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[Health Nut]

Hi!

I've been using J Rivers Media Center for a few years now and enjoy it very much.  I was thinking about installing a car PC and running J Rivers Media Center. 

I was wondering if anyone has experience with the Pioneer A/V/navigation car setups?  The Pionner AVIC Z1 is a DVD/CD/Navigation unit with flushmount 7 inch touch screen which can control an iPOD, however I'm not sure if this is analog or digital connection. 

I'm not into MP3 quality and would convert my APE lossless collection to Apples lossless format, but even then I only have 60 GB to work with if I buy the 60 GB iPOD for use with the car.  I was wondering if J Rivers Media Center would work with a touch screen of the Pioneer?  Or, if I decided to go the route of a CAR PC, I could use the Aux inputs of the Pioneer processor, but again, how would you best control J Rivers?  It would be great to control J Rivers with the touch screen LCD of the Pioneer.

Any thoughts on what can be done?  Ideally it would be great to have J Rivers in the car with me.... or maybe it is best to say Media Center hehehe!!  I'm not into the Brokeback Mountain thing!!

[Matt]

Hopefully Dragyn will chime in as he has an amazing MC-powered carputer.

I keep considering doing it, but haven't pulled the trigger.

MC running on a DC-powered VIA computer with ASIO all through a touchscreen would be pretty neat.  You could even have wireless so you could sync it as a virtual handheld with your main MC each time you pulled in the garage.

The hitch is that an iPod basically is a small carputer -- it's a drive, screen, power source, and processor.  So unless you want the other goodies of a carputer like GPS and a big touch screen, it's hard to justify the investment.

Either way, you'll have to let us know what you end up with

[modelmaker]

I have been running MC on a lap top in the car with 2 200gig USB HDs thru the AUX input of my car stereo for over a year. The HDs are bungeed together on a foam pad in the trunk. It works great!

I am starting to look into touchscreens and Cinemar's touch screen GUI, (it's designed to work with MC)

[Health Nut]

My only concern with the iPOd is that it it $400 and only has a 60 GIG drive.  It would be nice if I could output the video of a CAR PC to the video input and send the digital out to the Pioneer outboard processor.  The audio is 100% guaranteed, but just because I can display J Rivers and window on the 7 inch screen (and the 15 inch screen in the middle), doesn;t mean I have a good way to control Windows/JRiver... Would be nice if I could use the touch screen of the Pioneer...  I don't feel like having a mouse in the SUV, so not sure how to best control a car PC... I have to use my exisiting equipment since the Pioneer AVIC ZI is $2200 and very cool/brand new.  Ideas?  I don't feel like putting a notbook under the seat, but perhaps a similar idea would work, I would just prefer to use my existing screens and audio processor.   I'm still curious to know if the pioneer connection to the iPOD uses the digital or analog line level output....

[Health Nut]

Anyone else have input on this?  After furth thought, a car PC makes sense.  I'd really like to hear from someone who has done a car PC...  I'd really like to have a 200 GB HD with Media Center taking care of my lossless compressed music....

[Monkeyboy]

I have been running my carputer for over a year now. Its an Epia MII 1200 with a 200 Gig 3.5 inch hard drive running through a CarTFT MM400 7" touchscreen with a custom surround (pictured).

I also have the stalk control modified to work through the serial port so that I can control the pc without too much hassle. I have a wifi connection which I can synch my music with and a GPS receiver too.

Its all powered by a dc-dc converter which is controlled by a microcontroller built by myself. This monitors the ignition which has a delayed power on and will turn the amp on after the pc so you dont get a thud.
This has serial control too so you can send it commands (like your getting petrol so don't shut down, pause the music when the ignition is turned off etc..).

Girder is sitting in the background handling the connection between things.
I think thats it, which all works quiet nicely
One thing to say about touchscreens is don't buy a Lilliput screen, I have one and it was useless. They are cheap for a reason!
If you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them.
Oh, and of course I have MC in theatre view running on start-up 

Rich

[Health Nut]

Hi Rich,

Great to hear from you.  I am getting a Pioneer AVIC Z1 navigation system installed, along with the DEQP8000 which is the Processor for the Pioneer which does the DD/DTS 5.1 and PL II...  It also has a spare optical input and a spare video input, so I could hook up a PC using component (ugh!) for video....    But it seems like you had to program your own touch screen panel with girder?

[Monkeyboy]

No, sorry for the confusion. The touchscreen stuff if just like controlling the mouse. I have it so you touch for left click and touch and hold for right click. This works perfect for any apps especially MC in theatre view.
Girder does the comms between the pc and my controller board, changes the function of my stalk control depending on whats in focus and things like that

Is the pioneer a touchscreen? If it is you'd need a way of getting that into the computer, possibly serial? (out of the head unit) If its not you'd need another way of controlling your computer. If you have a comprehensive stalk control you might be able to do it using that.

Rich

[JONCAT]

Nice to see this thread, we're holding out for a new car until 2008...anyone have any blogs on their installs or any tips. I'd like to see more pics of Mc integration with a carputer; exciting stuff! Good point about the Ipod being a carputer in and of itself Matt. I think it would be a blast to set one of these in a few years; hopefully storage will be even cheaper and maybe I'll finally have finished ripping all my CDs by then.

DC