Traffic and Information OTA - Not From The Web

A friend of mine just got a newer Ford Focus with Microsoft Sync. It gets all kinds of really nice information from the built-in SiriusXM tuner including Traffic, Weather (with 5-day forcast and current live radar), Movie times and Fuel prices. Freaking awesome right?! I also know there is something similar if not exactly the same with FM HD Radio called Total Traffic. The JVC navigation radios support that too.

So why cant our Carputer's do this? Am I just not looking in the right spots? Why is it with our awesome frontends, with all of our neat modules, we cant get Over The Air information like this?

Centrafuse will do all that with plugins traffic cam, weather with radar and 5day, moviephone, fuel prices, navigation, diagnostics, tire pressure monitoring, distance sensor the list goes on and on... SNO sorry i just saw NOT over the web

Because the cool radios and HU that consume all that neat information don't make it available on any kind of interface that a computer can access. Unless you insert some kind of custom hardware into the signal path to "borrow" the data, you're out of luck.

VegasGuy

Over the web would be fine for most folks that have 3G enabled phones. However, I use an iPhone on TMobile which means my data connection is over EDGE which means very slow data speeds.... And I do not want to get a hotspot just for this option, thats why I asked about being able to pull it over XM and HD radio which will already be part of the CarPC. This would be so cool :(

The cost for those premium services and licenses is built into the cost of the vehicle, thats why. That's why you still see car makers opting to install XM even though it's still losing money as a company annually. Sell it to customers as a premium service and preinstall hardware in the car and people will gobble it up. I have both HD radio and XM in the car, and if the interest was large in the community i'm sure we could make an effort to try to interpret the weather/traffic etc information, but not many people are asking for it now.

Sonicxtacy02 is dead on! Several of us investigated doing the XM data stuff when it originally came out and XM wanted an exorbitant amount for the monthly service, refused to discuss licensing the software or give us the code to access the traffic or weather data, and threatened C&D filings if we reverse engineered it.

For years I accessed iNET RADIO, traffic and weather using a 115K cell modem and it worked great. EDGE is faster than that so you should be fine. Have you even bothered to try it. I had to do a lot of optimization to my system to get it fast and reliable, but it was well worth the effort.