Airbiquity is the data link technology behind Ford Sync. What is exciting you ask? You can use any cell phone from any carrier to get 800bps of data to your telematics solution. Even if you have a nasty phone carrier like ATT or Verizon that doesn’t permit tethering, Airbiquity's technology will use your Bluetooth hands free profile to pull down the data you need or make an emergency call. In my opinion 800bps will cover the majority of remote data needs until you reach a broadband link. Lots of innovative stuff can be done with technology at very low costs due to the ability to leverage consumers existing devices.
Talk about this on our forums here:
As long time members on our forums, this team really shares in the passion for car computing. They have made an amazing prototype of their product which is on display at CES this year. Final units are expected in April. The unit without a rear seat entertainment (RSE) system will retail at $2,750. Add on an RSE package and it will cost $485 more. This may seem pricey, but they have made some custom cables and hardware devices which should help simply and speed up the installation process. Dashboard devices has 2 units being road tested in Amsterdam now. They have made some great progress with this product but as some of us know, one of the hardest things to do is move this from the 1-2 trial stage to being able to make, sell, market and support car computers at a larger scale production level. This is where most companies struggle. There are many companies who have failed completely and others who have announced product and several years later never released anything. We will talk more about the difficulties of bringing a car computing product to market in a later post.
Talk about this on our forums:
A different version of Giantec’s hardware was also in the Intel booth. Here is Giantec's double din model. We take a closer look at this version and the single din version as well. The single din is in a previously posted video.
We found two amplifiers here at CES that take an optical input. They both are very expensive but for audiophiles you can’t put a price tag on good sound. Here is Focal’s version.
MP3Car.com – CES 2009 - Giantec Single Din Car Computer
A different version of Giantec’s hardware was also in the Intel booth. We take a closer look at this version and the double din version as well. The double din in a video coming soon.
After 2 years of never shipping the Azentek Atlas, Azentek is taking a more conservative approach to launching product. They were planning on showing their single din car computer here at CES, but have decided to hold off until it becomes available for sale. Azentek also got car computing some exposure on good morning America.
Check out our video for more details and talk about this on our forums here:
We take a quick look at when we might be able to get 7” capacitive touch screens in our cars.
Tags: Capacitive, Touch Screen, Car computer, mp3car, ces, ces 2009, multitouch, multi-touch Talk about this on our forums here:
We sit down with Xenarc to find out what happened in 2008 and what the future holds for 2009. Like some large companies, Xenarc has decided to opt out of buying a booth this year. Talk about this on our forums:
Wimax and Centrafuse got some great exposure today at the front of Intel’s booth. Intel used a convertible smart car. This is a perfect format for trade show demos. We interviewed Centrafuse’s CEO Eric Breier from the car. Expect this and 5 other videos to be online in the next 24 hours.
Today we are on the ground in Las Vegas getting ready to kick off our video coverage of CES. While the CES vendors setup their booths.
We were invited to attend Telematics seminar about 17 miles outside of the city which has round tables, panels and debating the future of communications and technology in cars. We have already heard some interesting things today that I will write about more as the day progresses.
The hottest debate of the morning, as it always has been, is what role can carmakers play in Telematics? How can carmakers play with rapidly evolving consumer electronics products driven by massive economies of scale and a tremendous selection of features and vendors.
What value-add do carmakers really bring to car technology? Should they just have core safety features, vehicle data outputs, input devices and get out of the way for aftermarket devices?
We expect to see lots of Intel based car computers at CES this year. VIA always has embedded platforms which can be modified to for the car, but other than the embedded products it seems like they have disappeared from the car-computing world now that Infill has died. The Guru units and its close cousin the Azentek cpc will be in at least 6 cars this year. Intel's new series of Mini-itx based boards has been a huge hit for prototypers, telematics labs, and hackers. We even based our telematics lab bundle of this line a few months ago.
At the telematics seminar today we had a discussion with the director of Intel’s IVI director Staci Palmer. There are no car computing or Telematics PR events planned this year for CES. They do however have a dashboard mock up in the Intel booth, which we will report more on later. From our discussions it also seems like Intel is going to be putting more effort behind their in vehicle version of moblin. An open source active in vehicle linux app would do wonders for in car technology.
The biggest barrier to entry I see for Linux in the car for things like moblin is a navigation solution. How can anyone put linux in their car without nav? I guess you could use virtual machine for your navigation…or buy a pnd? That’s what I call a speed bump.
Gracenote’s Booth demonstrating a flash integrated demo of Gracenote integrated with Centrafuse.
Dashboard Devices –
Tememetria
Azentek’s Booth
Streetdeck – No formal announcement - from their website:
“StreetDeck will be at the 2009 CES show in Las Vegas Nevada. We will
not have our own booth, but we will be wandering the show floor on
January 8th and 9th.”
RoadRunner – No response
Imobile – No Response, no press releases since 2006
Wimax and Centrafuse got some great exposure today at the front of Intel’s booth. Intel used a convertible smart car. This is a perfect format for trade show demos. We interviewed Centrafuse’s CEO Eric Breier from the car. Expect this and 5 other videos to be online in the next 24 hours.
Today we are on the ground in Las Vegas getting ready to kick off our video coverage of CES. While the CES vendors setup their booths.
We expect to see lots of Intel based car computers at CES this year. VIA always has embedded platforms which can be modified to for the car, but other than the embedded products it seems like they have disappeared from the car-computing world now that Infill has died. The Guru units and its close cousin the Azentek cpc will be in at least 6 cars this year. Intel's new series of Mini-itx based boards has been a huge hit for prototypers, telematics labs, and hackers. We even based our telematics lab bundle of this line a few months ago.
