my goal for the infocast 8" i have just purchased was to use it as a low-cost car computer kind of system. i've already got a dead-simple AVR board that can interface the OBD-II connector in my car, so i can check diagnostics codes on-screen, and a gps module piled on top of that to log mileage and other factors. i want to have it get internet anywhere on the road, and since i always carry my iPhone, i figured it would be a good match to tether through that. i've gotten the native tethering working on my computer over both bluetooth and usb, but it appears the chumby firmware will have none of it. i've tried the "3G" ssid trick, which would trigger /usr/chumby/scripts/start_network to use a ppp interface to a usb modem. although, it's looking for a device on /dev/ttyUSB0. my phone shows up as /dev/usbdev1.2_ep00 (/dev/usbdev1.2ep81 perhaps?) which isn't really a tty. i can modify files in /psp/, right? if so, if my phone would finally show up as a tty i would be able to run SLIRP or something on the phone (jailbroken, slirp would emulate ppp like a 3g modem) and edit /psp/ppp-peer to set up a config pointing it to slirp over usb?

my question remains of how to tether an iPhone to chumby firmware. i can't install drivers because the firmware's read-only.... what if i were to take the sd off of the board and edit files on my computer? would that enable me to get my hands into /usr/chumby/scripts and modify files?

overall so far i've been pleased with the performance of the $100 device. i want to skip the control panel completely, so what i've been doing is whipping up custom swf's as if i were designing a widget and then just ran stop_control_panel and chumbyflashplayer.x -i /mnt/usb2/altcontrol.swf for example. this could be performed automatically, or the startup of the control panel inhibited entirely if i had access to the firmware files. are they on the internal sd?

if the infocast can go into accesspoint mode, i may reluctantly try to get the iphone to share an internet connection over wifi... but running touch /psp/start_ap doesn't seem to change anything.

i also dislike how it downloads the control panel every time. any suggestions?