i am building a car pc and to lessen the time i need to look away from the road, i was wondering if there is a peripherial i can use that is jsut the multimedia functions from a keyboard? i just need the standard play/pause/stop/next/previous/vol up/vol down. if there is a very simple way i can make this, that would be awesome, but i have very limited soldering/electronics engineering experience. if you know of any way to do this, please tell me
If you want to go all out money wise, get an optimus mini three But otherwise, things like Matrix Orbital screens come with buttons inbuilt,
See my Mini ITX Hi-Fi (link in sig) I'm going to put those same controls on the front of it. I've put llinks to how I will get them to work. (requires some simple circuit constructing to do it)
i forgot to mention this is a very budget build that i want to make not look cheap. i will likely be getting a plain-jane 7" or 8" VGA or RCA screen in my dash with more added later. i already have the mobo, it is an older one with a 1.4 ghz p4, five PCI slots and one AGP. i will be running a 5.1 surround sound card and a 64 bit dual monitor AGP vid card (i will be adding more screens later). i will also be fiberglassing in a hand-held trackball mouse for control (i cant afford touchscreens) and a wireless keyboard for when i am not driving or for the passenger. thanks rick, i'll look into that, i have an old serial joystick that isnt doing anything and my mobo just happens to have a serial input i haven had a chance to look through the artical in depth, but i think i can do it. one more question, is there an FM tuner PCI card or something similar?
how about a usb keypad. You should be able to map the buttons whichever way you want. A bit of modding/painting...
i was thinking about that too, can i re-map buttons in winamp? that is probably what i will be using to start off with.
You might be able to use a PIC to send the scan codes to the PS/2 KB port assuming your board has one. Otherwise, the best option is to find a cheap keyboard and trace the buttons to the right pins on the micro controller and wire switched to buttons of your own design. If your car has buttons are the steering wheel, you may even be able to convert that protocol to act as the hotkeys.
What about one of those i-Drive (BMW thing) lookalike USB knob whatsits? They had alsorts of functions and were perfect, but I've forgotten the name tbh.
