Author: Keith Edmunds Date: To: hampshire Subject: [Hampshire] Open Source car audio
I've recently bought a new car radio/MP3 player, and have already come
across what appear to be firmware bugs. I suspect, as time goes on and
more everyday devices are running on microprocessors, we'll see more and
more of this. Another example is my TomTom GPS - the first one I had was
excellent; the later models appear to be shipped to a timetable rather
than a quality standard.
It strikes me that the manufacturers - Alpine and TomTom in this case -
would benefit greatly from making their firmware OSS. Bugs would be fixed,
features added, etc; one only has to look at the OpenWrt project to see
what can be done. I'm not holding my breath, though.
The next logical step would be for a manufacturer to sell a car audio
system that is designed to be hacked. At the end of the day, it's a PC
with a USB connector or two, a tuner, an sound card and a small display,
all wrapped in a case suitable for fitting to a vehicle and running from
12v. A quick Google didn't find anyone selling such a beast, or any
manufacturer that has enabled reloading of the OS in a car "radio".
Maybe the market isn't there for it, but if it can be done with mobile
telephones, I would have thought there was sufficient market to try it.
