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> I'd rather have some sort of standardized modular system where I can put my own tablet-sized computer in an appropriate place and have it get power, audio syn

by ansible 10y ago

> I'd rather have some sort of standardized modular system where I can put my own tablet-sized computer in an appropriate place and have it get power, audio sync with the car's speakers. Oh my gosh yes! The car should be the peripheral, not the main compute device. Is it a big deal to plug in a 10-year old USB mouse into your computer? No, because that is a well-defined interface. Ditto for some other peripherals. This is what I'd like my car to be. I don't think we'll see that anytime soon though. Unless everyone gets on-board with a Bluetooth standard that exposes sufficient functions to the phone/tablet to be useful.

kylecordes 10y ago
Probably everyone here would like something like this. But the decisions aren't going to be made by the sort of people who read this, they're going to be made by auto marketing executives. Then they're going to operate in an environment regulated according to lobbying by automakers. We're going to get auto electronics with software that becomes obsolete about as fast as a typical Android smart phone. I realistically think that when the major legacy automakers ship something vaguely similar to a Tesla dashboard, the best a buyer can hope for is that it remains vaguely updated for a year or two, and then only critical vehicle safety changes might be made forever thereafter. But you can also look at this and the point of view of carmakers. What an amazing boon to sales. This is a way to finally solve the ultimate problem of selling cars today. A car you make today has to compete with the extremely good car you made five years ago that still works great, still looks great, and is much much cheaper.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  This makes tons of sense, especially in these early days of self-driving vehicles. There are of course enthusiasts who will want nothing to do with self-driving until the very end when their manual gearboxes are ripped from their cold, dead hands, who would honestly prefer precisely zero touch screens in their current and future vehicles (I consider myself part of this group). We're a small minority though, and as evidenced by how many cars are still available in the US with even the option to row your own, I don't think it's going to stop any manufacturer from eliminating the possibility of manual control entirely within the next few decades.
Natanael_L 10y ago
What I'm imagining is something similar to Android Auto / Chromecast / Samsung's smart TV "evolution kit", using a connector in like HDbaseT (everything-over-ethernet) or USB C 3.1 (both of these connector solutions even offer up to 100W power transfer and arbitary data streams). Basically an RPi3 / RPi Zero with a single connector and a number of well defined interfaces for audio, video, talking to car systems, networking, etc... The possibility to swap I/O devices would be nice too, so you can integrate stuff like Soli (Google ATAP) when modules for that shows up. And I want that same thing for smart TV:s too. Ideally both of those could use the exact same standard too!

by ansible 10y ago

kylecordes 10y ago

Probably everyone here would like something like this. But the decisions aren't going to be made by the sort of people who read this, they're going to be made by auto marketing executives. Then they're going to operate in an environment regulated according to lobbying by automakers. We're going to get auto electronics with software that becomes obsolete about as fast as a typical Android smart phone. I realistically think that when the major legacy automakers ship something vaguely similar to a Tesla dashboard, the best a buyer can hope for is that it remains vaguely updated for a year or two, and then only critical vehicle safety changes might be made forever thereafter. But you can also look at this and the point of view of carmakers. What an amazing boon to sales. This is a way to finally solve the ultimate problem of selling cars today. A car you make today has to compete with the extremely good car you made five years ago that still works great, still looks great, and is much much cheaper.

seanp2k2 10y ago
This makes tons of sense, especially in these early days of self-driving vehicles. There are of course enthusiasts who will want nothing to do with self-driving until the very end when their manual gearboxes are ripped from their cold, dead hands, who would honestly prefer precisely zero touch screens in their current and future vehicles (I consider myself part of this group). We're a small minority though, and as evidenced by how many cars are still available in the US with even the option to row your own, I don't think it's going to stop any manufacturer from eliminating the possibility of manual control entirely within the next few decades.

Natanael_L 10y ago

What I'm imagining is something similar to Android Auto / Chromecast / Samsung's smart TV "evolution kit", using a connector in like HDbaseT (everything-over-ethernet) or USB C 3.1 (both of these connector solutions even offer up to 100W power transfer and arbitary data streams). Basically an RPi3 / RPi Zero with a single connector and a number of well defined interfaces for audio, video, talking to car systems, networking, etc... The possibility to swap I/O devices would be nice too, so you can integrate stuff like Soli (Google ATAP) when modules for that shows up. And I want that same thing for smart TV:s too. Ideally both of those could use the exact same standard too!