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5x00 General discussions / Sl5500 As In-car Display
« on: January 05, 2005, 08:51:03 am »Quote
I wouldn't trust the cradle to hold the Z without modifications. I used a bracket out of a Case Logic "Strongman" case. If you want to use the cradle (which, granted, is nice for cabling simplicity), I'd strongly suggest finding a way to attach some sort of elastic to hold the Z in place when jolted.
I'd already thought about that, I was thinking of using a USB cable instead of the cradle itself, then I could buy a proper dash mount for the zaurus from ShirtPocket. Novel idea to attach it to the ceiling in some way. I was also considering making some sort of mirror arrangement so I would have a proper heads-up-display on the windscreen, but that's for another time, once I've got the basics sorted out.
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You absolutely want something you don't have to look at to operate. If you're going to use a laptop with USB, I suggest getting a cheap gamepad or joystick. There are apps that will convert joystick movements into keystrokes. You might even dismantle the gamepad, and wire up switches in a panel of your own design.
Yeah, I'm going to try and get it to talk to me as much as possible (using Festival). I hadn't thought of using a joypad though, that's a good idea. I was thinking that I'd mount a proper (compact) keyboard inside the glove compartment door for full control, and find an even more compact keyboard or numpad for general control. I find that even on the zaurus, as long as there's thumb/finger size buttons I have very little need to look at the unit itself I have an LCD panel 1-for-all TV remote which has given me a lot of practice
Now, the joypad idea is pretty ingenius, and cheap too, which is always nice That would be especially good to use in my other idea, which was to put big control functions, like 'turn music on/off' and 'turn GPS on/off', into the dash itself (ie. using foglight/etc dash buttons taken from another car in a scrap yard)