Smoothwall Firewall project

Sunday 17 May 2009

Linux powers the TomTom car satelite system

I bought one of these great little devices about six months ago as my wife had a need to find her way around rural France a little more easily. Well I have to say we use this all the time now, and it has effectively rendered all our paper maps redundant. I probably use it more than my wife now, and it is constantly showing us great new short cuts to all sorts of locations.

This little device is just so easy to use, you just enter a post code , an address or even the latitude and longitude of your destination, and the little box will just plot you a route, using the faster or cheapest roads, in Europe you must remember we have to pay on the motorways.

Well this is all powered by Linux, and the little touch screen works without a hitch, and offers a whole range of points of interest around the destination you have selected. This is really useful if you are new to a town, and want to find the train station, ferry port, bus station, museums etc etc.

Another great facet of this unit is that it warns you of speed cameras, which is very useful when you are rushing for the ferry, as I was today.

If you have not already got one of these little beasts , then I would recommend you put embedded Linux to the test, and just see how adaptable this operating system really is. This is an extremely easy device to put to use very quickly.

Thanks to the TomTom, I'm posting this blog entry from the ferry on my way back to the UK from France, so it's proof it gets you there on time ;-)

Using Ubuntu Linux of course, I need a solid, reliable platform when I'm on the move.

No comments: