Particularly given the trend of ‘glue a tablet to the middle of the dashboard’. If you are going to do that anyway, bring up a modern successor to the DIN/Double DIN standard, where the mounting is standard and update to also include USB-C for standard power, audio, and data. Add some network profiles for standardized exchange of useful information (Car speedometer, car model, fuel/battery amount and efficiency profile, navigation information to drive dash/HUD, etc).
That last but is almost NMEA 2000, which standardizes exactly that kind of information, but in boats. It’s old enough that they based it on CANbus, but there are many repeater products to add IP devices (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) to the network.
ETA: By which I mean to say, plenty of designs already exist in the marine market which could be used to bridge a car’s CANbus to consumer devices, if they wanted to.
And sarcastically speaking please oh please don’t add functionality to the obd connector like the ability to self diagnose and display a full report for any mechanic to easily use without the need for special hardware. That would be awful to have.
I find it insane that with modern computing and displays, they still just render a vague check engine light despite being able to easily display the specifics.
Particularly given the trend of ‘glue a tablet to the middle of the dashboard’. If you are going to do that anyway, bring up a modern successor to the DIN/Double DIN standard, where the mounting is standard and update to also include USB-C for standard power, audio, and data. Add some network profiles for standardized exchange of useful information (Car speedometer, car model, fuel/battery amount and efficiency profile, navigation information to drive dash/HUD, etc).
That last but is almost NMEA 2000, which standardizes exactly that kind of information, but in boats. It’s old enough that they based it on CANbus, but there are many repeater products to add IP devices (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) to the network.
ETA: By which I mean to say, plenty of designs already exist in the marine market which could be used to bridge a car’s CANbus to consumer devices, if they wanted to.
And sarcastically speaking please oh please don’t add functionality to the obd connector like the ability to self diagnose and display a full report for any mechanic to easily use without the need for special hardware. That would be awful to have.
I find it insane that with modern computing and displays, they still just render a vague check engine light despite being able to easily display the specifics.
Ding ding! You got a flat tire dude! You can tell because I’m showing you this symbol “!”
Oh, wanna know which one? Just go outside and check it out buddy! It would be the one that looks flat.
You get all this great information for just $400 bucks! 100 per each tire monitor.
Dude, my goodness! Can they do worse?