Autöcar sensor ideas

[epapp]

Hello everybody,

For the past two years (ever since I bought my car), I have been developing an extremely intricate sensor system for my '99. There are different styles of sensors placed in different parts of the car for different purposes. I plan to explain it all in detail for others to implement and change as soon as I have the initial platform running in my car and can document it with pictures etc.

More importantly, as the system is nearing completion, I'm curious what the community thinks is important as far as data collection, sensing and controlling in the boxster. I won't say just yet what my system includes but as part of my addiction, I am always looking for new things to implement, and I am afraid that I have addressed and implemented all reasonable valued options.

What do you guys think?

[JayG]

that's like asking
"How long is a piece of string?"

[amitmishra4]

A feature I would love is controlling top(raising/lowering) with the remote keyfob!! Is that the kind of thing you are asking about?

[rick3000]

^ You can't do that because of the A-Pillar latch.

epapp, are you talking about like sensor senders and gauges? It sounds more like you are developing something similar to a Durametric when you say "as far as data collection, sensing and controlling in the boxster"

I think oil pressure is probably the most important thing to monitor, and I am considering/figuring out how to wire that up in the near future. I wouldn't mind oil temp, and volts as well. Trying to see if I can find a LCD display that might fit in the batwing (long shot).

A DIY on how to wire it all up would be awesome in my opinion.

[epapp]

For example, I've 3-d printed an enclosure, wired, mounted and written software for a gesture sensor. in the car. I can now control pretty much anything in the interior with certain gestures (e.g. turn on seat heaters, activate seat massage, turn on lights etc). Along those same lines, there are lots of other sensors which you can do similar dorky things. Waving my hand to turn on seat heaters or lights is pretty useless IMO so I've decided to use it for other interactions with the interior.

I'm curious what other people think are useful interactions when driving our cars. The possibilities are almost endless with just a few sensors (the important part is how you fuse the data together to get more meaningful results).

rick3000, voltage monitoring is easy with an OBD2 adapter. Oil temp and pressure are harder than usual because theres no easy place to tap an oil line to insert a pressure and temp sensor.