Navdy’s Heads-Up Display for your car starts shipping for $799 | Hacker News Reader

Navdy’s Heads-Up Display for your car starts shipping for $799

techcrunch.com

37 pointskjhughes51 comments

My wife's BMW X4 has a built-in HUD, and to us the killer uses are:

1) Current speed shown along with the speed limit. It gets the speed limit from onboard maps combined with using the car's cameras. If there's road construction, for example, it'll notice the signs and update the speed limit accordingly. This seems really simple, but it means never needing to look at your dash to check your speed.

2) Driving directions. Very handy when you're in places you don't know well, or in heavy traffic. The HUD is dramatically better than looking aside to your phone or the car's center console screen.

If an after-market HUD can do those, I'd seriously consider putting one in my other (older) car.

Yup, I also noticed on my Mazda that I don't really look at the main gauge cluster anymore - HUD is way closer to my standard field of view, it's focus is closer to the things on the road and it shows all the critical info (speed, radar cruise control status, directions, lane keeping... in new version also blind spot monitoring status and speed limits).

I'd recommend it to anyone, the annoyance is only that you need to readjust it for every driver.

Which Mazda model is that if I may ask? I'm looking for relatively low-end (and affordable!) cars with helpful safety features. I've heard Subaru has some good stuff, but didn't know about Mazda.

No idea on the HUD, but subaru's eyesight regularly wins the comparisons I've seen. In the USA the IIHT does regular testing, overseas there's a similar organization (sorry can't remember the name). Youtube, consumer reports, various car magazines, and various others have done similar.

Definitely seems smart enough to reduce or even eliminate (some cases) rear ending someone. I know a few people with eyesight systems and they speak of it highly.

Kinda surprising given how small subaru's R&D budget is compared to the bigger makers. I think subaru is in the 3rd generation or so.

All new Mazdas offer the HUD as far as I know, but you need to take one of the higher trims.

I have the top trim 3.

Thinking about "killer uses" for a car HUD makes me chuckle.

Great place to find out how much ammo you have remaining.

Do I currently have oil slick, smoke screen, or caltrops equipped?

And it's really handy how the targeting reticle turns red when you've got the car lined up with your target.

Point 1 doesn't seem that simple to me. Sounds like a cool car though.

Well it "seems simple" in terms of the value you get: your speedometer is only a quick glance down, so until you get used to driving with a HUD, you don't really appreciate its value. Eliminating all those glances down to the dash really does make a difference!

(As for implementation, that's absolutely not a simple problem.)

I thought you were talking about the implementation. My bad.

>... put it on a screen that is, in theory, less distracting.

A heads up display isn't less distracting. If anything it is more distracting since it is more in your field of view.

The value of a heads up display is that you don't have to move your visual focus as much as with something in the dash. Better heads up systems than this one make it so you don't have to change your distance focus, everything is at infinity focus.

A heads up display still requires your attention. The improvement is in a reduction of the dead time while switching between it and your surroundings.

I believe the front element is curved--i.e. it's a lens--and the system puts focus a couple of feet forward of the windshield.

A proper HUD uses collimation to move the perceived focus point out to infinity.

So there's a very tiny display in the base ?

ps: oh .. I just clicked, it's probably the same thing as the Google Glass HUD.

Navdy looks neat, but I have a hard time believing that $799 is the right price point for something that competes with a $20 cell phone holder...

Perhaps I'll eat my word :).

Let's see: no weird angles, no distortion, no phones sliding around the dash, no having to run shoddily made apps with backwards displays...there are plenty of reasons for the $799 price.

Do you work for Navdy?

I paid about $500 for an after market stereo with a phone holder and professional installation, so I'm clearly your target market.

$800 for something like this is waaaay too high, and this is coming from someone who actually paid good money for a similar low-tech solution.

Surely this is different, as the display is transparent which your phone (which hopefully isn't in the centre of your view) isn't.

Chinese knockoffs are already in full speed at a much lower price. One of my friends saw an exact Navdy knockoff called Carrobot in China selling for only $400. Supposedly it worked pretty well and was already shipping back in February.

A Google search of Carrobot turns up this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VLNC6ey82E and this indiegogo page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/carrobot-the-world-s-most...

I'm surprised that Navdy hasn't at least shut down their indiegogo presence.

The price is high, but it's still non mainstream tech and also, IMO - I'm no expert, a life changing advantage compared to anything else. Even a large phone nicely placed will be more distracting than a semi transparent overlay right in your field of view. It allows to keep binocular focus on the road. Any time I have to aim anywhere I lose track of what happens on the road, I also lose sense of depth, peripheral vision isn't build for that.

I want to find a way to have a HUD asap. Actually I dreamt about making one in a different way last week and I'm a bit jealous right now.

People are weird when it comes to buying car addons :) . Look at how much these 5-series upgrades cost: http://www.bmwusa.com/standard/content/byo/byohome.aspx?namo... .

I drive an '04 Civic, so it's all moot for me... but I'd guess that people are willing to pay ~$800 for the aesthetics of a HUD vs. the kind of phone mount you see in an UberX. Although who knows!

Seems like the place to sell something like this would be through the car dealers, rather than direct to consumers. $799 seems like a lot when you're paying for it up front, but it'd be a much less daunting "just $X more per monthly payment!" number when it's just one more thing getting rolled into the already-large amount you're financing...

When you can roll it into your car loan, it doesn't seem that expensive. Cash out of pocket hurts all at once.

Good point! Hadn't considered that; you're 100% right. As smacktoward suggested, maybe Garmin should sell these to dealerships.

It looks like they have financing in place.

Too bad the Garmin HUD was discontinued: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-road/discontinued/hud... It was $150 plus a smartphone and $35 app or compatible Garmin GPS.

Because Chinese clones cost only $30.

Do you have any you'd recommend?

Link or it didn't happen.

Tons on aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...

Refurb on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garmin-Head-Up-Plus-Display-HUD-Navi...

Are any of those integrated with a phone? They all look like they are just OBD-II speedometers. $25 for a simple product like that is reasonable.

Only the garmin is integrated via bluetooth. There are chinese clones of the navdy but haven't found a way to purchase them.

There's a comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790191) that mentions one of the Chinese clones by name: Carrobot. That might help you track one down.

That's the one, I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it. Not worth tracking them down though after I found out language barrier would be impossible to overcome.

There's tons on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...

I'd be curious how hard it would be to create a "case" which could take a smartphone screen and properly reverse it and move the focus point outwards, such that you could get the same effect with your smart phone displaying off the windshield.

I wonder how it will work in Arizona sun. Especially when one would potentially need it the most. That is, in the morning and then in afternoon/evening commute. The sun is at the worst possible angles during those times if one is east or west bound respectively.

$799 ouch. I'm waiting to see what Anker's ROAV costs in the mean time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziMZgN60muM

I was thinking the same thing. Anker seems to be able to put out decent quality hardware affordably. So I'd be surprised if their version is over $299. Unfortunately I can't see myself spending more than $99 on something like this.

Too bad it's not a thin-sheet that you apply to your entire windshield. Not sure how you'd make a cheap material that's also a transparent display.

I thought it would be much bigger and projected onto the glass. Maybe my physics is off, but this form factor doesn't look that impressive.

That might work if the windshield is steeply raked (e.g. Honda Civic) but not if it's closer to vertical.

"onto an almost completely-clear piece of glass"

I suspect the glass is slightly silvered (similar to fighter plane HUDs), in order to reflect the image better. Wouldn't work nearly as well projecting onto the windshield.

Hudly is similar though they seem to be more focused on the community providing software solutions for what to display.

Isn't it illegal in most states in the US to place objects on the windshield like Hudly's projection device appears to be placed in their pictures?

That's head-up display.

And while I'm at it, it's not "line of site" either.

800 bucks is too much imo

It wasn't 10 years ago when car audio / electronics regularly commanded $1,200+ for a "Flip up" or double din screen by Alpine. Now they are $250+ with everything better; touch screen etc.

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