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When Appliances Revolt
conaone writes "From the "disconcerting" file, Baseline has a weird story about how the increase in use of embedded operating systems is causing strange things to happen to consumer products. Their example is the use of Windows CE in the BMW 745i, which apparently occasionally goes nuts. The best is the list of video clips showing off the possessed car."
Boy, if that isn't a case for Open Source, I really do not know what it.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Ok, having the worked with many Real time OS's and embedded OS's... what I want to know is why the hell do they need Windows? It's bloated, the interface is not suitable for a driver (as in car driver)...
:P ) Stick to a modified version of Linux. I don't recall the exact build name, but there is a mod (or more than one) out there that make Linux practically realtime... and that's all you need for these gizmos... operating a phone, changing seat positions, etc... There you go... cheap, damned reliable (be it stripped down linux, or some other RTOS), no crap to mess up the functionality, since the only thing in the code is the bare minimum OS and drivers to control the devices you need to control (nothing more, nothing less), and a simple UI.
Develop your own RTOS... hell, grab any simple Real Time OS, be it VxWorks for example, add a display driver and an input driver (which can be developed at a very reasonable cost (Take a look at what the military uses..) Then from there add routines to communicate with your 70 or so embedded processors and voila, a stable, easy to maintain, not full of useless crap, system. Don't want to invest in an RTOS? (They can be pricey...
Ok... Someone care to tell me how much Microsoft paid to get BMW to use their WinCE for something that it clearly is not good for? Dealing with lots of unique and independent devices is not Microsoft's strong suit. To get WinCE to be reliable (as the previous poster put it), you would need to strip it to nothing more than a damned memory manager and a Task scheduler, and write custom drivers for EVERYTHING. Why bother? It's easier to start with just a bare bones OS. There are SOOOOO many other, BETTER, choices out there... There had to be one hell of a good bribe on Microsoft's part... Either that, or some dumbass making decisions at BMW don't know dick all about embedded device programming...
That's my $0.02... And no, I'm not a microsoft hater... I just don't agree with what WinCE is meant to be used for...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Consider the following (idea inspired by this video):
- You put a copy-protected CD in your car CD player
- Your car suddenly behaves in an unexpected and unpredictable manner directly because of the non-standard effect of said CD
- You, say, get a speeding ticket because the display is now in KM/H instead of MPH.
While you are certainly responsible for the manner in which you operate your vehicle, what liability would the car manufacturer have, or the embedded OS vendor (Microsoft)*, or the company that released the CD?(I'm thinking back to the copy-protected CDs that would lock up Macs hard)
Certainly the excuse "my car's computer crashed" would hold about as much weight in court as "the dog ate my homework." But once fined (having incurred a loss as a direct (?) result of negligance), would the owner have a legal recource against the (car mfg | OS vendor | record company)?
With the continuing march of integration, what liabilities will be incurred when a CD crashes the OS on something (larger | more expensive | more dangerous) than "just" a PC? It sounds to me like a possibility for scaring the RIAA away from doing weird things to CDs... but IANAL, and I think this could use some discussion.
* In this case I'd expect, more likely than not, that Microsoft's contract with BMW absolves them of all liability, thus securely pinning all lawsuits on BMW.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
That's what it would cost you, after dealer mark-up. A "computer" in a car is normally a "microcontroller," a single chip. So what they're really telling you is that it would cost $10k for 6 chips. And I can assure you that the unit cost of those 6 chips is under a dollar a piece.
If you can cut down the number of computers needed, you can lower the price of your car or increase the profit margin. Or both.
Increase profit margin, if that's possible. Are you really serious when you say they'd charge you $10k to replace the "6 computers" in your car???
The down side to that is that if the single computer fails, all those functions go away.
The problem is when you use OS's like CE it is entirely possible that the single computer will fail. When you develop it all on a microcontroller and get rid of all the fancy BS, you can get everything into a single chip and be stable.
You know, I really think it comes down to keeping Microsoft as far away from anything of any importance. And I say that in all honesty, not just to score points with the anti-MS crowd here.
It's a good question, and one automotive developers haven't really had to worry about until recently. When all they had to code was realtime control code for those 70-odd microcontrollers, they certainly didn't need an OS.
But the developers (or rather their marketing departments) have bigger ideas. A car is no longer but a conveyance - it's an environment, an entertainment centre, a home. So they mandate navigation, remote and stored diagnostics, centralised control of various settings (A/C, seat position, etc.), radio stations, RDS, CD control, media (MP3 etc.), radio, video (disney for the kids), and all of this controlled by voice input and giving voice output. Those are requirements a workstation or PC could scarely manage five years ago. Add to that the significant issue that most of those applications will be coming from third party vendors. Anyone implementing such a system has little choice but to put in a decent 32 bit microprocessor, a fair chunk of RAM (several meg, going on 16), and a half-decent OS.
WinCE (for automotive, whatever...) is certainly the worst choice. QNX, VxWorksAE, or Embedded(orRT)Linux would certainly be better - but the fundamental problem remains - this is HARD to get right.
Don't be fooled into thinking this is just an amusing diversion, where the worst that can happen is that your radio doesn't work for a while. This is a major safety issue - simply because the "infotainment system" doesn't have a wire to the steering or the accelerator doesn't mean it can't kill you. Imagine you're driving through a busy freeway intersection, at high speed in pretty heavy traffic. Suddenly the radio turns on, to a bad (noisy) channel, at FULL VOLUME. IT HURTS. YOU'RE SURPRISED. YOU LOSE CONCENTRATION FOR A SECOND OR TWO. YOU DIE. So do your kids, and those of the guy in the subaru in front. The lady in the dodge behind you loses a leg.
Also, don't think this is confined to high-end cars like BMW and Cadillac - auto manufacturers try out new stuff in the high-end lines before they push it further down the product line. Soon you won't be able to buy a vehicle without this stuff. And __nobody__ is doing a good job of making it.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Pinning the problems on the user is really wrong in this case. This system was destined to fail. The only one that i've tried that was worse was in the Buick Reatta. (Anyone remember that?)
I have seen these cars kaput on the side of Bay Area streets and freeways three times now. For a car that's been on sale for only six months, that's pretty scary. BMW has apparently had a lot of explaining and backpedaling to do when people come back into the dealerships time and time again with cars that act "weird".