Pandora As A Carpc?

[AArtist]

Being a "gp32-veteran" and general supporter of open source projects I have followed the development of the Pandora with quite a bit of interest so far.
It would be interesting for me to know if the system could maybe be used as a simple Car-PC offering music playback, navigation and such. Does anyone in here know if it's possible to get gpsd/gpsdrive to work and hook up a GPS mouse? Since the Pandora's an ARM system and there are ARM branches available for these programs, is there any reason that might keep them from compiling? Is anyone with the time/skills and toolchain willing to give it a shot?

The next thing that would interest me is the question of how the screen is connected to the board internally. In a car pc setup it would be quite handy to be able to mount the screen somewhere else than the system/keypad. Is it possible to use a cable to connect these two with some reasonable soldering skills?

Thanks a lot

 

[gruso]

Great minds ;-) I've got a dash mounted docking station in the works, my main goals being media playback and satnav. I'll be using a Bluetooth GPS receiver. I won't be doing any mods to the Pandora itself, it just plugs in.

A satnav app called Navit is already in the Angstrom repository - it may require tweaks and/or a recompile for Pandora, don't know. I'm sure there will be more options down the track, too.

Navit: CODE
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/?pkgname=navit

My project thread (progress halted until Pandora arrives):CODE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=44069

 

[Tom`]

More: CODE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=44745

 

[Kekerot]

I too would like to put a pandora in the car. Currently use my n810 with the dash mount but I worry because the pandora does not have a transreflective screen so when sunlight hits the screen it will be hard to see. I guess the pandora could be mounted lower in the center console where there is more shade.

 

[valhalla]

Great minds ;-) I've got a dash mounted docking station in the works, my main goals being media playback and satnav. I'll be using a Bluetooth GPS receiver. I won't be doing any mods to the Pandora itself, it just plugs in.

A satnav app called Navit is already in the Angstrom repository - it may require tweaks and/or a recompile for Pandora, don't know. I'm sure there will be more options down the track, too.

Navit: CODE
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/?pkgname=navit

My project thread (progress halted until Pandora arrives):CODE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=44069

AFAIK navit works already on the beagleboard, so all that it's missing is a nice pxml+zip package.

gpsd may be a bit tricky in that I don't know how easy would it be to run it from an external folder if it's not available in the firmware, but somehow I believe that it will be made to work, since many people showed interest in using Pandora for navigation.

 

[Kyo]

or, if you don't care about the touchscreen, add a transreflective layer

 

[Karel Jansens]

or, if you don't care about the touchscreen, add a transreflective layer

I found that my N800´s screen became a lot more readable in bright light after applying a (good) screen protector with antiglare coating. It seems counterintuitive, but there you go.

 

[CCmachined]

I've been wondering about Bluetooth remotes, how do they work? do they appear as pressing keyboard keys and so can be used by any app? or is it more like a usb joystick, requiring specific "remote" support? or would it appear as joystick buttons? is there a standard for bluetooth input devices that would be supported by many apps (or something like joy2key but for bluetooth which could translate the remote presses into keyboard presses that can be used anywhere) ?