Current Progress building my Car PC:
Sources for taking apart the OnStar system:
http://members..cox.net/onstar/
http://www.openminds.net/onstar/
The two sections of Onstar are the following: the Vehicle Communication Unit and the Vehicle
Interface Unit. The Interface unit is basically the main processing system, and it contains the GPS.
VCU
VIU (the Important one)
The LCD screen will be an Audiovox VBPEX56 5.8" LCD Detachable Add-On Monitor that I got for
$99 at Best Buy. However, the outside housing is a lot bigger than I'd like to try to fit in my car.
So, it's time for more hacking....
Front of LCD (pre-hack)
Opened-up rear of LCD
6-1-2004: Trying out an iBook.
Thanks to a little problem with my iBook that Apple was not quick in repairing under warranty, I have
an extra iBook that would make a good car pc. It also works pretty well with a USB GPS I have. (Don't worry,
I plan on finishing the OnStar hack soon, I just wanted to have something to play with since I was going
to be driving a few hundred miles at a time the next couple weekends. So, here are some "proof-of-concept"
pictures of the system I was playing with. I'll eventually mount the iBook under the passenger seat or in the trunk if this works out.
The unmounted LCD
The iBook sitting on my passenger seat... not exactly the best setup.
Turns out the Route 66 software
isn't very good on that little LCD, and the interface is downright
painful. Nor is the location I was going to
put the LCD a very good one. I'll have to work on that.
6-12-2004
Ok, worked on the "LCD kind of sucks with Route 66 and isn't easy (or safe... duh) to use when you're
driving" problem.
I compiled GPSDrive under MacOSX. This itself was a chore.
First, I couldn't just use the version in the unstable branch of Fink, due to some strange library dependencies
that Fink tried to solve by uninstalling a library and installing a different one (and vice versa) whenever
I tried to install it. So, I downloaded the source, and made sure all the dependencies were filled (thankfully using Fink).
Of course, it doesn't just WORK. If you (God forbid) try to compile this, make sure you use the
./configure --disable-garmin option or you will get some painful errors during compilation.
The other painful error I got was the missing header file "dlfcn.h". Thankfully, after many hours,
I found this site which
pointed me towards this library:, dlcompat-20021117,
found on SourceForge. Make, install, rinse.
Another little issue with using GPSDrive and my particular GPS unit, the Rayming TN-200, is that
the OSX driver assigns it to /dev/tty.usbserial-191, which is too long of a string to put in the
Interface field in the Preferences. So, ln -s /dev/tty.usbserial-191 /dev/gps and put THAT
in the field instead. And, until I play with the permissions, GPSDrive has to be run as root for now, which
merely gives an undesirable warning. Well, undesirable for a car pc that will have a limited interface.
Speaking of limited interfaces....
I picked up a USB numeric keypad to use as a simple interface I can mount somewhere in the car. Of course,
simply remapping function keys in OSX isn't trivial. (Nothing seems to be trivial with COTS hardware/software, but
that's another story for another time.) And I wasn't really in the mood to learn enough AppleScript to control
all this. Luckily, there's an application called HotApp. Not only does this
remap keys, but it will also map AppleScript to keys, and includes some AppleScripts for controlling iTunes. Very Tasty.
Yeah, it costs $15, but at this point in my life, it's not worth the aggravation to do it myself.
Next on the agenda get most GPSDrive configuration and controls automated. This might be easier said
than done, since it seems that all the keyboard shortcuts GPSDrive uses require the "alt" key, and not
the one that comes on the Mac keyboard. :-)
More to come...
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