carputer

A working IVI system prototype

Tim Trampedach Cars, SLC , , , ,

I’ve written about the IVI system for the SLC before here, but since then I’ve made a few changes, added a few things and put together a live demo of it. Before you check out the demo below, here is a quick overview of the progress I’ve made:

  1. I bought an embedded computer with the right Intel Crown Bay chipset, but had to return it of a variety of reasons to with hardware support and functionality. Instead I will be using the Nexcom VTC 1000 system, which is the Tizen IVI reference platform. Couple of questions around the display which I need to work out before I order, but that will be the one.
  2. I rewrote the front end from scratch to use jQuery mobile and a different gauge library. This allows various gestures and much more customizable gauges.
  3. I bought a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) hub that connects via USB to provide both pressure and temperature of the tires.

Check out the video below – a live demo of what I’ve put together so far. I would really appreciate any feedback you might have on current functionality, features to build, data to visualize (and how), logical organization/flow, etc. Note that things like nav and audio are part of a base system and this app is just meant for the car data. Either comment below or send me an email at tim@timtt.com. Thanks!

The beginnings of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) System

Tim Trampedach Cars, SLC , , , , ,

In-Vehicle Infotainment is a slightly silly (IMO…) word for the center dash display of a modern car. It’s the system that runs the audio, GPS, settings, etc. on the car via a touchscreen LCD. I want to put the same in my car, but since this isn’t your run-of-the-mill production vehicle, I want to do some specialized functionality like diagnosing the data coming from the car. More or less the only choice I therefore have is to develop my own home-grown system, which I’m actually very excited about. Combing cars and computers into one sounds like lots of fun to me.

Typically, most folks build these “carputers” (the names just get better…) to plug into an existing car and mostly for the “tainment” rather than the “info” reasons. In my case, it’s a little bit different as I am much more focused on having access to all of the data floating around the car than anything else. Entertainment is icing on the cake, so for now I plan to display the data coming off a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus onto the center dash and I’ll be happy once I achieve that reliably. So what is can then? CAN is an automotive industry standard developed by Robert Bosch GmbH in the 1980’s for having various electronics communicate within a car.

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