The CarPuter

For the longest time, I have wanted to put a computer in my car. Besides the standard "Ooh I could have GPS and know where I am" stuff, and the whole MP3-playing (or OGG/Vorbis) thing, there are just a trillion other neat ideas that I've had about what you could do with a computer in your car! But something finally pushed me over the edge, and that was the thought of having speech-recognition and text-to-speech support in the car, along with a wireless or cellular-modem hookup to connect to the Internet. That would allow me to do neat things like listen to my e-mail on the way home (because, of course, I get SO MUCH e-mail... NOT), or IM OVER VOICE. That's the one that has me really excited. So, maybe I'll get this whole thing moved forward to the point where I can actually do that in the near future.

Components Acquired Thus Far

So far, all I really have is the computer. It's as good a starting point as any, since most of the work has to be done on it. It's an IBM Thinkpad 365XD, weighs like 200 lbs, and will soon have Mandrake Linux installed on it. Then the fun part begins.

Needed Components

Here is a list of things I still need to get:

• A GPS receiver. I think it will need a serial port on it, but hopefully I can find one that works over serial or USB.
• A wireless card. For now, I'm going to try using my Orinoco WaveLan card from my Sony VAIO laptop, until I know everything works and I can buy a dedicated card.
• A cable for my cell-phone to use it as a modem.
• Some sort of LCD display that the laptop can drive. Some run off of parallel ports, some run off of serial ports.

Problems to Solve

I have some interesting problems to solve, too:

• Some way to power the laptop off of the car battery. This is going to be an interesting challenge, since the laptop says it wants 16V, but the car puts out significantly less than that. The laptop AC adapter says it outputs 10V-16V - if that's the case then I may be able to cheat and just give the laptop no more than 16V. Also, the laptop can't be allowed to kill the car battery... Fortunately, it has its own battery, and I need to see how long the laptop battery life will be and whether I can remember how to build a little power-management circuit that will actually manage the link between the car and the computer's power. Note to self: BUY FUSES.
• Where am I going to put all this stuff?! Well, right now the laptop might live under the passenger seat, but I don't think that's optimal because then the wireless card will be in close proximity to, well, the passenger's seat, and I have no idea what that might do to people... In the long run, I think the trunk is the best choice, especially because I think that is where the GPS will probably hang out too.
• I bet I run out of serial ports. I don't think that laptop does USB...