I was actually planning on building my own car pc - had all the parts ordered and ready to install....
Then I got word that one of the employees that works for my father-in-law killed two people via a head-on collision because he was watching a movie using an in-car dvd player while driving. The accident was terrible, and I believe the driver who caused the accident literally watched the victims burn up in flames inside their car.
Subsequently I decided to sell all my car computer parts on ebay so that I'm not a hazard to other people on the road. The temptation for me to fiddle with a computer while driving is probably too high.
Driving is one place where tactile feedback really matter and touch screens are a POS. If the driver has to take their eyes off the road to change the radio station somewhere someone will get in an accident and die. On my G35 I really do not like how all of the radio preset buttons are smooth and flush next to each other no matter how 'nice' it looks. It makes it near impossible to push the correct one without looking. I added little bumps via super glue so I would know which button is which without having to look.
Going out of your way to add a generic ipad that is designed to require you to be looking at the screen and not the road is a bad mix. You could use it as a glorified screen and have special software that always ran and connected to the car via the usb port (exists on the iphone) and didn't let you do anything when moving that would be in a step in the right direction. Still, adding a distraction to the driver is usually not worth the risk.
Problem: Temptation to use computer while driving.
Solution: Disallow interface while in motion, or enable speech recognition, or (holy grail wishful thinking) have the computer safely drive the car for you so that you can play with it. There are probably hundreds of solutions, but let's just get the ball rolling.
Speaking of which, we need to do more work on machine vision, people :P (Tangentially related: Project Natal leads me to believe that video games will end up contributing more to science than most people suspect.)
good move. :) I don't use my ipod while driving because I skip songs on it too much (no built-in ipod control in my 15 y/o celica).
And in fact - I'm pretty sure this would be illegal for me: Rule 299 of Victoria's road rules states that it is an offence to drive a motor vehicle with a "TV receiver or visual display unit" if the screen is visible to the driver of the car or "is likely to distract another driver". In-car navigation systems are exempt.
(( While it's a bit of a nanny-state law - I'm pretty much in favour))
It probably wont be long before someone find some cool place in their home to mount the iPad too. I'm thinking something like an iPad mounted flush into a coffee table at a slight angle so you can control your home theatre, lights, read the morning newspaper and check your TV listings. Or how about mounted into the kitchen wall to stream TV or get weather updates? Along the lines of this, except with an iPad:
I thought that a magnetic fridge mount (as long as it didn't mess with the internals of the device) could be good. Attach the iPad to your fridge and then use recipe apps like Jamie Oliver's.
I'm planning to do the same thing in my car. Good iPod integrated headunits are expensive so if you don't mind a little DYI work this would actually be cheaper and more functional. I'm going to wait for the 3G unit to get GPS. Glare is going to be a big factor though. Not sure how well these anti-glare screen covers work.
Soon after I started driving, my father said at every point in time I should have a mentally planned "exit path". That is - some way to escape oncoming or concurrent traffic that is not aware.
As more hacks like this come out, and with the amount of distracted drivers, I think the best "hack" for driving is knowing to escape someone using an ipad or an iphone coming at a closing speed of 200kph.
As a bit of a CarPC enthusiast, I am interested to see how long this holds up. I have fabricated my own touchscreen into my car and did all the work to make it look as factory as possible, however it takes a lot of time to make sure that everything holds together. Honestly, from the clips they showed, it really doesn't seem that the iPad was made to stick in there if the roads got a bit turbulent. I have seen people's touchscreens fall out from not being properly secured into the dashboard (including my own from a particularly rough driving experience...)
Ultimately, I think it's pretty cool but the iPad interface is not a very safe one to use while driving. This is why I always, always, always install a dashboard frontend like Centrafuse or RoadRunner on mine to make navigation simple.
Aside from all that stuff, I am pretty curious to see a) how the iPad holds up on the car battery, and b) how well the screen illuminates during sunlight. Both of which are always interesting problems to work through when building your own CarPC.
Wow. Soundman. These guys are in my town. I pass them on the way to work. I hope they got the data version so they can use maps. Regardless of the distraction potential, I think it's a pretty clever hack. Let's just hope he doesn't get distracted and kill me on my way to work.
As bad as smartphones were before Apple came along with the iPhone, car audio/navigation is a thousand times worse. Whoever turns out to be the Apple of autosound will have a license to print money.
Then I got word that one of the employees that works for my father-in-law killed two people via a head-on collision because he was watching a movie using an in-car dvd player while driving. The accident was terrible, and I believe the driver who caused the accident literally watched the victims burn up in flames inside their car.
Subsequently I decided to sell all my car computer parts on ebay so that I'm not a hazard to other people on the road. The temptation for me to fiddle with a computer while driving is probably too high.