[Suggestion] N900 as a car onboard computer
 

Hello there community!

As much as I loved my N900, unfortunately I've got too used to modern commodities, and have several apps on my Android phone that I couldn't use on the Nokia. However, I'm thinking about transforming the N900 in a full fledged onboard car computer, being at the same time a dashboard camera, a GPS tracker and a OBD-II reader. And, since the N900 is fairly small, it could be put on one of the corners of the windshield, to record driving videos and to show information on the screen to the driver.

Here is what I'm thinking:

1) OBD-II Link - For those who are unaware of what OBD-II is, it's a communications protocol standard present in every car since mid-90's. There's a plethora of bluetooth OBD-II adapters, and several Android and iPhone apps that can show loads of engine information, like temperature, mileage, oil pressure, fuel pressure, turbo pressure (when present), speed, rev meter and ECU's error codes. It could be just a matter of adapting a Raspberry Pi project to Maemo to be able to read the bluetooth data from the OBD-II adapter and display it on the screen;

2) Dashboard camera - Pretty self explanatory, but with a catch. To record everything nonstop would drain the N900 battery fast, so this module could be coupled with the OBD-II reader to only be turned on when the ECU sends a signal to the OBD-II port that the car is turned on. Then, at each drive, the N900 would record a full video of the trip, since the car was started until it was turned off, and save the video. Then, if the N900 is running out of storage space, this module would simply delete the oldest video files;

3) GPS tracker - This could be the most tricky. I think it's possible to adapt the GPS functions from those ecoach programs, to parse the phone's coordinates to a SMS message. You could program trusted phone numbers and a secret code, so when the trusted phone sends the secret code to the N900's number, it would return its GPS coordinates in a message. Maybe we could also link it with a maps app to put a marker on a map readable by google maps.

I am completely out of time to work in this now, but if I keep the idea here I can come back later without forgetting anything. Also, if any of you want to work in this project too, it would be amazing!

Re: [Suggestion] N900 as a car onboard computer
 

We already have pyobd for live data, and I compiled obdgpslogger, which can capture more data points, but doesn't do graphing/live display.

GPSRecorder is a minimal program that can do what you want. Logs to file.


In all honesty, the amount of processing to do all 3 "live" is probably beyond what the N900 hardware can manage.

Just my two cents

Re: [Suggestion] N900 as a car onboard computer
 

Agreed. It would only be worth it, if you insist on using the N900 for it.
Otherwise a cheap android phone/tablet would be a better choice.

Re: [Suggestion] N900 as a car onboard computer
 

Thanks for the questions! I will consider all the suggestions.