How to build a video server for your car

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Mon, 11/06/2006 - 3:02pm.

The latest Cringley column is up and it talks about adding a video server to your car. This is an interesting topic, as we go on long car trips each summer.

The forms of entertainment we've settled on include:

MP3 players

Portable DVD players

Laptop computers

We've purchased a converter that allows us to get AC power from the car, but each of the items has drawbacks. For instance, the portable DVD players have really poor screens, so sunlight affects them. They also have very underpowered audio.

The laptop is great for watching movies, but it gets hot, pleas you don't want to really have that expensive of an item just for watching movies.

The MP3 players are good, but if everyone wants to listen the rest have to listen, too.

What Cringley talks about is putting a fanless, small PC in your car running on Linux. You can stream movies to a PSP off a compact flash card.

While he doesn't provide exact instructions, I did find it interesting that he specified a certain brand of PCs by Nohr Tech . These PCs are fantastic in that they'll run from your car's DC power, are fanless and offer USB ports.

It's something we'll have to think about next summer for our trip.