Just found something that spiked my interest again : a Raspberry Pi embedded in a DSLR
For a while now i've been thinking about getting into photography, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Also I've been willing to have a go at the Pi, but seen no need for it yet. Now let's put one and one together :-)
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Minimalist car audio
I was over on revlimiter.net the other day and saw his new radio . That got me thinking. I never use CDs in my car so why should I have a big DIN size radio, when i can get some small retrosound.
They look nice and customiseable and have a lot of features out of the box
- Radio with RDS
- SD-card reader (don't really need that)
- USB port (big bonus since i got some spare USB hard drives laying around)
- they are small enough to be mounted in an otherwise wasted space in the dash
BUT they lack one function which i can't live without: Bluetooth.
So queue the Parrot MKi9100. I'll have to do something about the fugly remote, but at least this will add bluetooth connection to the phone and allow me to play music from my phone. As an added bonus the sound quality of the parrots systems i know is really good and the double mic looks nice poking out from behind the steering wheel :-)
So next up is phone mounting. For the moment i have my Nexus One in his proper car mount. Which is really nice since it charges the phone at a higher rate than the normal usb connection, allowing you keep the screen switched on while charging.
This wouldn't be a proper brain-fart if i wouldn't find a way to change this now would it.And this is where this goes from semi-realistic to straight out dreaming.
So the plan is to get a new phone (someday) which comes with, or can be modified to have wireless charging. Then we can have a Palm Touchstone or similar mounted behind a random dash panel, such as this one behind the gear lever. Just put the phone on there, the magnets hold it in place and it gets charged at the same time, perfect. I just hope the wireless charging will pump enough amps to get the phone charged in a reasonable time-frame. Must look into that
Essentially this will free up the space in the dash normally occupated by the stock navigation. Leaving me with a big gaping hole there and two options.
1. I could just get / make some extra storage box, like in a Celica
2. I could mount a display there fed of the phone.
Or and this is the kicker, I could mount a display there that can tilt up exposing a hidden storage compartment. Cue the bond music :-)
This brings me to the next idea / problem. The display should support miracast so that the phone's screen can be put on there. So far all is good but I'll have to figure out a way to control the phone. Does anybody know if miracast / widi supports touch input to be streamed back to the source device ?
Another bonus that comes with this setup is the possibility to add a reverse camera to the display since these kind of displays usually come with a multitude of inputs, one of which can be used for the camera.
Building on all this I could / should also have a wireless router in my car, enabling me to get a NAS running. I believe a Pi would do nicely. Which would in turn make it bearable to have a limited storage on the phone, playing nicely in Googles strategy of pushing to the cloud. The only difference being that it will be my cloud and not theirs :-)
So there you have it, my random thoughts on car audio.
They look nice and customiseable and have a lot of features out of the box
- Radio with RDS
- SD-card reader (don't really need that)
- USB port (big bonus since i got some spare USB hard drives laying around)
- they are small enough to be mounted in an otherwise wasted space in the dash
BUT they lack one function which i can't live without: Bluetooth.
So queue the Parrot MKi9100. I'll have to do something about the fugly remote, but at least this will add bluetooth connection to the phone and allow me to play music from my phone. As an added bonus the sound quality of the parrots systems i know is really good and the double mic looks nice poking out from behind the steering wheel :-)
So next up is phone mounting. For the moment i have my Nexus One in his proper car mount. Which is really nice since it charges the phone at a higher rate than the normal usb connection, allowing you keep the screen switched on while charging.
This wouldn't be a proper brain-fart if i wouldn't find a way to change this now would it.And this is where this goes from semi-realistic to straight out dreaming.
So the plan is to get a new phone (someday) which comes with, or can be modified to have wireless charging. Then we can have a Palm Touchstone or similar mounted behind a random dash panel, such as this one behind the gear lever. Just put the phone on there, the magnets hold it in place and it gets charged at the same time, perfect. I just hope the wireless charging will pump enough amps to get the phone charged in a reasonable time-frame. Must look into that
Essentially this will free up the space in the dash normally occupated by the stock navigation. Leaving me with a big gaping hole there and two options.
1. I could just get / make some extra storage box, like in a Celica
2. I could mount a display there fed of the phone.
Or and this is the kicker, I could mount a display there that can tilt up exposing a hidden storage compartment. Cue the bond music :-)
This brings me to the next idea / problem. The display should support miracast so that the phone's screen can be put on there. So far all is good but I'll have to figure out a way to control the phone. Does anybody know if miracast / widi supports touch input to be streamed back to the source device ?
Another bonus that comes with this setup is the possibility to add a reverse camera to the display since these kind of displays usually come with a multitude of inputs, one of which can be used for the camera.
Building on all this I could / should also have a wireless router in my car, enabling me to get a NAS running. I believe a Pi would do nicely. Which would in turn make it bearable to have a limited storage on the phone, playing nicely in Googles strategy of pushing to the cloud. The only difference being that it will be my cloud and not theirs :-)
So there you have it, my random thoughts on car audio.
Singer
The other day I was watching Chris Harris testing a Singer.
He went into the design process of the car and this got me thinking. This might be an affordable way to get myself a very nice car, ok, affordable by use of a large portion of man maths.
The Singer he drove is based on the 964 Porsche series, of which a nice one can be had for around 20k. They are not overly powerful (3.6L 250hp), so insurance isn't going to be a complete killer. And the nice thing about Porsches is parts interchangeability. So basically you start with a box standard 964 Carrera 2 and you can start on an upgrading trajectory that leads you to an RS.
The one I've seen on a used car site had those nice leather electrical seats which way roughly 200kg a piece. Replaceby some of these or for a really oldschool feel, a pair of these. I don't know if i will fit in them though.
Some other bloke who's doing something similar with the original 911 is Magnus Walker. I really think he's on to something there :-)
*edid* found another guy who's really made me jealous : Have a look for yourself
Anyway, enough on porsches ... back to the real world.
He went into the design process of the car and this got me thinking. This might be an affordable way to get myself a very nice car, ok, affordable by use of a large portion of man maths.
The Singer he drove is based on the 964 Porsche series, of which a nice one can be had for around 20k. They are not overly powerful (3.6L 250hp), so insurance isn't going to be a complete killer. And the nice thing about Porsches is parts interchangeability. So basically you start with a box standard 964 Carrera 2 and you can start on an upgrading trajectory that leads you to an RS.
The one I've seen on a used car site had those nice leather electrical seats which way roughly 200kg a piece. Replaceby some of these or for a really oldschool feel, a pair of these. I don't know if i will fit in them though.
Some other bloke who's doing something similar with the original 911 is Magnus Walker. I really think he's on to something there :-)
*edid* found another guy who's really made me jealous : Have a look for yourself
Anyway, enough on porsches ... back to the real world.
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