TomTom Bluetooth Remote & Raspberry Pi

A while back I bought a TomTom Bluetooth remote control (here's a good review) with a view to using it with a Linux home theatre computer (HTPC) running XBMC or similar. As far as the computer is concerned, it is just a Bluetooth keyboard.

TomTom Bluetooth remote control

While most of the information below should apply to any Debian/Ubuntu system, this time I was using the Debain variant Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi. Since the Raspberry Pi has an HDMI connector I may keep one connected to our TV, but this could also work out nicely for controlling a Raspberry Pi running the GPS software Navit in the car. Time to get Bluetooth on the Pi with a USB dongle!

Navit GPS on Raspberry Pi

I've got a USB GPS dongle working with my Raspberry Pi, so I started exploring mapping software that I could run on it if I were to mount the RPi in my car with a little screen - the simple low resolution screens used for reverse parking cameras sold on eBay for under £20 look perfect.

Two options came up, GpsDrive and Navit - both of which recommend map data from Open StreetMap. Of these only Navit is available in the Debian/Raspian repository, so I tried that first.

$ sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients navit

Pharos/Microsoft GPS-360 on Raspberry Pi

I bought a Microsoft GSP-360 USB dongle on eBay as an impulse purchase, toying with the idea of running a Raspberry Pi in my car for live map display or at least route tracking for contributing road traces to the Open Street-Map project. Just getting my location out of it proved harder than I'd expected.

24V passive POE for Raspberry Pi

Today my 24V power supply arrived - the final part I needed to try a 24V passive power-over-ethernet (POE) solution down a 40m cable to drive my Raspberry Pi and two webcams. Good news - it works!

Raspberry Pi and two Xbox Live Vision webcams
using 24V passive power over ethernet (POE)