Hi all,

My friend had this idea of hooking up the audio/video output of a car pc to the audio/video input of my AVH-P4200DVD unit. I know that I can hook up a PS3 or an Xbox, so I should be able to hook up a car pc?

I think it should work fine, but I want to get your guys' input. Has anyone tried this before?
Did the touch screen work with the PC?
How's the audio?

Thanks!

 

You'll need a PC with composite output, since there's no HDMI, VGA, S-VIDEO or other video input.

No, the touch screen won't work, and I'm guessing that adding a USB touchscreen overlay to the 4200 would stop the 4200's touchscreen from working at all.

Audio would be just as good as any audio input into the headunit, which is to say, just fine.

 

Cool. I think I have seen that cable before. Its got male RCA components on one end and VGA on the other..

I wonder if there is a computer software fix for the touchscreen to work.
I hope its not a dead end.

 

It would be very hard to make the Pioneer unit control the car PC

you would need to get into the software in the Pioneer to make it work correctly.

I think you would need a mouse or something similar to control the PC

 

Yeah, maybe if you had a capacitive overlay on top of the resistive? Dunno, but if you're doing a car PC do a car PC without the baggage of another headunit.

 

Yah...I thought I could get away from the expense of getting another monitor and somehow mount it in the dash...it would be inconvenient to have a mouse and keyboard to operate the pc..

 

Unless you're going all-out with a car pc, I can't see much reason for them anymore. Smartphones do all the portable web-browsing you want, and headunits features have grown to do many of the music and video playing capabilities that car pcs were so cool for being able to do.

Now, if you're looking to put some USB control boards and a 3G connection in it, so you can remote control everything on the car, get a wide-band o2 sensor and tap in to all the various inputs in the car for datalogging, it might be worth it.

 

It wont be worth it for diagnostics. The hks camp2 fills this role easily

 

Yeah.. You guys are correct.. After a day of thinking about it, I couldn't justify having it. With the capabilities of the p4200dvd I really have nothing more to ask.. Also I bought a 250gb laptop hard drive that is supposed to consume less power than a usual laptop hard drive. I it will work fine..

 

Problem with USB devices on headunits is there's no way to easily search by anything but the file directory structure.

iPods classics make much better storage devices for the Pioneer by a longshot.