Hack 40. Install a Video Game Console Computer in Your Car  
Video games are an extremely effective way of burning time on the road, and they're an essential tool for enduring long-distance drives. Unsurprisingly, many of the people who like to enhance their cars also enjoy playing video games. And even "soccer moms" and other unexpected car hobbyists enjoy the ability to placate their children with the backseat entertainment provided by a game console. 3.19.1. Installing a Game Console PlayStation 2 units, Xboxes, and Nintendo GameCubes are all candidates for in-car installation. There are several considerations when installing these in the car:
Power -
The car voltage needs to be converted and regulated to safely power these devices, and you need to make sure that they won't stay on when the car is off and kill the battery, so they should be connected to auxiliary switched outlets. A simple way to power one of these devices is to use an inverter [Hack #11] and plug in the wall adapter that came with the unit. A better way is to find a 12V adapter designed for your specific video game unit, which should be available at any store that sells video game console accessories.
Integration -
The easiest units to install in a car dashboard are ones where the optical drive tray slides out. You want the units to be installed in a stable way, so that the optical drives don't get shaken around. GameCubes, original PlayStations, and new PlayStation 2s have top-load drives and are more difficult to mount.
Video delivery -
If you are going to have head-to-head gaming, you need multiple passengers to be able to tap into the video signal. Thus, it's probably best to either run the game to all screens or, even better, install a video switcher [Hack #35] so that each passenger can select their screen's video source. If you would like to install two game consoles for head-to-head gaming (for instance, so that four rear passengers can play head-to-head, each with their own screens) you can use a 4 x 4 video splitter [Hack #35]. Put the two game consoles as two of the inputs, and each of the passengers can select the appropriate game console as their screen's video source.
Control -
The best solution for game control is to get wireless (preferably radio frequency, not infrared, which require line of sight to work) controllers so that they can be passed to whoever needs them without creating a tangled mess of wires. If you have infrared receivers, mount them high and central on the ceiling so anyone in the car can use the controllers. You can also run controller extensions to each seat and plug in a controller only when neededthis involves more labor but uses fewer expensive parts, and you won't run into any interference problems (as you may with the IR and RF solutions). 3.19.2. Hacking the Hack One of the benefits of Xbox and PlayStation 2 installation, and one of the reasons why they are so popular, is that they double as DVD players. When cleanly integrated in the dashboard, you get DVD, CD, and gaming capabilities all in one unit. But you needn't stop there. Most of the consoles on the market are powerful enough to run Linux. Some of the consoles require a mod chip, a chip with a hacked version of their internal software, in order to run Linux or other software, but once you get the modification your console becomes a powerful, versatile computing platform. Sony actually supplies a Linux distribution for their console (http://playstation2-linux.com). You can find Xbox Linux at http://www.xbox-linux.org and GameCube Linux at http://www.gc-linux.org. A full-featured car PC frontend package for Linux can be found at http://www.dashwerks.com. |
