Untangling the challenges of the connected car

 

I ran into an interesting article about some of the challenges car designers are currently - and soon will be - facing.

http://www.embedded-computing.com/articles/id/?4111

I personally feel the industry will be heading toward a standardized connector allowing units to be plugged into a bus. The connector will support two-way data transfers between the devices allowing both voice and data files to be transferred. This would allow unts such as a GPS, MP3 player, smartphone or other device to interconnect and share resources such as cellular connectivity with the phone, music files or directions from the GPS and other devices.

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Yea it is called USB for the

Yea it is called USB for the cabled option. Or I would prefer ULTRA-5 SCSI Wide for the technophilespeedfreek in me!

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Probably not

onestep wrote:

Yea it is called USB for the cabled option. Or I would prefer ULTRA-5 SCSI Wide for the technophilespeedfreek in me!

It probably won't be the USB as it will not support multiple devices on the same bus operating in parallel. Remember, you have to have data flowing between the phone, the GPS, the MP3 and the stereo all at the same time.

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ɐ‾nsǝɹ Just one click away from the end of the Internet

re:Probably not

Aren't most of these built into the car already as options. Not sure what can be done to address the ever changing technology.

Yeah as technology changes,

Yeah as technology changes, it's hard to keep up I'm sure. Personally, I hate when car companies put the proprietary plugs in (i.e. iPod specific plugs), they should go more generic instead of device specific in my opinion.

needs to be non-proprietary and user upgradable

mem10123 wrote:

Yeah as technology changes, it's hard to keep up I'm sure. Personally, I hate when car companies put the proprietary plugs in (i.e. iPod specific plugs), they should go more generic instead of device specific in my opinion.

I second that. I have the iPod integration in my car and it's non-upgradable. So it works great with the 5th Gen and earlier models, but doesn't work very well with the current line of iPods.

needs improvement

I hate using the current "cigarette lighter" type power plug. They have shorting problems and just aren't a good solution. I would really be happy if they created some quality standard power plug.

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___________________ Garmin 2455, 855, Oregon 550t

Standards? There are plenty!

And my Mini (made by BMW) uses at least three of them -- three different internal busses. One for the stop-go parts (engine, trans, brakes, stability and traction control), one for the entertainment system, and one for everything else (lights, door locks, that kind of stuff).

From a systems perspective, there are good reasons to keep some things separate -- I don't want my transmission to lock up because some wiseguy is ARP flooding the car's bluetooth connection (the mini has bluetooth -- part of the entertainment system for hands-free phone calls).

Oh, the tire pressure senders and the wireless "keys" operate on 318 MHz, so there's another data network on the Mini.

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