[bhawks28]

So I bought myself a few Christmas presents: two of which include the Mygig Lockpick for my WK and a raspberry pi mini computer. This thing is pretty sweet, it's a tiny little computer powered over a micro USB port. I've been thinking and doing a little research and I think I've got a pretty cool idea. Some of this is probably just my ramblings, but I need to get these ideas down (bear with me here).

So I take the video composite out (RCA) and audio out (3.5mm headphone jack to RCA adapter ) and plug these into one of the Lockpicks inputs (I think the newest version has 3 inputs, each of them a video, right audio, and left audio). Now I've got the raspberry pi using my Mygig screen for video. Then I'm thinking I buy one of these. A rechargeable wireless keyboard/trackpad combo (it's even backlit!). Now I can control the raspberry pi wirelessly very easily.

Next I load up my 32gb SD card with movies and watch them with VLC media player! I can even get a 3/4G cell card for the raspberry pi and passengers can browse the web, all from inside my WK. This would enable the use of web services like Pandora and Grooveshark as well. Another possibility is to get a Wifi dongle for the raspberry pi and tether it to a cell phone's data connection.

The raspberry pi also has GPIO pins that you can control switches, servos, and relays with. I was thinking I could hook up a couple relays to it and control lights (or anything really). I'm a Software Engineer for a living, so I'm confident that I could program the board to control lights, and even do cool things like make them flash in a pattern or make them flash with the music (totally useless, but cool).

I see one little problem with this setup that I'm hoping you guys can help me out with. I'd hate to have a USB cord running from a 12V charger into the glove box where the raspberry pi would be. Does anyone know of a way that I could wire something up behind my dash (or even in the glove box) to take 12V from the cigarette lighter and convert it to micro USB (I believe that's 5V)?

I'm interested in anybodys thoughts, criticisms, or ideas!

 

[bhawks28]

Obviously I won't be using this thing unsafely while I'm driving. It boots up pretty quickly actually, I'd probably just run it off the 12v that's only on when the key is on. Otherwise I have the 12v right next to it that is on all the time, but yeah that would drain the battery so I don't want that.

I'm sure I could do this alot cleaner in many aspects, but this was just a fun project I thought of using materials I have on hand (except for the wireless keyboard).

PS - I don't really care to get in the logistics of what to call it.

 

[bhawks28]

You must be under 30. That would be the 'semantics of what to call it', and some in your age group don't seem to care about looking uneducated calling it the wrong thing, so fair enough.

I was just trying to help, but we have a communications barrier.

I don't see how picking apart my English is trying to help. I didn't come here for a ****ing English lesson. You offered me one piece of advice. I know I asked for criticisms, but I was talking about criticisms of the idea, not criticisms of my knowledge of the English language. Did you really have to go out of your way to tell me that I'm calling it the wrong thing? And did you really have to go out of your way to point out my misuse of the word "logistics"? Misusing one word does not make me uneducated. Did I go out of my way to show you that I am, in fact, not talking about a nanocomputer? A nanocomputer uses components that are no bigger than a few nanometers. Do you think my raspberry pi is that small? Does that make you uneducated because you misused the word? Go be a dick somewhere else.

 

[bhawks28]

Haha okay, keep thinking that, buddy. You must live a pretty miserable life if it makes you feel good to come on here and pick apart people's English to call them uneducated.

 

[bhawks28]

Careful ryancurry1979, you don't want Quantum to start berating you because you didn't type your response in a full sentence. Improper English on the Internet really gets to him...

I'm assuming you're talking about the Raspberry pi? If you go to their website, on the right side there's links to a few vendors you can buy from. I think it's around $30 and they are very cool. A lot of people are buying them to get their kids started out in programming! But you can also use it for many other things.

 

[bhawks28]

Seems to me you are not interested in anybody's thoughts, criticisms or ideas...if so please do not indicate in your thread that you are.

Quantum provide you some thoughts. You then proceeded to call him a d**k. Lighten up and remember this is a public forum and when you finish your post looking for "thoughts, criticisms, or ideas" be prepared for ones that you do not agree with or ones that may educate you.

Scott

He provided me with one useful piece of information, then nitpicks my choice of words (mini vs nano... really? you really want to get into that?). Then he insults me and calls me uneducated. I don't really see where I was in the wrong here...Maybe I shouldn't have called him a dick, but what right does he have to call me uneducated?

Like I said, I'm open to criticism of my idea, but I am absolutely not open to criticism of my intelligence, education, and least of all, my choice of words. If I wanted an English lesson, I'd be googling mini vs nano, logistics vs schematics, etc.

 

[bhawks28]

I was just trying to help you not look stupid bhawks28, but you have that chip on your shoulder and seem like an angry person in general.

Exhibit A: You can't let this go.

Do you really think other members were going to read my thread and say "Haha look at stupid bhawks28, he said mini instead of nano! What a moron!"?

Dropping this goes both ways, pal. If you want to let this go, then stop reading this thread because you obviously have no more good input.

 

[bhawks28]

So anyway, back to the original topic..

I do embedded linux for a living (and have off and on since about 1999) .. so I have a couple R.pi boards here, but never thought about what I might do with one in a vehicle. It is a great platform to hack around on.

Something that might be fun would be to stick a micro (mini? nano? femto?) Bluetooth dongle into an R.pi usb port, and stick one of the Bluetooth ELM OBD thingies into your OBD-2 port, and pop up some gauges on the screen

Rock on.

Ah nice idea dude thanks. That would be really cool!

 

[bhawks28]

Wow I thought we were done with this crap. Quantam, I understand there are plenty of situations where term accuracy is important, I just don't believe this is one of those situations. I mean, cmon, we're talking about a little computer for my Jeep. I listed the components I plan on using, there is no reason to call me out on my word choice here. Congratulations, you've run Linux for the past few years, I'm very proud of you.

 

[bhawks28]

Wow I came to this thread expecting great advice about the actual point of this thread but it turned into a terminology nitpicking. This is a Jeep forum not a computer forum, everyone understood what bhawks28 was saying. It was interesting to hear the difference in the terms but this isn't really an appropriate place to attack someone for misusing a single term and then make it an issue of a person's intelligence. I've been doing Tech Support at my high school for the last couple years and no one has every made such a big deal over a simple term.
Bhawk28: I love this idea! I thought about doing this yesterday when I found out how little power it consumes. I was hoping someone would do this so I could follow their guide once my family gets a WK soon. For temporary purposes, I would go get a mini usb power cord that they sell at the mall for five bucks and use that for your power source. I missed the electricity portion of Physics because my dad was dying so I can't help too much but what I've read is the cigarette outlet puts out 12V while RPi needs 5V. I wouldn't know if that would end up frying it. Since you are a software engineer, I would think that you would know someone who is a electrical engineer or have some experience in it, so I would have them wire into one of the power outlets to keep the wires hidden and to boot up the RPi when you turn on your Jeep (since there is no power button one it, you boot it up by connecting power).
I hope you try this out and make a new thread with how it turns out!
Also I hope no one dares to insult my intelligence :fear:

Yeah, be careful, you don't want somebody to call you uneducated because you chose the wrong word in a very trivial situation. I've never had a problem with anybody on this forum until today...:thumbdown:

Anyways, I'm glad you're interested. Today while I was bored, I got the Rpi running in the Jeep! I hooked it up as I said but just used a USB car charger to power it up temporarily. I loaded up the Rpi with a version of XBMC (Xbox Media Center) written for the Rpi called Raspbmc and got video playing on the screen! It was pretty cool to see. For some reason the sound didn't work but I didn't spend too much time on it. I'll keep ya updated on what I do with it.

the trick we played in my daughter's Scion years back to power a usb thingy was:
- go to Radio Shack or wherever, and get a 'lighter' outlet on a pigtail. Maybe cut off the lighter plug of the assembly.
- wire this to the switched power outlet and tuck it up under the dash.
- get a "high-power" usb lighter thingy (Newegg.com sells these dirt cheap).
- plug that in to the pigtail lighter outlet and tuck it up under the dash.

and then plug the R.pi into that.

Yeah, I'm thinking that I am going to have to go with a solution similar to this. Thanks for the input.

 

[bhawks28]

So right now I have the OS installed on a 16gb SD card and I used my 32gb USB drive to test some media. I have one of the 160gb iPod classics that I keep in my WK so I don't really need space for music. Plus I don't know how much I'll actually be using this, so 32GB USB drive should be fine for me now. But I like the idea of an external hard drive being plugged into the Rpi! I plan on playing with this setup a little more this weekend.