Introducing TruxII
March 20th, 2006 @ 13:42 by NormMonkey
From the carputer department:
Forgive me AZROLB for I have slacked.
It’s been twenty-two days since my last update.
Where have I been for the last 22 days?
Working on TruxII! What is TruxII?
When my team and I did the DARPA Grand Challenge our vehicle had these computers. They’re ideal for cars since the CPU and mainboard are designed to be low-power and the power supply is designed to work well with your average car’s power system.
I bought one of the computers from the team after the event. Now I’m working on building something that I think will be cool, or at least will be fun and incredibly frustrating to work on.
I’m going to build a system that lets me make modules. The thing is that there are a bunch of cool things for a vehicle computer to do. Play MP3s. Collect GPS data. Plot GPS position. Monitor OBDII for things like speed, efficiency, etc. Connect via wireless to a home base and grab your updated grocery list, then remind you what you need to get at the store (maybe even print a hardcopy). Turn the volume on the music up or down depending on the car speed. Etcetera ad nauseam.
All these cool ideas and more, running on the one computer. How to manage it? Modules! What I envision so far, which is as far away from “set in stone” as you can get while still having an idea, is a low-level system that collects all sorts of data from the peripherals, and an infrastructure in which a bunch of modules interact. Some will run in the background and make themselves known when needed (like the shopping one, which can use GPS to detect when you’re near a store, check if you need any items from that store, and alert you if you do).
Does it make sense to you? It doesn’t make sense to me, at least not anywhere lower than the ten thousand foot level. I’m working on that. In the meantime, I’m using my Wiki to keep track of cool ideas, what I’ve done so far on actually making the computer work, etc.
It’s all here: http://grinning-monkey.gnurple.net/index.php/Carputer
In other news, I’m now addicted to West Wing. I dream West Wing when I sleep. My computer’s background is the President’s Seal. My boss laughs at me when I say “I serve at the pleasure of the President” every morning. When I get home I go to the TV and put West Wing on, and when an episode finishes, instead of going to eat food or do work I start the next episode (OK, maybe only that last one is true…).
… and what’s up with the West Wing DVDs? The first season is in 1.33:1 (4:3) aspect ratio (just like a normal TV). The second season is 1.85:1. The rest are 1.78:1 (16/9).
Weird.
Oh, and speaking of weird, I’ll leave you with this picture of somebody who’s really trying their hardest to communicate with God:
