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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

My 2016 Mazda was never connected in the first place, but I've left my wife's 2017 Volt connected because I do actually find the monthly OnStar report that's emailed to me to be useful. I also like notifications of low-tire pressure, engine-oil life, etc.

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I also like notifications of low-tire pressure, engine-oil life, etc.

Both things that have been done with non-connected cars for decades.

Sometimes the person driving the car does not (want to?) pay attention or has "ceded responsibility" for car maintenance, and it's nice to get these reports without needing to periodically remember to check the car manually.

Though my wife and I just celebrated 26 years of marriage and have open lines of communication, her telling me anything about the car she's driving is very hit or miss. So the monthly email is helpful. :-)

Hardware

- VoCore Lite

- USB to ODB2 cable

- Murata 1" x 1" DC-DC converter

Software

- Your choice of Linux flavor

- FreeDiag, looks like it is still under active development: https://github.com /fenugrec/freediag/

- Your own glue code to consume data, munge, and send updates.

I think I might do this. :D

For something like low tire pressure, won't a monthly report be too late?

It sounds like the monthly report and the notifications for tire pressure and the like are separate things

Can't this just be shown on the dashboard?

I had a similar warning come up on a hire car last month.

Soon the car will just purchase its own new tires, or drive itself around town in search of a working air pump.

Or it will just auto-dial the nearest tow service and leave the bill to you.

And it will also pay for it with the money it earned from offering rides to people. :-)

Low gas should come in a monthly report you can pickup it up on your way walking your empty car home. Or a door is open report that you can receive as you lay on the side of the road.

I have a 2012 Mini with no connectivity at all that has tire pressure warnings.

There's some kind of corollary to Zewinski's Law of Software Envelopment: device developers are incentivized to "innovate" their product to the point it can send email.

Yes, it shows on the dash and in the monthly reports.

Unless a tire is punctured, it only loses air slowly over time, but not enough you'd really notice looking at them, but still enough that it's bad for tire wear. It's a nice reminder to me I need to add air to the tires.

The car's dashboard display also shows the tire pressures, but:

a) My wife, for whatever reason, seems blind to anything the car shows her on the dashboard. :-(

b) She'd have to put the dashboard to the screen which shows tire pressure. The TPMS doesn't alert till pressure is quite low. They are supposed to be 36 PSI. The TPMS won't alert till they are below 25 PSI or some such.

I have also had your experience, but my resolution was just to swap cars for a day every couple weeks. The threshold on her car was higher though, I believe 29 (same ~35-36 normal range), so if they dropped she'd at least be alerted sooner if I didn't see it.

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