with my equipment. Luckily the bandpass box, being too heavy to carry more than 15 feet was found at the end of the parking lot, intact. And with the help of insurance, I was able to upgrade my machine to the last revision.

This final revision was comprised of the following parts:

Lilliput 7″ touchscreen

EPIA M-10000

An 80GB harddrive containing music, maps, and software

A Buffalo wireless card with external attenna (for loading new stuff on the computer without running a cat5 cable out to the parking lot)

A simple Deluo GPS receiver with a strong magnet so I could stick it on the roof when I needed a better signal

I went through various software solutions, ranging from stripped down Windows 98 + Winamp, to full-featured front-ends like MediaEngine and Frodoplayer. I always had a couple different versions of mapping software available, whether it was Destinator (nicely integrated into most front-ends) or Delorme Street Atlas.

When the motherboard came, I was so excited to get to work on this project, that I just used the box it came in as a case and had to repeatedly short the pins with a screwdriver in order to boot it because I hadn’t ordered an On switch. Eventually I realized a CD-ROM would be handy, so I upgraded from the EPIA box to the Kikwear shoebox. Four and a half years later and it’s the same shoebox (with some extra electrical tape to hold it together) that I’m retiring.

Shorting the Carputer Motherboard to boot it

In San Francisco, it’s highly unintelligent to keep anything of value in your car. Cars are broken into so regularly that you see signs inside windows stating there’s nothing of value. After making the long roadtrip moving here from Chicago and utilizing the carputer one last time, I pulled it out so that it wouldn’t be temptation to anyone walking down the sidewalk. Now I have phones that can stream internet radio, more handheld GPS devices that I can count, and should I ever want a full carputer back in my car, multiple options on the market.

Looking back though, it was less about having mp3s and maps in the car, and more about a project that was rewarding. Putting together a carputer was definitely not without it’s challenges and pitfalls. I remember embarrassingly having to pull over on the highway, somewhere between Ohio and North Carolina, to “reboot” my car because Windows had blue screened at 80mph. Shortly afterward, I wired a switch in the dash to power-cycle the machine so I didn’t have to do that again. The hours of frustration trying to reduce engine noise in the audio lines, struggling with horrible Lilliput drivers that occasionally allowed the touchscreen to work (if you were lucky it was calibrated right too), and of course always having to wait for my car to shutdown before I turned it off.

On the flip side, there was all the times that I got to show it off to people who found it fascinating, the hours and hours on the road that I never had to flip through a CD book to find the next hour of music, never being lost, watching TV on my lunch breaks at work, and of course all the chicks that I got. Well maybe not so much the last one. It was a great project and I kind of miss not having it to work on. Luckily I have other current and future projects to satiate these geek desires and occupy my time.

Unfortunately I can’t find a good pic of the actual carputer _in_ my car, other than this one from the roadtrip from Chicago to San Francisco and a couple taken by my Sidekick:

3 Comments

Debating the QNAP TS-209 II vs building a PC

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek | 2008-06-04, 00:42

So I’m at a point where I feel like I need a good solid server in my apartment again. Something that I can use for the following:
– Media storage for serving to PS3/xbox
– Backup storage for photos, files, and whatnot
– Version control system for website development
– ssh server for tunneling back through my network connection
– Download machine for large files and torrents
– General Windows machine for video conversions and and other CPU/harddrive demanding tasks

I have basically two options to go with in my eyes: Build a solution or buy a prebuilt one.

Build a solution:
Pros:
– Completely customizable
– Upgradeable
– Limited only in price
– Can reuse existing IDE drives
– My choice of operating system (dual boot?)
Cons:
– Significant time investment
– If it breaks I have to troubleshoot
– Possibly overkill for what I need
– It’s been awhile (5 years?) since I built a machine

Buy a solution:
Pros:
– No building and only minor configuration needed
– Technical support available
– Minimal time investment
– Cheaper
Cons:
– Limited in hardware
– Not customizable
– Probably stuck with a custom linux distro

As far as building a solution, I quickly spec’d out this setup.
– It has both IDE and SATA ports so I can use old harddrives and new ones
– It’s a pretty decent system as far as CPU is concerned
– It will be large and probably loud
– It will consume a significant amount of power

And for buying, I was thinking of going with the QNAP TS 209 II (feature lists)
– It’s preconfigured with just about everything I need (except version control) and has ipkg to install whatever else I need
– It’s small, quiet, and consumes very little power
– It’s a wimpy machine under the hood
– It seems to do everything I think I’d need and then some, and I don’t have to set everything up manually

For those not following along, my life right now is kind of busy as I juggle a job, a web business, a relationship, and a fire arts group. At this point I’m more willing to spend money than time configuring something, so the QNAP is looking enticing. But the thought of paying a few hundred more, putting in a bunch of hours, and having a much more powerful machine is tempting.

Thoughts/opinions/criticisms? Any other suggestions?

4 Comments

Turn off border popup on OLPC laptop

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware | 2008-03-24, 23:00

One of the minor, yet incredibly annoying features about Sugar, the operating system on the XO laptop, is that there is this thick border that pops up to allow you to navigate. It seems to be really sensitive and loves to pop up when I try to go access the menus in a program that’s running. I put up with it for a long time, but finally stumbled across the information to turn off that automatic popup based on mouse location.

Open up Terminal and enter these commands:

su
cd /usr/share/sugar/shell/view/frame
nano -w eventarea.py

Now, find line 56 and 57 and comment them out. i.e. change

invisible.connect(‘enter-notify-event’, self._enter_notify_cb)
invisible.connect(‘leave-notify-event’, self._leave_notify_cb)

#invisible.connect(‘enter-notify-event’, self._enter_notify_cb)
#invisible.connect(‘leave-notify-event’, self._leave_notify_cb)

Either reboot your laptop, or exit out of everything and hit Ctrl+Alt+Erase to restart the GUI. Now you can just use the box key in the top right corner of the keyboard to access the border navigation!

4 Comments

Griffin Evolve Wireless Speakers Review and Unboxing

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek | 2008-03-14, 12:25

A few weeks ago a set of Griffin Evolve wireless speakers arrived. I had been needing to get a decent solution for listening to music when hanging around the house and my laptop speakers weren’t cutting it. I wanted something that would work with my iPod since that’s where my music lived and something that I could use anywhere in the house. The Evolve wireless speakers seemed like just the solution.

What are my thoughts on the speakers? I love them. Being able to come home and pull the iPod out of my pocket and plug it directly into a set of speakers and continue listening to the same song is a nice convenience. In addition to that I can grab one of the speakers and take it into any room I want. They’re small, light, and the sound quality is pretty good. I was mostly concerned that the sound quality would be crap, akin to my experiences with FM transmitters, but I am pleasantly surprised and have no complaints about sound quality. They don’t have a whole lot in the realm of bass, but for their use (background music) they’re fine and I’m sure my neighbors are appreciative. They do get really loud though. For the audiophiles in the crowd that spend hundreds of dollars on cables, these probably aren’t the right solution. But if you’re a casual listener (especially if you’re still using those awful iPod earbuds) that just wants to have some nice background music in the house with the convenience of playing from your iPod, I highly recommend these. The selling points for me:

They accept my 80gb video iPod in its protective case without needing an adaptor
I don’t have to worry about screwing up my last.fm stats since all my music plays from my iPod
They’re black and look nice
Charging them is simple and easy, just set them on the base
Range extends to anywhere within 150ft
Additional inputs on the back so I can use any audio source
Remote control is wireless and works anywhere the speakers work
iPod charges while docked
Switch on the base that changes from Stereo to Mono in case you want to have only one speaker in a room

My only improvements/complaints:

No way to control song playback other than using preconfigured playlists and Next/Back
It would be awesome to have a small LCD on the remote to view/control the iPod
It would be nice to have a 5.1 version for use with my media center too
A bit pricey
Not a whole lot of bass
While they aren’t nearly as bad as my PS3, they do gather some dust well
I worry that the dock might snap off because I’m not using an adaptor since my protective case doesn’t fit in with the adaptor

All in all, I highly recommend them if you feel like you need a wireless solution for casual music listening. I may even buy another pair of speakers to add to the set in the future. You can find pretty low prices from different sellers on Amazon. I went with ANTOnline who shipped incredibly fast. Below you’ll find pictures of the unboxing, aka geek-porn:

8 Comments

I love the Garmin eTrex Vista HCx and Geotagging

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek, Photography | 2008-01-06, 03:19

I love GPS receivers. There’s something great about knowing exactly where you are, plus being able to track where you’ve been. They come in handy while hiking, walking around a city, or driving. And I have a very long history with these things. I used to have a carputer that combined a GPS receiver with software long before it was standard on cars. My carputer consisted of a shoebox+miniITX+LCD imported from Hong Kong. I’ve used a handful of GPS receivers that are meant to interface with laptops, but up until recently, have only owned one handheld receiver, a Garmin eTrex Legend (unless you count the Boost Mobile i415 or the Helio Ocean). I loved that little device, it got me into geocaching and was primarily bought for that purpose. I used to also enjoy taking it on plane flights and tracking our flight across the country. It also rode shotgun with two other GPSrs during my cross-country move from Chicago to San Francisco. But I always felt like it was lacking. With only 8mb of internal memory, I could barely load enough maps for trips. I couldn’t even squeeze the entire Bay Area on it. And the monochrome screen? So 2002. I’ve been meaning to upgrade for quite awhile, and prompted by a New Year’s trip to Joshua Tree, I finally caved during a last minute trip to REI.

I picked up a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx unit for $299.99 (you can get it cheaper, but I love REI’s return policy). It’s almost the same size as the old Legend, just a little shorter and fatter. The screen on it is gorgeous though. It’s amazing how much easier it is to read maps with colors. The best part about it though is the sensitivity of the receiver. With the old Legend, I had gotten accustomed to having to leave it on the dashboard in the car or carrying it in my hand while walking. It consistently complained about needing a clear view of the sky in order to lock onto satellites. The new Vista HCx scoffs at these needs. It was able to pick up satellites while stashed in the seat back pocket in the middle of my car! Amazingly it was also able to pick up a signal while inside! So armed with my new toy, we headed out to Joshua Tree. I basically left it on for the entire drive and most of the time we were out in the desert and it did a spectacular job of hardly ever losing a signal. It came in handy when trying to find our campsite that was a little over a mile from our cars and hidden amongst desert foliage that all looks the same. It also allowed me to keep tracks on where we went, whether it was climbing a mountain, scrambling over boulders, or even just wandering away from camp to *ahem* dig a hole.

This tracking all came in handy when I got back home and wanted to geotag the photos I had taken out there. I loaded up EasyGPS to download a .gpx file containing the tracks and then used gpicsync (a Google Code project) to stamp the GPS information into the EXIF header of the actual image files. From there I uploaded the photos to Flickr, which automatically interpreted the GPS coordinates and placed my photos on the map. The other cool thing about gpicsync is that it will create a Google Earth file that will let you load up Google Earth and fly around the world, seeing where your photos were taken. Quite awesome when you’ve been taking photos in the mountains and you can actually see which ridge you were on in 3-D.

So I highly recommend the Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. And no, they aren’t paying me to say that. :) Although, if you do want to pick one up, use this link: Garmin eTrex Vista HCx and Amazon will give me a few bucks. They’ve actually got a damn good price for it there.

And yes, it comes in handy when you need to mark a waypoint to point out where you found your girlfriend’s toothpaste when you’re practicing “Leave No Trace” camping. ;)

14 Comments

Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, News, Photography | 2007-11-20, 20:08

Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
Originally uploaded by edrabbit.

Finally got a minute to setup my Eye-Fi card. I must say I’m very happy with the finished product so far. I was very very glad to have both the options to upload directly to Flickr as well as to upload to a folder on a local machine. I was stuck with just Flickr support in the past and didn’t like how every single blurry photo got uploaded, not allowing me to pick and choose. Now with it uploading to my laptop via wireless, I can sort through them (organized by date even!) and pick which ones warrant the Flickr stream. All in all definitely worth $99 in my opinion.

This could definitely change the way photos are done. Imagine being at a protest or gathering. You snap some pictures of some sensitive stuff, the authorities confiscate your camera and destroy it. What they don’t realize is that all the pictures were wirelessly synced to your laptop in the car that has a wireless AP running. I can also imagine this being convenient to photographers, who can upload photos while they’re doing a shoot, so they can be reviewed instantaneously. I’m also trying to think of other projects where this could be fun. Mella and I have talked about putting together some portable cameras that this would be fun to work with.

So far there are only two things I wish the card could do. Have another 2 gb of space to match my 4gb (although I may be able to survive with space for 780+ photos/17minutes of video), and have a setting where I could tell it to connect to open networks that don’t require a password automatically. Oh, and add a third to that… support for RAW images would be nice!

Electronic Ink Tattoos

Filed Under Art, Body Modification, Gadgets & Hardware, Video | 2007-10-23, 22:26

Every day it seems like we’re living in a Neal Stephenson book more and more. While the thought of tattoos that change via technology is not necessarily new, this is the first time that I’ve really seen someone illustrating the concept in a video. And on top of the sexy video, the people behind this are none other than Philips.

They describe this project as such:

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring.

The Electronics Tattoo film expresses the visual power of sensitive technology applied to the human body. The film subtly leads the viewer through the simultaneous emotional and aesthetic transformations between two lovers.

While the video really touches on the possible sensuality of a tattoo that changes with arousal and emotion, there are also practical applications for something as incredible as electronic tattoo ink. Imagine a simple text display created in electronic ink. Nothing more complex in display than a character LCD. Add bluetooth (or some other form of wireless) support to that with a small implant. Now you can display any text you’d like. Use your cell phone to pull the latest weather, sports, stocks, RSS feeds, or subjects from your emails as they download. Your latest twitter scrolling across the nape of your neck, or perhaps the song currently playing on your mp3 player. Or more importantly, serious medical information that provides EMTs with life-saving info right on your chest. The possibilities are endless, and not really that far off.

In fact, way back in the dark ages (1995) there were some people that had a similar idea. There is a patent filed by Andrew J Singer and Sean White from Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, CA. This patent is for an implantable and programmable LCD that might actually be possible with today’s advances in technology. Unfortunately Interval Research closed their doors in June 2006. *sigh* Maybe we’ll have better luck with Philips in 15 years.

via BehindTheInk

8 Comments

Lego Salt and Pepper Shakers

Filed Under Art, Gadgets & Hardware, Lifehacks | 2007-07-20, 17:25

Finally, mom will let me bring my Legos to the dinner table! In a neat use of a childhood toy near and dear to my heart, designer Joel Hesselgren has put together a simple yet ingenous salt and pepper shaker made out of legos. Rather than create separate shakers, he combines them into one. By moving the top lego piece you can control the amount of each flavor enhancer.
lego salt and pepper shaker
lego salt and paper shaker

Source: Yanko design via

salt and pepper shaker made out of legos

4 Comments

Octapult – a kinetic sculpture

Filed Under Art, Gadgets & Hardware, Video | 2007-07-19, 20:23

We stumbled upone this video and were strangely mesmerized. Something about the rhythmic movement and the sounds that it made were entrancing. The engineering behind it is beautiful and the resulting product is great.

Here’s what the artist has to say:
The “Octapult” is a kinetic sculpture designed and built on commission by Bradley N. Litwin of Philadelphia, PA. With 8 synchronized catapults, 160 plastic balls per minute are launched, caught, and recirculated. Made mostly of wood, the work is ~36 inches in diameter. On permanent display in the lobby of Lower Merion Elementary School, Merion Station, PA. Also a performing jazz musician, more of Litwin’s work may be seen and heard at www.bradlitwin.com.