My carputer in action (youtube high quality)
 

Just a quick and dirty little demo of how a computer can be used in a car, with mostly free software....

Late night drive to Wal-Mart to buy Nursing Pads, for the wife :-)

http://www.youtube.com/v/cFn3c0k1LVE

edit : Sw used : Road Runner front end, IGO8 PC GPS, Palmer DashCommand OBD Gauges

nice.

I have two questions. Does it do anything a GPS deck with a hard drive cant do aside from intrenet access?

How do you get internet access? Thru a cell phone provider or one of those Rogers mobile modems?

Haven't used GPS on a deck but I would think it has the same functionality.

It does anounce street names during directions.

The holy grail for me would be live traffic updates and automatic re-routing around traffic.

I think some markets, europe mostly, get live traffic through FM RDS then gets sent to your GPS device (deck, Tom Tom , or OEM satnav) via TMC protocol.

Do any decks here support live traffic rerouting?

As for internet, I've got an HTC Touch cell phone with bell, $7 month unlimited data.
I tether it to my carputer via usb, and have live internet on the go, I can watch my rogers cable via slingbox (when parked for safety) and stream radio and shoutcast streams, etc...

i dont think the unlimited data means tether cellular modem dude, it means unlimited data on the device itself.

You're right, PDANET gets around this, shhh don't tell any one...

they got a blackberry version of that software?

June Fabrics PDA Technology Group

does'nt look like it , iphone, palmos and windows mobile only...

Just did a google on blackberry and tether, looks like this might help...

BlackBerry Application Store - How To - BlackBerry Modem

It can hold any amount of songs and videos in any format (including lossless).

The most compelling reason though, would be the advanced EQ's (and PEQ's), output channels (mostely for running active) and advanced T\A and phase tuning one can have access to.

Yeah, very flexible with the vst plugins and such, I have the right hw, m-audio fw 410 sound card, but it just seems to daunting right now. If I could do the processing on the PC succesfully I would consider selling my zapco dc amps and just get regular ones.

Yuli, I've got a live OBD connection which I can use for realtime gauges, as well as diags (reading and clearing cel codes).

The on the go internet though opens up so many possibilities....

I've also got alot of flacs that I think decks cant handle...

I also find with the pc, most parts are relatively cheap and available, so I have complete control of upgrading or fixing any part, from the screen to the cpu, hd, audio path etc... flexibility and expandabilty are limitless..

I would not recommend a carputer to someone if they can't build a pc from scratch and install windows and program ini files and small scripts...