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Comment by tomxor | Hacker News Reader

I'd pay to just not have one, but I'm not even sure that's possible any more. I'm really not looking forward to when I'm forced to buy a new car - few things make me more mad than smartphone tech with universally slow and terrible UX, duck-taped onto machines, let alone dangerous machines.

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> I'd pay to just not have one, but I'm not even sure that's possible any more.

Yeah, some stuff makes you go through the head unit on some machines. Any replacement head unit would have to implement the same controls somehow.

Wealthy will be the person who makes a generic 2 DIN head unit, where you have physical buttons which you can map to various CANBus messages.

I'm working on a generic device that sends canbus messages, that can have inputs such as potentiometer, push buttons, toggle switches, and rotary encoders. My end goal is to have real hvac controls on my Tesla, but I'd like to abstract the device as much as possible. Fun project, and most of the hardware necessary is already out there.

The dream:

https://www.amazon.ca/Honeywell-CT87N1001-Round-Manual-Therm...

Awesome! I demand links! Give me a GitHub I can watch and contribute too. My soldering iron is already hot! LFG!

That is super badass and I'd love to have something like that.

Does the factory display/controls use the canbus to do their work? How much stuff can you reasonably do through that? Do you know if it varies between manufacturers?

The problem is, there's not just one "CAN/LIN bus." There are probably a dozen different segments. One device attached to one segment can only talk to the upstream gateway and whatever peripherals are on that bus segment.

Of course this isn't a problem per se, it's good design -- but it has the side effect of making it harder to hack your own car through a single point of entry other than the main OBD2 port, which is connected to the top-level gateway.

> it has the side effect of making it harder to hack your own car through a single point of entry other than the main OBD2 port

Thanks! Do you know by chance if the OBD2 port can talk to/control everything? Would that be a good entrypoint?

In my own VW group cars, the CAN bus pins on the OBD2 port do have access to everything. I don't know if that's true for all/most cars in general, though.

I've been hoping somebody would do that.

I have a only half-joking business idea to build high-quality physical controls for all of the crap touchscreen shit being forced upon us. High-end ovens for example rarely now include physical controls so (I'm looking at you Miele) so I would like an aftermarket thing that sticks on to the outside of it. Maybe even directly over the touch screen. Actually, hmm, that's a good idea. Maybe we need a device that is the size of various standard touch screens that can read the contents of the screen, interpret them, and then have some sort of way to do capacitance touch on the screen. All of this of course hidden from the user who just wants a damned analog knob.

You're touching on a real opportunity, going down a open hardware canbus-dash computer.

This is one of those rare 'holy shit do this right now' kind of things.

Seriously. I have zero use for a touch screen in a car.

Maps? When I drive I look at... the road. If I need directions, google maps can tell me to turn left etc by voice commands.

I don't think I could live without it anymore, but I have a really tight parking situation at home and the parking sensors that are exposed through the head unit are really useful. Not to mention navigation and all that stuff. These features are really considered standard now by most (but definitely not all) people.

I had that in a car from 2008 or so. Camera feed switched on when you were reversing, but no touch screen.

Radar parking sensor are very useful. Not sure if you had that in 2008.

In my car, this all comes in via the head unit. Critical driving stuff isn't allowed to be in the head unit (wisely), parking display doesn't come up as critical although the sensors are technically available even if the head unit is fried, which I found out when my head unit failed (car was still drivable, but many nice things gone).

It wasn't radar, it was just a camera feed that activated when I put it in reverse.

Eh I'm anti touch screen controls, but as a motorcyclist driving in a foreign country relying on voice directions I need the visual input too. There's a big difference between audio only directions for a spaghetti junction and being able to glance at the visual and combine that with the audio.

You take your eyes off the road all the time doing head checks (blind spot checks), so long as you're not staring at the map I think the benefit of being sure about where you're going is safer

Sounds like google maps, am i right? Almost any other navigation product will do a combination of zooming in and displaying actual road signs with clearly marked intersections etc. Maps is useless without also turning on voice.

My Ioniq 5 (ironically, a Hyundai...) puts turn by turn directions on the HUD, if you want--eyes stay on the road, but you get full visual feedback. To me that's the best of both worlds. Downside is it only works with the on-board nav and not CarPlay/AA.

...people actually use voice commands? I've not used them in any GPS for like 10+ years nor do I know anyone who has audible navigation enabled.

what's the alternative - looking at a screen? I want to concentrate on driving.

I personally find that having to pay attention to visual prompts(turn right in 1km) makes me far more focused on the road than listening to the prompts, which can come without any warning and don't allow you to appreciate what is going to happen with enough warning. I usually glance and see that in 10km I'm taking the 3rd exit at the roundabout, then I know for next 10km I can focus entirely at the road, take 3rd exit at the roundabout and then will glance for next instruction again.

In previous discussions about how shitty touchscreen car interfaces are, people have been mentioning that new cars must provide a backup camera. I'd like to have just the camera, but why would manufacturers stop there when they can ship spyware as well? The screen is the expensive part.

Touch screens are actually incredibly cheap off the shelf components compared to all of the bespoke physical buttons and dials required to kit out a car.

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