Car PC

Hacks 556: Introduction Human/computer interface design is especially important in an automotive environment. Traditional control systems such as computer mice and keyboards tend to be awkward for passengers and too dangerous for the driver to use. ...

Before we get into the various ways a driver can safely control an in-car computer, let's look at how to get the passengers going. Many in-car PCs are designed for rear-seat or passenger entertainment. In this case, there's no particular reason a key...

Before the recent emergence of home theater PCs (HTPCs), there were not many hardware options for PC remote control. Now, with dozens of personal video recorder (PVR) or, if you prefer, digital video recorder (DVR) applications available, consumer de...

In Chapter 3, I showed you how to install a VGA touchscreen in the dashboard [Hack #26]. And for good reasonnot only are VGA screens sharper and far more readable than most other screens because of their higher resolution, but with a touchscreen inte...

Many programs are difficult to use without a mouse and keyboard. For instance, most of the navigation packages for Windows are almost impossible to control without stopping the car and clicking on tiny buttons for a while. These applications are actu...

When I first started researching in-car computing trends, I tried to determine what the biggest obstacles were to launching a successful product that large numbers of people would buy. What I learned from reading a lot of market research, analysis pa...

My initial inspiration for implementing voice recognition in my car PC came because I kept seeing commercials for voice-activated navigation systems, like those in Hondas and Acuras. Speech recognition requires the computer to accept spoken words as...

Some people in the car PC world like to claim that auto manufacturers are a decade behind the technology curve. True, it took years before a single car had MP3 support, and even today almost no new cars support it. The automotive industry has two st...