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satellite TV system for vehicles

Michael Stepanov — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 08:18:20 +0000

If you don’t want to be bored in your car trip TracVision A7 is what do you need! It’s a satellite TV system for vehicles from KVH Industries. It allows to watch DirecTV in your car. The unit is available at price $2,995. Sure, you should pay also monthly about $45.
The TracVision A7 is a cool gadget but it seems a bit dangerous. Before drivers could talk by mobile phone only But now they start watch TV

[via Engadget]

Keep watch over your vehicle

Michael Stepanov — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 09:12:47 +0000

Many people were in the situation when they came to their cars and found out some damages. It’s difficult or maybe impossible to find a witness and get a compensation. The British company TruScene offers an elegant solution – The TruScene TS-1L camera. The camera should be mounted internally on the front windscreen (there is also an option to purchase a rear mounted camera for fitting to the rear screen). If the car is involved in an accident that results in a pre-determined g-force, then a g-force motion sensor is activated and the video image is transferred to non-volatile memory for storage. The camera can be easyly connected to the PC to download video.

Additionally, the camera has built-in LCD display for adjastment and integraded GPS to allow for the location of the footage to be embedded onto the clip as well as the time.

Hovewer, the price is not so cheap – $1,000. But it depends on your car.

[via Engadget]

Put A PC In Your Car

Michael Stepanov — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 07:40:48 +0000

If you’re licky owner of Lexus IS220 or something similar this article is not for you. The article describes a procedure of preparation and installation mini-ITX PC in the car. Among the subjects under discussion are:

heat and power – the car PC should consume not much energy and doesn’t get too warm;

vibration and shock – it’s a car and roads are not perfect;

operability – the car PC should be useful and handy.

Concerned readers can find a list of all needed components and detailed steps to build and install PC in the car.

Another way to have the PC in your car is to install Mac Mini. You can find here an information and a bunch of photos.

Mac Mini as Car computer

Michael Stepanov — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:44:37 +0000

Mac Mini is one of the geekest gadgets produced recetly. It combines wide functionality, small form-factor and stylish design. Once you get Mac Mini in your hand you didn’t change it anything else.

I already wrote about two interesting installations of Mac Mini: Mac Mini as home PVR and Mac Mini as part of multimedia car system. But the using of Mac Mini as computer for Toyota Prius seems really amazing! It allows to listen a music and watch DVD and photos.

Guy who did this installation wrote a Perl script to listen to the serial port and send the Apple Script commands to control Front Row from the touch screen.

Car stereo with Bluetooth, SD and USB

Michael Stepanov — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:57:28 +0000

Boss – the world leader in the produsing of audio systems has announced a new line of car stereo. This line is notable by support Bluetooth, SD and USB. So, now it’s trivial to bring new music in your car. I read before about support iPod in several car producers. Boss did better solution because using USB you can connect many devices to your car stereo (iPod as well).
[via Akihabaranews]