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A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices)
LinuxDevices looks at a
U.S. government- and automotive industry-led coalition to equip cars with
wirelessly connected computers. "On the software side, the prototype
OBEs [on board equipment] run Linux. The Parvus SBCs come with a basic
Linux BSP. Alternatively, if OEMs want commercial support, Wind River said
its General Purpose Platform, Linux Edition was selected for this purpose,
in part because of the company's long-standing relationships with Delphi,
Motorola, and other project participants, broad experience in automotive
applications, and experience working with large ecosystems -- Eclipse's
Device Software Project comes to mind here. "
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A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 23, 2007 14:02 UTC (Wed) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] I already have a computer that runs Linux in my garage. I use it to play MP3s while I am out there puttering around.
But in my car? No! If I ever came into possession of a car with such a device in it I'd rip it out. As much as I may like technology and electronics I don't want any of it in any of my vehicles past what I must have. Ignition, a starter, wipers, a blower, and some lights, which are nice at night. When it comes to automobiles I am a purist, and if it isn't helping me get down the road in a very physical material way then I am not going to haul it down the road with me. I don't even have radios in my vehicles. I like how all of my vehicles sound just fine by themselves. I surely don't want a device that monitors my driving. That is what I am behind the wheel for.
This whole project strikes me as rather pie in the sky nonsense. No one is going to put up with a baby monitor device in their cars in the USA. It won't be in any of my vehicles, that I can assure you. Have engine hoist, will change out powerplant, if need be. Whatever it takes. I will not be any part or party to crap like this. No, this initiative will go nowhere.
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 23, 2007 15:36 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] You do realize that any car made in the last couple decades already has a computer init, right?
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 23, 2007 15:59 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Several of them, I thought. Low-powered, embedded devices, but computers still.
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 23, 2007 21:53 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Pretty much.
Unless your using a old german car from the 1970's with mechanical fuel injection if your car has fuel injection then it has a 'computer'.
A computer in a car kicks-ass! A sophisticated system that keeps logs and such will be able to save you lots of time and repair costs.
For example it will help keep track of your driving habits. A small modification in your behavior can easily save you 20-30% in gas mileage. But such changes in behavior may be counter intuitive.
Also keeping track of sensor input and such things will help you gauge the health of your car. If you get a drop in performance (and hence a decrease in the efficiency of your engine) then looking at the sensor logs can help you pin-point the problems. Could be a bad catalitic converter that is getting plugged up. Could be clogged fuel injector causing fuel puddling and decreasing the efficiency of the burn. Could be that your buying fuel from a place were they are lying about the quality of fuel causing a decrease in octane and your engine is having it's timing retarded to avoid detonation.
Any number of things.
How easy is that to figure out if you have a 'dumb' car? You'll be stuck doing it the old fasion way were your mechanic is having to make educated guesses and replacing the more inexpensive parts, working his way towards the more expensive stuff, in a effort to stumble across a solution.
To avoid the bad nature of software were it tends to lock up you simply have to use good engineering practices with redundant control systems and 'cripple mode' operation so you can get your car to the nearest repair facility in case of a failure.
All of this is currently possible in most cars built since... say.. 1992. However it's still not as useful as it could be because of the intense proprietary nature of automobile electronics.
The sensors are unique to manufacturers and such things. They are unique to models of cars and such things. All in all it makes these things very expensive and relatively unreliable compared to having the ability to pick and choose replacements.
It's quite a racket. Nowadays car dealerships make more money from used cars and automobile parts then they do on selling new cars. When you sell a 1-2 dollar piece of electronic equipment for 75-100 dollars the temptation is pretty strong to keep everything non-standardized.
The ironic part is that fuel injection systems and modern electronics should make things _cheaper_ and _simpler_ then old carburated systems. Less complexity, more reliable. But nowadays these systems are designed to be very intimidating and appear to be complex. But once you understand how these things operate and how they _could_ be you quickly realise just how bad of a job car companies are doing.
You need to know the RPM of a motor (cam shaft sensor), you need to know the temperature of the motor, you need to know the density of the air (Mass airflow sensor), and you need to know the position of the throttle. That's all you _need_ in terms of information to have a very efficient and reliable fuel injection system.
There are lots of different approaches to do some of those things.. Like instead of the mass airflow sensor you could do throttle body position + air temperature + RPM to calculate the amount and mass of air coming into the motor. But I like having a simple Mass airflow sensor.
Then from those sensors it's possible to determine accurately how much fuel to squirt into the intake and the timing of the ignition.
Then there are safety and efficiency things you can add, like a knock sensor (to prevent detonation from hurting the motor), crankshaft position sensor, a way to measure how complete the fuel is burning (O2 sensor), and a couple other things.
But of course car manufacturers want to keep everything a 'black box' and proprietary.
Also the threats about 'monitoring' are very real.
Some rental car companies have installed GPS devices into their cars. If you speed then they will automaticly deduct a fine from your credit card. (you read the fine print, right?)
Governments, such as the sort of behavior you find in England, would love to install devices to monitor your behavior for taxation, regulatory, and crime-fighting reasons. Insurance companies would want their hands on this information.
So the temptation of doing the 'TiVO dance' and making people's computers obey somebody other then their rightful owners is very strong.
So this is why it's Free software is so critical in these devices. It's getting to the point were it's almost absolutely required in a modern free society that 'smart' devices obey their OWNERS and not some other authority whether it be government or corporation.
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 24, 2007 4:50 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] How easy is that to figure out if you have a 'dumb' car? You'll be stuck doing it the old fasion way were your mechanic is having to make educated guesses and replacing the more inexpensive parts, working his way towards the more expensive stuff, in a effort to stumble across a solution.
Search the web for "right to repair". Here's a brief summary. The benefits are being kept from the small shop owners and the public. Unless there's something I'm missing, a laptop with a custom interface and some software should be able to connect to many cars. Given the volumes involved, these shouldn't be cost prohibitive to small shops and enthusiastic consumers. I haven't looked through this issue very much (I'm not one to repair mechanical things) but it appears the auto industry has some lock down on an owner (or a party they authorize) from accessing information from their own car for repair or other purposes without spending large amounts of money for diagnostic tools.
-Brock
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 24, 2007 6:17 UTC (Thu) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] I had a car with Bosch mechanical fuel injection once. I liked it better than the same engine with EFI on it. I still like that motor the best carbureted though. How's that for life experience? I've done it all. But it wasn't an old German car. (it is an old Sweedish car well quite a few of them over the years they all have the same engine in them though well I've run the exact same engine in a few cars let alone the same model engine which I've had more today than I can even remember I've been running that engine since the early 80s in 4 different bodies) I was never too wild about old German cars. Though I'd take a gullwing Mercedes if someone was just giving it away.
Now drag here in the beginning acts like all car computers log data, then later on admits that all car parts are different. Which is it? I know which it is, but I wonder if drag does.
Beyond that I have to assume that drag has never met a competant mechanic either from some of their statements. I know plenty of people who just know, when they see something is wrong. There is no guessing. If you are guessing then you are not a good mechanic.
There is no car dealership marking up $2 parts to $100. There never was. I guess this goes back to the disreputable mechanics that drag has experience with though.
Nothing about EFI is cheaper, or more simple than carbureted engines. It is a more sophisticated system, and consequently it is more complicated too. Maybe it is simpler for drag to just turn the key and go in it, then take it to their shyster mechanic if anything goes wrong with it. More likely take their lease option and get another car.
Then we go into la la land with the camshaft sensor to determine engine RPMs. Why one wouldn't simply monitor the ignition is beyond me. This is how engine RPMs are typically measured. This demonstrates drag's ignorance with internal combustion engines clearly. Not to say that what drag says is impossible, it is simply impractical. As is most of what drag states.
To wrap it up Linux is not going to help you if the computer is black boxed and you have no interface to it. The Linux license does not give you that guarantee. All you're guaranteed is access to the sourcecode. If there is no interface a fat lot of good that'll do you! Here you go kid, here's the source, too bad there's no keyboard, or monitor for ya, ha ha! I mean does anyone here honestly believe that they're going to give you the development kit with every car? There is nothing in the GPL that guarantees that you'll have a keyboard or a monitor now is there? Beyond that how does the GPL guarantee access to their program? All they need to do is provide you with the sourcecode for the parts they use that are GPLed. Do you really think they're going to GPL a monitoring system and just hand you the sourcecode? Be real!
Linux is no magical silver bullet in this application protecting you from those who wish to impose their wills upon you. This goes beyond the original scope of what Linux was meant to be. I suppose it is nice that some Linux developers will get a paycheck out of it. But I don't see the upside for anyone else here.
Lets all get a grip fanboys, and try not to cheer everytime we hear the word Linux. If they can't rig this so you're locked in then they will go with something where they can.
I know I can sit back and smile though. This sort of justifies the 100 grand inventment in tooling I've made over the years :) Because I don't like to take what the man keeps trying to shove down my throat. So I make my own.
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 24, 2007 11:23 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > Then we go into la la land with the camshaft sensor to determine engine> RPMs. Why one wouldn't simply monitor the ignition is beyond me. This is > how engine RPMs are typically measured. This demonstrates drag's ignorance > with internal combustion engines clearly. Not to say that what drag says is > impossible, it is simply impractical. As is most of what drag states.
I've worked on a few motors. I am by no means a expert, but I have replaced EFI with carburated systems before. I did it because a webber carburator was cheaper and easier to do at the time.
One of the major reasons why EFI has replaced carbs is because they ARE cheaper and ARE simplier. They are simplier to maintain, simplier to design. They are simplier for the car manufacturer, not for the end users. They are _potentionally_ simplier for the end users, but so far they are not usually.
Carburator designs are based on vaccuum suction. All these little tubes and passageways. Everything has to be properly setup and carefully calibrated. They are static devices and generally are unable to adjust themselves to changing conditions. It's not uncommon, for example, that if you take a carburated car from a low-lying place.. such as Florida, that you will have to do some manual adjustments and even rejet a carburator to make it run properly at higher altitude place such as Colorado. Also they become increasingly inefficient as time goes on and the motor begins to wear out.
In comparision sensors are static, solid-state, electronics and _should_ not be subject to the same problems that you have with vacuumm-based fuel metering systems.
This is not to say that fuel injection is inherently superior to carburator, I am saying that in order to create a system that is as flexible and efficient as fuel injection _can_ _be_ then that carburator would have to be so complex that it would be very expensive and very prone to failure from the numerious delicate mechanical parts.
> Then we go into la la land with the camshaft sensor to determine engine RPMs. Why one wouldn't simply monitor the ignition is beyond me. This is how engine RPMs are typically measured. This demonstrates drag's ignorance with internal combustion engines clearly. Not to say that what drag says is impossible, it is simply impractical. As is most of what drag states.
It's not that way in any car that I've ever worked on that is newer then 1990 or so.
Their is no mechanical linkage between the ignition and the engine. No gears or anything like that. The ignition on a typical modern cars is completely electronic and firing is controlled by signals from the computer. Camshaft and crankshaft sensors are used to determine engine speed and position, the computer calculates timing and controls the ingition directly.
This way your not dependant on things like spring tension to determine timing advance at different rpms. Also you can do things like retard timing to counter-act detonation and avoid damage to the motor by bad fuel and other such things that can increase efficiency and lower emmisions.
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 24, 2007 4:17 UTC (Thu) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] Wrong! None of my vehicles have computers in them. Carburetors forever! Go stuff your EFI. Where do you kids get your information from these days? Take a few cars apart. I have!
A Linux computer in every garage? (LinuxDevices) Posted May 23, 2007 17:20 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link] Many people like the OnStar system, which has the potential to be very invasive.
Therefore it's obvious that "a baby monitor device" in their cars is a thing that some people do want.
Personally, I'd love to have a computer system like KITT in my car. It'd be great. Just as long as it didn't turn out to be KARR instead.
Are we mini-Slashdot now? Posted May 24, 2007 15:49 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] The whole discussion is in one thread, started by some provocative comment by somebody who probably didn't even bother to read the article. Do we need to be taught not to feed trolls? Or maybe we need a feature to hide offending comments from view to quell the temptation to post a reply?
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