XBMC: a future in cars?

Maybe for some of those show cars with giant fold-down TV's and all that, but I'm not sure if I could see it in the dashboard.

First of all it would have be optimized for touchscreen and big fonts/icons that you normally wouldn't have to worry about on a 40+ TV. Scale it down to a 7" screen in your dashboard and all the descriptions and pretty details in the skins really don't mean anything if you can't read it.

Secondly XBMC, to me, is a media center... not a home for GPS, navigation and finding the nearest starbucks. I guess the music could transfer over pretty well, but you would be limited in the library you take with you. I have nearly 20Tb at home and have no need to have any of that available in my car. Even on trips, I can put enough stuff on a 16Gb usb stick or upload to the ipad to entertain the family and kids in the back for the duration of the drive.

If anything and I had the time/money to do it, I would toss a simple PC under the seat with just enough space for a season of Dora/Diego or maybe a dozen movies, set it up with wifi and duct-tape a couple inexpensive tablets to the backs of headrests so the kids can watch their own shows and I'm not hearing them argue about Snow White vs Cinderella all day.

Honestly, I think an android based system would be best in this situation.

Perhaps when xbmc is finally released for android, that would be the ultimate solution.

Imagine a touchscreen stereo that runs on android, provides Bluetooth hands free while getting the internet connection from the phone through bluetooth as well, has google nav and maps and pandora and all that. . . That would be awesome.

For now, I would probably go with a cheap capacitative 7" android tablet or an ipad if xbmc is required. And you could put a wifi nas in the trunk for storage

I bought an iPad mount and ziptied it to my heater vents and use my iPad for this, works perfectly. I run XBMC on it, but use the 5-finger swipe to swap between XBMC and TomTom.

I understand the concept of having XBMC in the car, but there are many better options out there. XBMC is a media center designed for home use in which it does a great job!

I have built alot, around 20 or so daily used carpc's in various types of european cars when I had my shop. I have used diy frontends designed for use in a vehicle and some I designed. There's centrafuse ,roadunner, mpegcar, and professionally built software from xenarc and mp3car. They are vastly different from XBMC in so many ways becuase its purpose built. Large buttons for touchscreen, GPS, FAx ,Phone, internet, tv, music, movies, surround sound ( yes in a car must use multiple amps ), voice control, front and rear cameras, start/shutdown controllers and more. Every Os you can think of from linux, windows and mac has been used in a car. This was 8 years ago and so much has changed since then. Miniitx picoitx motherboards are nothing new, there are motorized screen with built in pc's designed for single and double din and special designed versions like for 350z and infinity vehicles and others.

I really enjoy working with XBMC but designing XBMC for car use is something I Really believe wont happen since there are other solutions that are solid, supported, and ready to use.

Check out MP3CAR.COM and you will see many ideas and projects, everything I stated is my personal opinion from years of realworld experience. Also fyi if a police officer notices you watching movies at a stop light ,in cali its a large ticket, and thats why you see parking brake signal needed to view video on standard car stereos. Of course you can just ground that wire on some stereos but most now need a firmware change as the movement has been made to use gyros instead of a ground signal.

I am currently attempting to use XBMC as a media server for my carPC install. I bought a cheap Android tablet from woot to install in the dash, but found it lacking in pretty much every way. I had a netbook at my disposal, so I decided to see if I could use it to play the media and use the tablet as the controller/now playing display. So far I've tried install XBMC on top of ubuntu and installing XBMC live (yes, I know they are very similar) but performance issues make it nearly unusable. The other issue I see is being able to launch Pandora: the Android remotes available allow you to view the "Now Playing" screen OR use the Android touchscreen as a remote (meaning you need to view the output connected to the XBMC box). In other words, I don't know how to launch Pandora remotely.

My (theoretical) setup will be: El cheapo Android tablet mounted to the dash, connected to a charger through a switched voltage source (the battery life is actually one of the only decent things about the tablet; an android app will change the settings to keep the screen on while charging)

A netbook will run XBMC with the Pandora plugin and have whatever other media I want to have and also serve as a wifi bridge. Using Tasker (or similar) my phone will be triggered to share its data via wifi hotspot, which will be picked up by the netbook, and shared to a router in the vehicle.

The router will serve as a Wake-on-Lan source for the netbook.

In short, I see potential.

IMO strapping any tablet or netbook to the vents, to me its not a carpc. Its an oversize iTouch far from something that is truly integrated into the vehicle.

From a person who has built alot of car pc's what you described is honestly something I would stay far away from. Making something work that has lil potential when there are alot of options available which are specifically geared toward the mobile market doesn't add up. I can see alot of problems that will eventually lead you to purchase the right gear, however you seem determined to make gold outta plastic.
Id rather spend a day building a carpc system and enjoy it for years to come then to spend months figuring out how to make something work.

All the above is my opinion, dont let a knowledgable person keep you from trying. Goodluck with your project, and post your pics too as everyone I am sure would like for you to make it work.