Frequently Asked Questions about SlimCar

Please leave a comment if you would like to ask a question that may be added to the FAQ.

What is SlimCar?

A PC running SqueezeCenter in the car, with a SqueezeBox to control it. By dedicating a computer to this task, it can be small, inexpensive, easy to install and reliable. By linking it with your SqueezeCenter at home, you can synchronise your library and database and not have to rescan the library when you add new tracks. Thus, you have a familiar method to access your music (SlimCar users generally already have a SqueezeBox at home) without the problems associated with most other car PC solutions.

What inspired it?

Please see Inspiration.

Who is responsible?

Please see Credits.

What's the status of the project?

Please see the ProjectStatus page for up-to-date information on the state of the SlimCar project.

Why are you doing this? What's wrong with existing Car PCs?

We can't deny that there's a certain element of "because we can" at work here, and a not insignificant amount of idle curiosity, but we genuinely feel that most current car PC solutions aren't really very good. If all you want is a source for your music (and lots of it!) and an intuitive, user-friendly interface; SlimCar is for you.

If you're looking for DVD-playing, GPS-mapping, toast-making complexity, SlimCar is not for you. There are no plans to extend SlimCar to support other functions along these lines, because part of the design is that no display is required. A SqueezeBox provides the standard frontend and a monitor/touchscreen is not needed (or useful).

What about putting another NAS-type device in a car? Building a custom Linux distro seems rather extreme!

This is something we looked at briefly, and it does seem quite feasible. However, most of these items are very focused on the NAS side of things (and hence have a lot of features that would be useless) and none of them have the software configured to allow you to sync with a MasterLibrary, as SlimCar does. It's likely that we could have taken a pre-existing Open Source NAS system and altered it to our spec, but a customised Linux distribution allows for a more focused system and that's what we want from SlimCar.

What about another control interface? The SqueezeBox remote is a little big

This is something we're exploring. It may be feasible to replicate the more common functions of the remote in a smaller package and then integrate this into the car somewhere. If you've got any ideas along these lines, please get in touch!

What license is SlimCar released under?

SlimCar will be released under the GNU GPL. We are still some way from a release though, so bear with us.

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