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Auto Makers To Standardize On Open Source
Lucas123 writes "There are efforts underway within the auto industry to create a standard, Linux-based platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems so that cars will act more like smartphones instead of having only about 10% of that functionality today. For example, Tesla's Model S IVI system, which is based on Linux, is designed to allow drivers to navigate using Google Maps with live traffic information, listen to streaming music from any online radio station and have access to an Internet browser for news or restaurant reviews. Having an industry-wide open-source IVI operating system would create a reusable platform consisting of core services, middleware and open application layer interfaces that eliminate the redundant efforts to create separate proprietary systems by automakers and their tier 1 suppliers like Microsoft. By developing an open-source platform, carmakers can share upgrades as they arrive."
What about receiving engine info, warnings regarding brake pads, fuel consumption, etc, etc? An established protocol that could link this to a mobile device would make sense. Not sure why this wasn't done with bluetooth ages ago...
I don't know about you but I've grown tired of effectively connecting a dongle to my car in order to do things like GPS navigation. The main problem as to why phones are better than the built-in stuff is because its updated when the built-in stuff stagnates.
Processing power is cheap - dirt cheap (a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, etc is less than $50 and contains more brains than most in-dash systems need). In today's age when so little data is actually stored locally on the devices anyways it makes far more sense to build an open system that can access the same profiles (ie, synced data from things like Google accounts) than to force users into connecting their phone to their car.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Microsoft still licenses their software like it's 1982 and they are the toll collector on progress. You buy a copy of their newest [whatever] program and pay them the fee that they set. They never look at what they provide and ask themselves 'are we providing value equivalent to what we are collecting in tolls?' Auto companies, in contrast, have to do that with absolutely every thing that they provide since cars are very complex performance-driven devices that are competitively mass-produced and consequently sell for little money relative to their high cost of manufacture. Moreover, cars must be both reliable and supported/maintained for 20 years after they are sold. All of these are foreign concepts to Microsoft which can't see any reason why they should not just release V x.x of their 'car OS' and sell it to manufacturers who would eagerly link everything to it. The manufacturer's, though, need to have control over the source code for critical updates, control over the licensing and distribution, and control over the overall structure and software design. Manufacturer's have been putting software in cars for over 20 years and they could never settle for Microsoft's way of doing things...so turning to OSS is inevitable for them.
If you don't want to be hacked than you better use an Atmel instead of a Microchip.
Just trolling, no real reason other than I hate PIC and its mess of banks when coding in assembler, AVR is much cleaner.
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