Car? Whar? Over thar!
Michael & Michael get together to talk about one of the original examples of augmented reality, the Head Up Display (HUD) for cars, and explore the example of the Hudway Glass, an ingeniously simple Kickstarter product that allows a user to place their phone on the dash and have the phone’s display reflected back to the driver. Michael R remembers an app with this kind of capability from way back when called V-Cockpit.
Keeping with the pretty clever car theme, the pair then move to the innovation that Ford is bringing to the market for Ford and Lincoln cars: an OBD II module that plugs into your Ford car, and because of the software in your car and this additional module, you can remote start your car, download your car’s performance data, even use the 4G LTE modem as a wireless hotspot to connect your WiFi devices in the car. Michael R noted that while the OBD II port has been a standard part of every car since 1996, each manufacturer has their own proprietary software so a universal version to provide all the connected car capabilities is not highly likely. Even so, Michael R has the OBDLink MX tool for translating error codes and warning lights, along with engine diagnostics. Enabling connected car data sharing opens up more possibilities, and the insurance marketplace is one of them, as evidenced by Progressive Insurance’s Snapshot offering.
Wrapping up this short show, Michael and Michael agree that 3D TV is not the wave of the future anymore, and the article points toward the idea of VR and TV merging at some time. While certainly possible, we’ve seen other examples of holographic TV, and from Neal Stephenson’s novels, concepts of immersive storytelling where people become the actors themselves.
selected links
Hudway Glass — https://hudwayglass.com
V-Cockpit GPS app — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/v-cockpit-gps/id303482803?mt=8
Haptic Socks – https://tampub.uta.fi/handle/10024/97672
TechCrunch article: Ford’s new SmartLink OBD accessory adds connected features to other cars — https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/fords-new-smartlink-odb-accessory-adds-connected-features-to-older-cars/
OBDLink MX — https://www.amazon.com/ScanTool-OBDLink-MX-Wi-Fi-Diagnostic/dp/B00OCYXTYY/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1485538594&sr=8-22&keywords=obd+ii+wifi
Progressive Insurance Snapshot — https://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/
Postscapes roundup of connected car enablement devices — http://www.postscapes.com/connected-car-devices/
TechCrunch article: 3D TVs are Dead — https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/25/3d-tvs-are-dead/
Neal Stephenson’s Cyberpunk novel “the Diamond Age” on the concept of “ractors” – people who play roles in a virtual reality experience — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age
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