Depleting usable bandwidth since April 30, 2000
InfoCar - Revision 1
These pictures look horrible since I was taking a picture of the CRT during software development. In real life, the video on both the CRT and TFT look very clean, crisp and flawless. Sometimes the monitor brightness washes out all color too, sorry about that.
I am realy loving this display. The TFT has a resolution of about 720 x 240, which kills all interlace flicker (!).
Rev 1 cycles through a sequence of various pieces of information, and takes about a minute or two to complete the cycle. This provides the perfect hands-off driver information system that I intended to develop. Rev 0 just displayed traffic information.
Rev 1.5 may feature a web-based configuration utility. Most data is pre-processed on a colo'ed server right now. Think of it as an XML stream to a wireless multimedia terminal!
Rev 2.0, although not yet finished, will be done someday. I will post these screenshots soon. It makes use of a menuing system to aide in internet content selection, maping, driving directions, video switching (DVD/VHS/backup camera/etc), remote vehicle location telemetry, etc. Provisions for OBDII diagnostics, windows/locks/starter, and other wacky stuff is available, but the cost of implementation is not for the faint of budget/heart. Remote vehicle start over HTTPS or UDP anyone? ;-)
This software uses Scala MM300 as a multimedia front end, and an ARexx backend to handle data fetching and processing. Some things you can't see from these still pictures are the fun transitions (screen flips, stretches, etc.) and the Saturn swish startup animation. Each snapshot is in order of display sequence:
My drawing skills are not ideal, so expect better icon graphics in the final version.
Main menu screen is displayed after startup. The items are "internet", "video", "maps" and "prefs". The menuing system uses the joystick wires for input, so a custom interface can be built somewhere on the console of the vehicle.
This is the first internet menu. "slideshow" will cycle between all information. "Traffic" displays the traffic map (this version lets you move around a zoomed up portion of the map). The traffic light balls do not line up to counter-act the strange contrast issues on my screen. Believe it or not, this comes out perfectly straight on the display (?). "Top Stories" and "Slashdot", of course.
"Current weather", "Doppler Radar", "Forecast", and "ducting". Most of which is kindly provided by the local TV station's website. "Ducting" shows me a VHF/UHF ducting map, telling me if I am going to be receiving an FM radio station from 500 miles away or not. This is also great for mobile amateur radio operations.
And finally, "Stock Quotes", "Amiga.org news", "Email", and "Webcams". Its always nice to see a live picture from antartica or something.
This screen lets me select "DVD/VHS", "Rear View" (or backup camera), and "MP3/Audio". This actually controls a hard video switcher that changes between this, and several other inputs.
This menu displays a "topo map" overhead navigation system, a "satellite" overhead map, "Directions", and realtime GPS dumps.
This turns the system off and displays the about message. I think i might put the OBDII diag as well as configuration systems under this menu.
This is a prototype of the news display going into rev 2.