Iamatechie always believes in wireless enabled innovative ideas and its experimentations. We proudly announce “how to make your car WiFi enabled with an internet connection so that you can access internet whereever you go“. We are starting the post series which describes and demonstrate how we changed our Chevrolet Optra to WiFi enabled car.

Initially we started experimenting with a GSM/GPRS card and phone for internet connection from AIRTEL, which was pretty slow. But we moved to a 2Mbps EVDO BSNL connection now which is also cheaper wireless connection available in India for an amount 550INR monthly rental.

We are now experimenting with a laptop and linksys router (wireless access to nearby devices). But we are planning to do with single board computer instead of laptop so that we can avert plug and play procedure for internet connection every time.  Now a days size of the single board computer is very less. Even the single board computer available within the size of a thumb drive .

I guess all of my readers will participate for this experiment so that within couple of days we can bring our car Wifi enabled. Don’t miss the opportunity to participate for this experiment. Enjoy reading !!!

When we develop something our own we may experience some technology issues. There are couple of technology issues with Wifi car. I will explain the hurdles below and I will suggest the solution or workaround.

The main hurdles we faced is stable electric supply to drive SBC, wifi router. Most of the Car have 12V DC output from the battery and associated dianomo. We need 20V DC with 3.5A rating and 12V with 1A rating. So we need to design some adapter to cope this. Some adapters are available online we can also buy the same. But we need to make sure that the adapter is stable one. By the time we are using a costume designed power supply for this.

Apart from the electric supply we faced another major issue. As we are using BSNL EVDO for internet connection we need the dialing driver and its stack for connecting the internet. We can’t directly use Wifi router with EVDO cards. Moreover EVDO cards can be connected to USB only. We are using a laptop to install and dial EVDO now. But we need to carry laptop every time for connecting internet, we need to avoid this bottleneck. Single board computer is a solution for this. We can install a linux operating system in a single board computer and we can plug the EVDO card in the USB available in single board computer. By using a single board computer we can reduce the power rating too. For a device from compulab (check the link above) the power rating is 3.3V and around 1A current. This device will also support operating systems like Embedded Windows XP and linux kernels. The device cost around $140, which is promising we can also use the same device as music player too.

In the coming days we will explain the procedure for installing each and every components described above. Coming post’s contain somesort of technology configurations. Don’t be baulked to ask your queries and doubts. Don’t miss any of the post in the series, you may get confused if you miss some.

We are on the way to Wagamon. I am writing this post from our Car. You know how I am getting internet? Yes we are going in our Wifi enabled car with internet connection. All of us are using our laptops. We started 1 hour back we reached Kollam now. We need to meet one of the friend here.

Hope we will get the range for internet connection everywhere. As Wagamon hill station is a tourist destination I hope we can enjoy internet there. I had experienced some sort of internet connection issues, may be due to the tower switching. Anyway I am browsing the internet without much hurdle.

The trip

We have a presentation at peerumedu Engineering college tomorrow afternoon. We will leave to Wagmon after the presentation. Will stay at the hill station tomorrow night and will come back day after. Will update you the news from Wagamon. Oh the time is approaching 10PM its time for me to sleep.

Next day.

We had the seminar at MBC college and we started to Wagamon the place is really cool. But the main problem is no network connection for Airtel and Vodafone. So we were not able to call. BSNL connection was there but the signal strength was not good. We tried to connect to internet several times but we didn’t get the connection there. But we got some signal and we finally connected from the top of the hill. My friend is a travel blogger he will describe about the trip in his travel blog.

Yes the connection is here man.

As I mentioned in my earlier post that we can enable our car WiFi by 2 means.

(i) Using Laptop as and enabler to internet connection.

(ii) Using Single board computer in place of Laptop as internet connection enabler.

The main advantage by using Laptop is we can even avoid router(Access Point) by configuring the machine to a point to point wifi access. The disadvantage is we need to carry laptop every time for internet connection.

The advantage of using SBC in place of laptop rule out the disadvantage of (i). We need to buy an SBC to make car wifi enabled which cost around $120.

I am mentioning simple and easiest method that is method (i) now. For this we need to configure our laptop for point to point wifi access. The main advantage of using method (i) is we can avoid access point(AP).

The figure above shows the architecture diagram of our simplest wifi car. The EVDO is connected to the first wireless laptop which will serves internet to other system(s) using point to point network. I will explain the step to step procedure now.

Click on the Network connection in control panel(Start menu->Control Panel->Network and Internet Connections->Network connections).

On the properties window click on the wireless network tab and Add a new connection.

Add a name for the network let it be “MyHomeNetwork” and make the authentication as shown in the figure above. You can add a password which can be used to secure your network. The main and ultimate thing is that you need to change your wireless network as adhoc(point to point) network by checking the check box shown in figure above. Click OK to save the settings. Yeah your system is ready to work as point to point wireless serving device and also a gateway for internet. Connect EVDO driver program to get internet connection.

Carry the system you configured now for getting internet connection in your car.

Your Peer system(s) can be connect to this network. Search for wireless network you can see a wireless network named “MyHomeNetwork”. Connect to the network with key assigned during the process.

My next post will describe the way to make your car wifi using Single board computer. Which is more promising WiFi car.