

Ask HN: What's another application for our technology? - mojoe

My co-founder and I are developing hardware that will read diagnostic information from the OBD2 port on consumer automobiles and upload it to the internet via WiFi once the vehicle is parked. We are currently targeting customers who want an easy way to monitor their vehicle fleets for fuel theft, but we would really appreciate any other ideas regarding application of our technology. Essentially our system retrieves diagnostic information from vehicles (fuel information, engine statistics, etc, generic list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs), and then creates web-accessible graphs with the data.<p>Is there data from your car that you'd really like to see? Let us know so we can build it for you! And if you're in the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado and have a car fleet, let us know if you're interested in acquiring a beta device to try out the system (my email is in my profile). We appreciate any advice!
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msprague
Hey Mojoe!

It's great that someone is finally doing this! Which company are you founding?
Is it Fleetio or Automatic or something else? I've been trying to make a
prototype of something similar to this using a raspberry pi and an OBD-II
interface. Regardless, I've been kicking this idea around for some time so
I'll toss a couple ideas at you that I've come up with.

-Environmental footprint/impact. OBDII offers emissions information (I think) and you could do some really cool "green" stuff with it if you wanted to go that direction.

-Could you make an easy-to-use API for the device and sell it to developers? This could be profitable, but might create competition for you...

-Online car problem troubleshooting? Upload the error code and specific car information to your site, and you can diagnose the car without having to pay for an expensive mechanic to look at it right away. (Kind of like bargl's idea)

-Assuming it could interface with a mobile device, you could mount a tablet in your car and display realtime information

-Reminders such as oil change or similar maintenance

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mojoe
Hi msprague, thanks for the enthusiasm! We're actually discussing possible
approaches to a public API for developers. We're still in early development
and don't have a name yet, but if you send me a note at the email address in
my profile we'll keep you up to date on our progress.

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msprague
I don't think that there's an option to make your HN email public (yours isn't
listed), so if you reply to this comment with it I can email you.

~~~
mojoe
Oops, noob mistake. stech.joe+hn at gmail dotcom

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summerville
Would love to learn more. We have a fleet management software product (Fleetio
- <http://www.fleetio.com>) and would love to discuss future integration
capabilities. tsummerville at fleetio dot com

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mojoe
I've seen your product, it's very slick. We'll definitely contact you about
possible integration.

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carlosn
I don´t know what information is available (and english isn´t my first
language, so I may not know some terms), but off the top of my head, I think
some performance data could be used to know if the engine needs adjustments
(comparing fuel comsumption against what is expected for the usage might
help), alerts for when the brakes need replacement, the locations where the
car was turned off (to track if employees went where they were supposed to at
the time time they were supposed to (a problem at my job)).

    
    
      Probably could have worded it better, but I´m out of practice with the language.

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mojoe
I like the idea of comparing fuel consumption to usage -- this could be useful
to hypermilers <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving>

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bargl
I think there are a lot of things you could have this upload. Any sort of
tracking, door locking/unlocking, automatic pushing of engine data.

You could also create a user interface that maps and assigns people to the
cars they are using to work with drivers and get stats on the drivers in the
fleet (i.e. who drives like crap).

On a larger scale you could also map when cars seem to get issues and create a
metric of common issues for cars so that it could improve diagnostics in the
future. Man this is just a really awesome idea!

~~~
mojoe
Nice ideas! I like the concept of mapping drivers to vehicle stats, and
creating a database of issues that occur under specific conditions.

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tocomment
You could do some kind of weather app with the ambient air temperature and air
pressure readings?

~~~
bedspax
Yeah!

Now that Weather is in the game with apps for the two most popular smartphone
platforms, Kenny is looking to the next frontier: cars.

Voice-activated weather apps for the car would be "very useful and specific to
the driver," says Kenny. "This will be a very interesting platform for us."

>>
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/talkingtech/201...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/talkingtech/2013/03/06/weather-
channel-now-bigger-on-digital/1949345/)

;)

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tocomment
What kind of information is available? It sounds really cool btw.

~~~
mojoe
Thanks, we're excited about it! This is a list of many of the parameters that
can be obtained: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs>

There are many more manufacturer-specific parameters, but we don't currently
deal with those.

