Vanputer

[rpress]

Here are some pics of my Vanputer setup in my Westfalia camper van.

The server is an Iomega iConnect running Debian and SBS 7.6.1. There is a 1 TB hard drive with the music on it, and that spins down when idle. It has an internal wifi card that acts as an AP, it also has a client Wifi adapter for syncing and also to act as a repeater. Plugging my phone in connects the server to the internet, when desired.

You can see the server tucked between the microwave and the solar wiring, with the hard drive down below. A USB GPS mouse is used for time sync and also for GALA speed sensitive volume. I was thinking of sending the GPS over the Wifi to the tablet, but the tablet GPS is pretty good.

The tablet is an Asus Transformer. It was quite bright out as you can see but the display is easily readable. The mounts are from ProClip and RAM.

The head unit is an empeg running Squeezeslave. I ported it over to run on this device, and it works great. The connection to the server is through the Ethernet port. You can see the music playing on the head unit is the same as shown on the tablet.

It's still a work in progress but I'm pleased with the outcome so far. Next is to get my backup camera piped into the server so I can watch it on the tablet.

[mherger]

Excellent!

--

Michael

[drewe181]

Nice, but why did you have to move the steering wheel to the wrong side?

[rpress]

Thanks guys!

I just did a dist upgrade to Wheezy and it had a nice speed boost, although SBS needed some help working with Perl 5.12.4.

The backup camera is working using Motion on the server. It uses about 50% of the CPU to transcode uyvy422 to MJPEG at 10 FPS. I guess I'd like something that could do a H.264 stream but I haven't found anything that has reasonable CPU usage. My iConnect has no FPU.

I also need to figure out a way to only stream when required, so it's not always using the CPU.

[JJZolx]

Is that iPeng running on the iPad? They don't scale the fonts for the much larger display?

[rpress]

Is that iPeng running on the iPad? They don't scale the fonts for the much larger display?

It's an Asus Transformer tablet, running the Logitech controller application. Squeezecommander is another option, but I like the way the Logitech software does the dual pane display on the tablet. Squeezecommander does display "fullscreen" but the font is about the same.

[rpress]

I also need to figure out a way to only stream when required, so it's not always using the CPU.

I wrote a little background script that looks for established connections using "netstat". When there are no connections, it stops the "motion" process with "kill -STOP". This eliminates the CPU usage. When a connection is re-established the script issues "kill -CONT" to the "motion" process and it starts streaming immediately.

It works great!

I have washed the Subaru since that rear-view photo.