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[stevemac]

Hi,

Planning for 5 week road trip and looking for recommendations / ideas for in car / van entertainment

Current solution (for much shorter trips)

• Intel NUC running Windows and JRiver
• Portable HDD (media storage) connected to the NUC
• 2 x 7" screens connected to NUC for back seat viewing
• NUC connected to car head unit (3.5 audio cable) for music
• 2 zones configured in JRiver (Rear Seats, car Head Unit)
• ZTE MF91 wifi hotspot to provide in car wifi and Internet connection when in town
• Gizmo or JRemote on tablet (Front seat passenger to manage).

This has worked reasonably well for many years.  The NUC, HDD, wifi hotspot and a DC-DC power supply are mounted in a box located on the rear seat floor.  Power is from the vehicle's 2nd battery.

Main issues

• initial installation for each trip
• occasional need to manage the PC using wireless keyboard (very difficult doing text reading / entry on 7" screen)
• upgrading JRiver just before we go and forgetting to pull down the video components - resulting in the need to do them via mobile internet)

We are planning for 5 weeks on the road, estimating 10 - 12K kms.  Kids are older and are using tablets and we now tow a caravan

So looking for recommendations to cater for the following

• watch 2 different movies concurrently on tablets (1 x ipad, 1 x Android)
• connection to car's head unit for audio - hopefully via Bluetooth if I upgrade the head unit
• watch content in the caravan without moving everything to the van
• minimal cabling

I am also considering mounting this in the van (once I test the wifi hotspot coverage) between van and car

Some questions

• is a PI 4 powerful enough to handle this?
• best codecs to use for videos

thanks,

Steve

[JimH]

It sounds like you've got a great solution already.  I wouldn't expect a Pi4 to be very satisfactory for video.  It might work though if the video is low to moderate resolution.  That's just my guess.

[BryanC]

It wholly depends on if you are transcoding for streaming. If you can preprocess your videos so that you are transmitting them in the native format then the RPi 4 should be fine. There are other single-boards with more horsepower if you need it.

I would dedicate the hotspot to the RPi via 2.4ghz and connect your peripherals directly to the RPi's 5ghz. Bluetooth may not work reliably from the caravan to your head unit if you are constantly utilizing 2.4ghz wifi on the Pi. If you've already got the wired connections in the trunk then I would drop Bluetooth and install in the trunk. The RPi and hotspot are small enough that it could be permanent.

The biggest benefits you are going to see here is dropping the DC-DC nonsense for the NUC (you can get away with a 30-60W portable usb battery bank connected to your 12V supply) and reducing the footprint. In a perfect world I would ditch the hotspot and get a USB or ethernet LTE modem and handle the entire network through the Pi to clean up your spectrum.

You may be interested in listening to Chris Fisher of Linux Action News, Self-Hosted, and Linux Unplugged podcasts fame. He lives in an RV and has chronicled the evolution of his portable linux setups.

[stevemac]

Thanks for the updates / input.  Will definitely check out Chris Fisher

I forgot to mention that the NUC is re-purposed from my daughter's desk - hence looking at other options to host MC and if possible cheaper than another NUC.

The DC-DC power supply was to isolate the unit from the car's ignition (wasn't always on the Aux battery).  From memory it is one http://www.mini-box.com/DCDC-USB-200?sc=8&category=981. I notice they have dedicated ones for the NUC now

cheers,

Steve