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Originally Posted by Bob_98SR5
it looks like your system is plug and play. am i right?
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whoops... i kinda's skipped this.
Umm.. I would say that it gets to be more plug & play every time someone does an install. The whole community is continuing to learn about what's needed, the quirks of running an OS off of a spinning hard drive in a vehicle, power (as in... "what happens when you turn off the ignition?), etc.
People are also learning about things like redefining video requirements in these small computers. Right now, this machine "could" play a DVD, and the UI can handle that, but man it's not real pretty. But that's 'cause of the computer I chose. There are MUCH more powerful machines than I have being installed into cars.
From the time I had the hardware at home, it only took maybe 2-3 hours to load the core software. But then dealing with things like virtual COM ports, _mirrored_ COM ports (for when more than one app wants to see a serial device, like a GPS receiver), then input things (mouse? keyboard? touchscreen?), power requirements (some screens are touchy about things like alternator surging), etc... takes time.
Like I said above, it was about 4 weeks to get it to a point that I took it on a run; it was about 2 weeks before I even just threw stuff willy-nilly into the truck, ran it all off of an inverter and went for a drive. Right now, I'm still tweaking about 3-4 hours/week.
So I'd have to say - no, it's not plug & play. There _are_ companies out there that will sell you plug & play systems for a decent chunk of change, but I think most folks here won't be looking for that - they'll want to piece things together out of crazy eBay sales... ...like I did.
To do it all again though is just like anything else... It'd certainly be easier for me to do this a second time, but there'll still be tweaks for a given system. Each one is custom...