MAC running on a Prius MFD via CAN-view

I wanted to move this back up. jkusnetz is making progress. Also this is the time to pick up a G4 Mac Mini on the cheep. If you have a Apple Store near you the Intel Minis are replacing the G4s as demo models. You may be able to pick up one and save a few bucks. I may do this myself.
BTW here is the link check out the blog at the end. http://www.kusnetz.net/prius/

 

Hi all,
If you go the FM modulator route, you can use the DTR (or RTS) line on the serial port to control an optical relay, which will enable/disable the modulator. I don't know perl at all, so I don't know if there is an API call to control those lines, but if you can, those lines (along with the other inputs) are like gold. You can control power to various devices with them, read buttons, etc....

Most of the modulators I've looked at are enabled/disabled through the +12V power input. This will let you listen to normal radio stations without the signal loss introduced by the FM modulator. Minimal soldering, and the fact that RS232 is pretty tolerant to stupid mistakes (+15kV or so..) This means that you don't have to worry about blowing stuff up..

If the software is setup right, your perl script (in my case VB code) should turn the FM modulator on and off based on a touchscreen button/etc..

Just a random thought...

 

Hey all I just wanted to update you all with my progress.

Today was the first day I had all the parts working together. I had about 2 hours of driving and was able for the first time to use Front Row on the new Mini working in the Prius with audio! It was wonderful being able to finally listen to all my music with the great Front Row interface!

All was not perfect and there was one serious problem.

See http://www.kusnetz.net/prius/ for details!

If anyone has any ideas about my problem please let me know your ideas!

 

Don't tempt me. I can get a Mini from my daughter at a discount, but I would have to give up my backup camera and I really like that. Maybe someone could show me how to make a switch. Lets see all of my tunes in one place or the backup camera. You need pictures of the set up. The Geeks at the Apple Store my daughter works at are interested in this.

 

it's probabally possible to input a camera into the mac mini and just use the computer to view the rear

 

I'm actually thinking of trying this eventually. I'm already getting CAN data sent to the Mini, so I should in theory be able to detect when the car is in reverse, and thus display the camera view.

btw, I got my pre-amp working. Right now I have the Mini stuffed into the center console. I haven' t noticed any heat problems yet.

It's now time to think about getting everything installed nicely.

 

Pictures? What about one of those one handed keyboards? There would be a learning curve but that might work. I had not thought about inputing the camera into the Mac. I think I have enough length on the cable to do that.

 

When can we get step by step directions? I know I would glady pay a few bucks for this as it would make it a lot easier to connect the system for someone like me who is new to the Prius.

 

Well step one is the CAN-View install for a step by step go here ;
http://www.hybridinterfaces.ca/install.html
You would need the V2 or V3. I would get the V3 at this point. As soon as the innovation slows down a bit I am going to get the V.last but with the way eflier is churning out the modification this may be a yearly subscription!
There is no step by step for the next part. The current information is here;
http://www.kusnetz.net/prius/
It is still a work in progress

 

Yes I'm planning on taking more photos, and have a more detailed instructions of what I did.

But in summary, I bought a VGA scan converter that spits out RGB+S, I feed that into a scart cable (have v2 of the CAN-view) which goes into the CAN-view. I have the serial cable connected to the CAN-view and a serial to USB adapter on my mac. From there I wrote a program to listen to the serial port and send Front Row different commands depending on where I touch the screen.

For audio I have the CAN-view driving a 4pdt relay which is hooked up to my JBL amp. I bought a wireing harness for a sub woofer that i use to cut up the wires to feed into the relay (so I don't have to cut the toyota wires). I think the V3 CAN-view has the wiring already needed to drive the relay, the V2 CAN-view will take a little bit of soldering (one resitor and transistor).

That's basically it in a nutshell. Wonder why it took me so long to get everything working?!

 

Just and update, the project is slowly coming along (having to go to work everyday is slowing things down!

Anyway, I've posted some new pics of trying to get the mini mounted in the prius. The good news, it fits!

Check out all the gory pics of my prius all taken apart..

http://www.kusnetz.net/prius/

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jkusnetz @ Apr 2 2006, 11:35 AM) [snapback]233785[/snapback]</div>

Amazing work, thank you for the inspiration and not only...

Two questions:

1. does the Mac Mini work vertically? I am a bit uneased by the idea of taking the dash apart. I figure maybe it would fit well in the center console

2. any idea on total cost aside from Mac Mini and CAN View themselves?

Thank you,

S.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(snowflake @ Apr 3 2006, 04:52 AM) [snapback]234082[/snapback]</div>

No problems running vertically, I was actually running it in my center console for the past couple of weeks. The only two problems I had were there is no place to run the wires out of except for the top (unless you drill holes), so it's kind of ugly. And second there isn't really any ventilation so it gets pretty hot in there, probably not good for the mini.

Cost wise, it's a bit hard to say, a lot of it has been trial and error.

Let's see, the P1900 (DC/DC power supply) - $100
Scan converter - $50 on up, I spent about $80 including shipping for both the extron and the scan do.
Extra power supply for Mini - $50 ( you have to cut the power cord to fit to the P1900, so if you want you mini to still work as a desktop you need this)
Line amplifier - $40
relay - $5

So that's $325, it will probably be closer to $350 with all the misc. parts. So add that to the cost of the mini and CAN-vew and you are in the neighborhood of $1300 total. Adds up doesn't it?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jkusnetz @ Apr 3 2006, 08:36 AM) [snapback]234109[/snapback]</div>

Thank you for the estimate... It does add up... but then well worth it...

Imagine, next step is worldwide voice enabled instant messaging via web, or cheching email via text to speech and replying via speach to text applications.

Besides, I have a "problem"... My daughter would like that the Prius knows its name, and who knows, maybe the Mini can be later on trained to be asked the question "What is your name?" and know how to answer it... Long time ago I had a PC doing that so this now is so easy for a smarter Mac... In other words, while the Prius "brain" can be amazing, we do need improvements on it... I guess an extra 1000 on top of CAN View may be worth it in this context...

Thank you,

S.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(snowflake @ Apr 3 2006, 12:34 PM) [snapback]234262[/snapback]</div>

this sounds suspiciously similar to a technology that does exist already... the telephone!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(samkusnetz @ Apr 5 2006, 03:18 AM) [snapback]235172[/snapback]</div>

Indeed, it may , yet it's not the very same... taking a long road trip and wanting to (or having to) still be connected with work (granted, why would you want that if you could avoi it) or friends and family (more likely), you could do that with pictures and movies (including live stremed video feeds) from the roadtrip, or share documents, emails and anything else from road, not necessarily while driving...

As unfortunate as it may have been, on a recent 2000 miles trip over two days in my Prius I found the need for web searches, reading and typing short emails etc. My PDA phone helped me stay on top of things but a better (larger type too) solution would certainly have been welcomed...

The Prius is inspiring in many ways... Long drives alone can be seen as boring, and yet they can be seen as inspiring... I get a whole lot of ideas on them, and having more than the phone helps one like me who doesn't have an executive assistant to take dictation over the phone...

The work Atilla has done with his onboard computer placing his voice-Prius more so into the category of Sci Fi vehicles lead me to think through solutions for all sort of people who (in part like me) like to live from their vehicles...

And then again, what's wrong with dreaming of a Prius who can be trained to take new commands on top of the ones it already answers to?

What is wrong with dreaming:

"Snowflake, please instant message girlfriend in Australia..."

or

"what is the email address of the top manager of Toyota Gulf States?"

or

"Snowflake, please remember to send an email birthday card to all contacts in addressbook on their birthday"

Now, I don't mean to say we should "downgrade" our great cars to the role of an executive assistant...

so it can work also with:

"Snowflake, please perform a self check of all your systems..."


Anyway, all I am saying is that from visionary ideas combined across many people eventually come their very practical design and implementation into the future.

So, once again, thank you for the Mac Prius vision...

S.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(snowflake @ Apr 6 2006, 06:31 PM) [snapback]236004[/snapback]</div>

Well the good news is all of this applies to non mobile applications, so there seems to be some software out there already:

http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.p...=macosx&x=0&y=0

I may play around with some of that itunes control.

I do wonder how road noise will affect how these work.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jkusnetz @ Apr 7 2006, 05:02 AM) [snapback]236268[/snapback]</div>

And if you have an Intel Based MAC Mini installed your Prius can dual boot between Windows (running natively) and OS X using the new Boot Camp that came out yesterday from Apple!

 

Video hum..

Hey guys, figured I'd bring this up here to see if anyone had any ideas. The project is slowly coming along, I really can only work on it a couple of hours at the most each weekend.

I've finally gotten to the point where everything is being powered off of a DC/DC powersupply.

I've always had some noise in the video, but I figured it was due to my DC/AC power inverter. I figured it would clear up once I got everything DC powered. Well it did not.

As far as I can tell what I'm seeing is a video hum, or a ground loop problem. The problem is I moved the ground cable from the power supply to the ground cable on the CAN-view, so now the CAN-view, NAV, powersupply and thus the mini and the scan converter should all be sharing the same ground, yet I have the video hum.

Any thoughts? I'm using a ground loop isolator from radio shack on the audio coming out of the mini and it seems to do it's job well. I've seen some ground loop isolators for video, but they are $$$$. I've half thought of trying to take the audio ground loop isolator and hooking it up to the RGBS cables coming out of the scan converter, just some nice RCA to BNC adaptors should do the job, but I have no idea if this will work.

 

The audio isolator (a transformer) will not have the bandwidth to handle video. It won't break anything, but your video quality will probably suffer so badly that the hum is insignificant.

Sometimes you can find useful surplus stuff at TV stations. They throw this stuff in a junk pile when converting to newer video systems.

Have you tried a couple of ferrite beads or toroids on the cable?