A SmartRider in Every SmartCar?

[Jonathon Watkins]

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_9668.html

A Taiwanese company called PDC have announced an in-car computer called the SmartRider, which runs on Windows CE.NET 4.2. It uses a AMD Geode GX1 (300Mhz) processor, has 128MB RMA / 128 ROM, a 7" Touch Panel TFT screen, GSM Tri-band, a DVD Rom drive and a SD/MMC Reader.



The plan is to target this at a variety of applications including multimedia entertainment (DVD, TV/FM, CD, VCD, MP3), Mobile Communications (GSM/GPRS), GPS (Voice Guidance, Route Planning etc) and as a mobile office (Web Browsing, Email, Data etc.) It certainly seems to tick a lot of the necessary boxes. Can you see one of these types of devices in your car in a few years time and if not, why not?

[Jonathon Watkins]

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_9668.html

A Taiwanese company called PDC have announced an in-car computer called the SmartRider, which runs on Windows CE.NET 4.2. It uses a AMD Geode GX1 (300Mhz) processor, has 128MB RMA / 128 ROM, a 7" Touch Panel TFT screen, GSM Tri-band, a DVD Rom drive and a SD/MMC Reader.



The plan is to target this at a variety of applications including multimedia entertainment (DVD, TV/FM, CD, VCD, MP3), Mobile Communications (GSM/GPRS), GPS (Voice Guidance, Route Planning etc) and as a mobile office (Web Browsing, Email, Data etc.) It certainly seems to tick a lot of the necessary boxes. Can you see one of these types of devices in your car in a few years time and if not, why not?

[spinerep]

I WANT I WANT I WANT!
It better have Wifi for file transfer and sync when i pull into the garage. and voice recognition so i can reply to e-mail on the road!

[surur]

I don't spend enough time in my car to justify this. I live close to work. I'm only in my car about 30 minutes per day. For me a smart and stylish cradle for my regular PDA would me miles better.

Surur

[bkerrins]

It's going to need more horsepower. 300 Mhz is going to make it tough to play a DVD. 128Mb of memory? I don't want to have to store my GPS maps on a SD card if I'm IN the car. It needs at least enough memory to hold hours of music, maps for GPS, etc. I love the idea, I really do. It has rear view video, phone technology, a lot of great ideas but just needs more memory and processor speed.

[Gerard]

If car stereos need removable faceplates to help reduce theft... how will this survive the transgressions of those with lesser moral standards? If the 7" screen actually doubled as an incredible standalone PDA, great, I could see carrying that away from a vehicle and continuing to use it. The box in the car could be anonymized or just rendered useless without a paired screen unit to run it, making it useless to thieves, but if pulling the whole unit would let a stolen device work in another car this would be a major pawnshop item.

That said, it looks to be a rather killer device for kids on a long trip. Toss in gaming controller ports and you'd have the ultimate road trip distractiono for bored back seaters.

[gpspassion]

I had missed it at first on their booth at computex, but then that lady openened the suitcase and there it was!
The difficulty with this type of combo is getting the UI right and while this one had some nice graphics it seems they still need to fine tune and integrate all the "modules" before they can go to market.

[Mbai2]

Great idea although it is not quite new. I built one of these for my car and it has much more power than what is being discussed in this thread. I'm in the process of filing patents and starting a company to put this product in the market for mainstream users.

The one I have in my car has a 1Ghz x86 processor, 512MB RAM, 80 GB Harddrive, WiFi, Bluetooth, DVD, GPS, XM, WMA, MP3 and so on. It runs windows XP for now but I'm working on making my own OS tailored for car use. The best part about it is that is is basically infinitely expandable, both hardware and software wise, due to the fact that it is actually a fully functional computer.

Photos of my setup:
Main Screen
Weather Info
Music Manager
GPS
DVD

[Sydney Bristow]

Originally Posted by Mbai2

Great idea although it is not quite new. I built one of these for my car and it has much more power than what is being discussed in this thread. I'm in the process of filing patents and starting a company to put this product in the market for mainstream users.

The one I have in my car has a 1Ghz x86 processor, 512MB RAM, 80 GB Harddrive, WiFi, Bluetooth, DVD, GPS, XM, WMA, MP3 and so on. It runs windows XP for now but I'm working on making my own OS tailored for car use. The best part about it is that is is basically infinitely expandable, both hardware and software wise, due to the fact that it is actually a fully functional computer.

Photos of my setup:
Main Screen
Weather Info
Music Manager
GPS
DVD

Wow, that's amazing!

Erm, just out of curiosity, what did you major in university? I myself am on the verge of choosing, and I'm interested more in software, but would also like to have a mixture of hardware on the side - I was thinking perhaps Computer Science or Software Engineering, but I would love to have some comments from someone who has gone through the experience already. Thank you! ^^

[Charles Pickrell]

I'm going to break with the pack here. People want car stereos to be simple. Most people would be happy to just have XM and an iPod dock. Perhaps if the UI of the thing was really easy to use, but just looking at the design of the faceplate, I doubt that simplicity was a goal in the design.

[Phoenix]

I'd like to have something else similar to this in my car. An in-car computer that offered and handled all of the following would be great:

DVDs, TV, and Videos
CDs, Digitally Encoded Music, and Misc. Audio
FM and XM Satellite Radio
GPS Navigation
Weather and Traffic
Communications (Link with my phone via BT)
Voice Control and Recording
WiFi and VoIP
BT
Internet, Email, IM, and Video Conferencing
Security
Surveillance (rear-view camera, for instance)
Auxiliary Control
Windows XP or MCE access for full computing capability
7"+ Touchscreen
Control also via Hardware buttons and Griffin Technology's Powermate
Integrated HDD
Lightscribe-enabled CD/DVD+-R/RW/DL drive
Multicard Reader, USB and Firewire ports
Wireless Keyboard, Mouse, Remote, and Headphones
Flexible customizable GUI

...and Multiple independent source management and control:
-Four sources/four monitors - two up front, two in back (one in each headrest).
-Driver and each of three passengers to have access to different things simultaneously (for example, GPS, DVD, TV, and Gaming, all at once).
-Driver's source with its audio to pump through car speakers, all others sources with their own audio, feeds through wireless headphones.
-If one or more of the other three sources accesses the same content as the driver's source, then the audio still pumps through car speakers, or passenger can opt to still listen to it through headphones.


That's quite a bit, but I'd love to have that kind of power, control, and flexibility in my car.


Drivesoft might be the way to go. Out of all of the in-car computers currently out there, there's is the most impressive and well put together to me. There's always some room for improvement, though.