car computer- feasibility, functions

[HankScorpio]

Ha, not an issue with hijacking my original thread. Keep your eyes on it as I'll no doubt be asking you questions.

Surprised you've not got one of these in your plans

https://thepihut.com/products/flick-...nt=35493493969

[ThomasG]

Originally Posted by HankScorpio

Ha, not an issue with hijacking my original thread. Keep your eyes on it as I'll no doubt be asking you questions.

Surprised you've not got one of these in your plans

https://thepihut.com/products/flick-...nt=35493493969

What if i dont know the answer?

It is very possible..

[HankScorpio]

Then it goes to the boffins in my R&D department. They owe me many favours and would class this as fun.

[paddy74]

Then someone else here on the forum will

Small elaboration into HomeAssistant (HA):
HA is a bridge between all different home automation devices. Normally when you have let's say a bulb in your living room from one system, it is likely to be not compatible with other systems. Like the HUE gateway from Philips is barely working together with the cheaper IKEA bulbs, even they use the same protocol... Imagine, how all these devices behave, when they don't use the same protocols... That's where HA comes into play. It builds something like a headquarter for nearly all home automation systems.

All devices now talk with HA, and the logic resides in HA, not in proprietary gateways from different manufacturers.

So what makes my think, it can be useful here?

• HA is build with/upon Python3, meaning there is a near endless flood of small software snippets, that can do all kind of things. And if not yet, Python is very easy to learn. If you know a bit about programming, Python is a breeze, no steep learning curve. And literaly billions of tutorials.
• HA comes in very different builds: a docker version, the "normal" install on Linux distros and a well maintained all-in-one solution, where HA is backed into their own OS, namely hass.io.
• HA is build around sensors and states. And it does take that to its UI. You can design your screens easily, get only the things you want on it, have different tabs, and you can build your own so called cards to change states. All running on every modern browser (already in every Linux distro).

I'm not saying, it is the system to go for, but I do think, it can be a starting point, especially if voice recognition is wanted.

Resume state doesn't seem to be a problem, you can easily pin this on the lock-state of the car. As long as the car is open, the system is running. Together with a powerpack, that is loaded while the car is running, around six to eight hours should be doable with a power pack. If you open the car, the Pi is resumed, if you close it, it suspend after X minutes.

And for the nerd factor, think about the possibilities, using Arduinos on different places for different things... I'm getting lost...

[christheancient]

I think back to my first car.

It had three pedals, a gear lever, a handbrake, lights, a fuel gauge and three warning lights of igition, oil and main beam, wipers, a speedo). The de-luxe version had an engine temperature gauge! Did it need more than that? Nope. I took me everywhere... with few problems.

But in this world where car manufacturers try to make their car more whizzy then the opposition's, they find it necessary to add more (what Yorkshire people call "do nowts") fantastic things!

Why? I don't think it's to make life 'easier' for Mr Joe Public. It's to try to outdo the opposition and make their car seem better than everybody else's with their own fantastic gizmos.

I think it's made life worse! A brief flicker from a warning lamp, the heart goes into overdrive and the wallet is passed to a 'highly-trained genius' (?) with those magic words of: "Help yourself."

More seriously... cars are more reliable, economical etc. these days; but at a cost. A cost that the owner has to grin and bear while the manufacturers think of what other 'labour saving do-nowts' to include in their next generation (and the franchised dealers run their hands in glee).

That's the problem with being a grumpy ol' git. I just see the downside of everything

[MikeGMT]

Originally Posted by christheancient

I think back to my first car.

It had three pedals, a gear lever, a handbrake, lights, a fuel gauge and three warning lights of igition, oil and main beam, wipers, a speedo). The de-luxe version had an engine temperature gauge! Did it need more than that? Nope. I took me everywhere... with few problems.

Bet it had one of these as well.

[ThomasG]

Chris.

I don't actually disagree with you.

Its just my approach to it is a bit different.

Mike.

Come on

Be nice

(BTW: long time no see. Where have you been what have you seen?)

I'm too ****ed right now to explain my point of view, and anyway- I was thinking this thread would be a bit more technically oriented..

Yet the title says "feasibility".

I'll try to put some more light on it tomorrow, whilst trying to fight off the noises produced by marching ants, spiders chewing their food with mouth open, and, generally, all the noise that will be making me slightly mad while nursing my well developed hangover..

Ta for now.

[MikeGMT]

Originally Posted by ThomasG

Chris.

I don't actually disagree with you.

Its just my approach to it is a bit different.

Mike.

Come on

Be nice

(BTW: long time no see. Where have you been what have you seen?)

I am being nice Thomas. Every car should have a starting handle, they can get you out of all sorts of sticky situations, they were an indispensable part of 'proper cars'

Not been anywhere, always watching in the background.

You won't get much out of me, well not that makes sense, in this thread. When you start discussing 'electrical things' and software and programming I'm in unchartered waters and out of my depth. I'll just leave it to you guys and stick to pressing buttons, and then cussing when they don't work.

[SwissXC90]

To put this into perspective.

I have developed software to analyse and program devices on BMWs and recently applied that to Volvos.
Here’s my practical feedback:

You go nowhere very fast without an emulator and test environment right next to your main pc that you program on
You need experience. I had 20 years of it. Without it the development time takes orders of magnitude longer
You will experience unforeseen show stopping hurdles that will cause rethink and redesign
You will spend every waking minute on the project for over a year

And that was my personal experience.
It can be done.
It is by no means easy
You need a solid idea and structure. Both in your head and your code.

[ThomasG]

Originally Posted by christheancient

I think back to my first car.

It had three pedals, a gear lever, a handbrake, lights, a fuel gauge and three warning lights of igition, oil and main beam, wipers, a speedo). The de-luxe version had an engine temperature gauge! Did it need more than that? Nope. I took me everywhere... with few problems.

But in this world where car manufacturers try to make their car more whizzy then the opposition's, they find it necessary to add more (what Yorkshire people call "do nowts") fantastic things!

Why? I don't think it's to make life 'easier' for Mr Joe Public. It's to try to outdo the opposition and make their car seem better than everybody else's with their own fantastic gizmos.

I think it's made life worse! A brief flicker from a warning lamp, the heart goes into overdrive and the wallet is passed to a 'highly-trained genius' (?) with those magic words of: "Help yourself."

More seriously... cars are more reliable, economical etc. these days; but at a cost. A cost that the owner has to grin and bear while the manufacturers think of what other 'labour saving do-nowts' to include in their next generation (and the franchised dealers run their hands in glee).

That's the problem with being a grumpy ol' git. I just see the downside of everything

As I said- I don't actually disagree with you.

There are functions of the car that at "core", the very essence of what a car is- a means of transportation.

Wheels, engine, gearbox..
It doesn't really need much from " the world of gizmos" to perform its main duty.

But then, ages ago, someone got bored behind the wheel. Someone fitted the very first radio...

With radio came traffic announcements.

And with advent of internet these were given to us as data. Incomprehensible by human standards rows of 0s and 1s, that needed some kind of "translator", maybe your old TomTom, maybe your phone..

And in the same time, the very audio transpirtation was evolving, too..
Very quickly vinyls were replaced by tape.
Rolls of tape were replaced by cassettes, and these were small enough to be used in cars.
They didn't stay for long, though- between many others, Mark Knopfker was bending backwards to make sure CDs are successful.
And they were.
For a time.

CDs marked the very beginning of " digital era", after all, audio was stored as rows of zeroes an ones, and very soon someone noticed that some mathematical operations can save space on such a CD. Making it possible to store on one CD not 20 songs, but hundreds.

And these compressed files were finally small enough to be sent and received over very young back then, but growing rapidly: internet.

Mp3, ogg, wma, and, at later stage, lossless formats like flac..

From the time I had my first computer, almost-capable of decoding mo3 (486DX33 4mb ram), I had capability of building my playlists the way I wanted. To play what I wanted the way I wanted.
Sort music by folder, by name, by genre by play count..

It was something I learned to take as granted. Solid. Not going anywhere.

And then I had my first car and it was gone.
Car had some silly radio with Bluetooth and SD card slot/mp3 playback.

And it was only able to play 10 folders, each folder as separate playlist, and order songs by name only.

I have to say it was old car, and old (one of first such things) radio. Allowances had to be made.

Then I joined volvo gang, and learned that this kind of issues isn't dissapearimg
I mean- census system that will see order of songs only the way as they were loaded onto USB stick?
And no other way to play them?

In year 2009?

Who, what kind of an idiot, may I ask, approved it for production?

Then there were smartphone.

Beautiful pieces of equipment, allowing user to do nearly whatever he or she wanted.. Maybe with exception of iphones- these allow maybe 10% of things that I can do with android.. But I have to admit- they do these 10% of things perfectly.

It was only a matter of time when phones were incorporated into driving life.

Not as means of communication, of making/receiving phone calls, but as driving aids.
Satnav, speed camera warnings, anti-boredom media playback, both local and internet..

Ability to check systems "on the go" with torque app..

But..

There is a big and widely recognised drawback to using smartphones whilst behind the wheel.

Distraction.

To change anything, to set new destination on the satnav, one needs to divert eyes from the road.

Did any of the manufacturers, any if engineers or designers think about alleviating this problem?

Well.. Yes. Partially at least.

I've first seen it in some film, the "one actor" kind, and the guy was driving some BMW.
Phone in the pocket, mankind 300 calls a minute with the use of..

A little knob.

By the gear lever.

And a screen in the middle of console, so each time he had to look at the screen.
Unless one is properly cross-eyed, one can't look at both the screen and the road, no?

And it was controlling pretty much only phone book, menus for controlling other audio simply too complicated, too many options.

Still a distraction.

Did manufacturers try to improve this?

Maybe. I don't know.

Since, I've seen these knobs turning up in various cars, mostly premium range.

And all of a sudden there was no more development on this.

Someone came up with an idea of touchscreen fitted in the car.

Yes, that will help to focus on the road!
Bl..dy idiots.

There used to be knobs and buttons on centre console that one didn't have to look at to operate.

Turn up volume? Big knob.
Change station? Cluster if 4 buttons, feel for it, press top right..

Not anymore...

And whilst I didn't try, I can bet there isn't one, even one, even if fitted to maybah, Bentley or rolls royce, system that would let you choose what precisely services you want to use.

Not one that would let you abandin, let's say, TuneIn services and switch to OpenFM instead. Or use these two alternating.

There's no system that (whilst most of them are connected to OBD in one way ir another) would show you direct code, direct description, of a fault that turned up few seconds prior, so you can decide is the fault big enough to force you to stop immediately, or is it something that can wait few hours or maybe even days..

No. All there us is still that "check engine" light, maybe only displayed on an LCD panel nowadays, but still giving your heart lots of trouble.

Right..

So anywhere I look, I can't have what I want.
No manufacturer makes system that does what I want.
No manufacturer provides such a way of control that things can be changed without diverting eyes from the road even once.

Maybe only that voice control.
But this has its own limits.

It is capable of.. basics.
Volume up, volume down, play this song, play that station, call this person..

"OK google, start satnav with destination stansted airport, power up camsam and velociraptor, turn these two to optical alerts only"

Google: "eeeer"

Me: OK, I'll do it myself.

Bugger that.
I can use it as additional way of control, but for important things I want that knob.

And a HUD.
So I can bring up audio selection onto HUD, by feeling for and pressing a button, making changes to what I'm listening to, and, when I'm done, feeling for and pressing a button that will put satnav back into HUD.

Not for a second diverting eyes from what's important.

Anyone can give me that?

No?

OK..

I'll try to build one myself.

And just as a byproduct, show these... offsprings of second hand toilet bowl and chimneysweepers brush, these.. morons.. designing these so called "premium" systems..

How it is supposed to be done.