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In Car Entertainment?

Nick The Great

Nick The Great

Well-Known Member
Hello All,

I have a question or just discussion request for an issue I'm having.

My goal is to have some sort of in car entertainment for my young daughter (2 years old). So far we've typically done a tablet on a bracket in front of her. Works fine with downloaded movies. But one of us, usually my wife, has to keep bending and twisting around to control the tablet if the movie ends, or my daughter touches the screen and messes up.

What I'd really like is the ability to cast from a phone to her tablet screen. I'm not opposed to dongles on her tablet, but nearly every solution I've found require Wi-Fi connection. Miracast or something might work, but that's more of a screen mirroring deal. Which is slightly less than ideal.

I've recently stumbled on the RAVPower Filehub or competitor, which creates a "direct" Wi-Fi connection. Which is close, but not any control of the tablet itself. But is the best solution I've found thus far.

I don't want to buy a new headunit for the car. My truck does have Android Auto if that helps, but our car does not. Not sure if that's relevant anyway. I'm not opposed to a WiFi hotspot, but I don't really want to chew up data when local videos would work just fine. But both vehicles have USB ports galore, so powering various devices isn't a problem to me.

A lot of words here, but I'm hoping there's just a product out there that I haven't found yet.
 
Just FYI, my daughter's Tablet is a couple year old Samsung Tab S. And my wife and I both have Samsung S7 Edges.

I'm not opposed to a dumb screen or something else to replace her tablet if that simplifies things.
 
Sigh. I was afraid of that. Though if I wait long enough, I suppose she'll just be old enough to control the thing herself! ;)
 
I've actually had good luck with the Touch Lock app. It doesn't appear to disable features of the tablet itself, just makes it so you can't use the screen.

I'm still on the free version, but would upgrade to the paid just because it works so well.
 
Interesting. I've had the same idea about using extra tablets for rear seat infotainment. My Ridgeline has a flip down Audiovox DVD player. Great for shutting the kids f-up. Unfortunately it blocks my rear view so it's gotta go.
Is there really no way to directly cast from a phone to a tablet? Or do you need some mid-point like WiFi on a Chromecast?
 
There's ways to do it if you have a WiFi network. Which my truck does have WiFI (for a few months longer) but I really don't want to utilize the data for it, though. And then my wife's car doesn't have it anymore either.

There's also ways to wireless play videos on the tablet from another device, but thats all controlled on the tablet.

I'm probably looking for something that doesn't exist because there isn't a huge demand for it. :)
 
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