Tizen IVI – a breakthrough in on-board units?

Last year, after some years of development, Intel and Samsung announced Tizen OS – an open platform designed to work with a broad spectrum of devices ranging from smartphones to PCs to tablets to in-car systems and TVs. Here, we focus on Tizen IVI, (for In-vehicle infotainment) as it relates to the development work in carmesh.

The Tizen IVI architecture design is driven by requirements coming from automotive industry and via the GENIVI Alliance. Some of the biggest auto makers including BMW, GM, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault, SAIC Motor have already expressed interest in the platform as open solutions offer much potential in the automotive space.

Carmesh Implementation Stories (#2): Controlling Android application from Javascript

While working on the first version of carmesh Android application I had some issues with co-ordination between the app and an embedded Webview browser. The issues manifested in an authentication process which had to run in an embedded browser before handing control back to the application.

Carmesh presents at GDG Dublin

Yesterday I had an opportunity to present Carmesh implementation work and project vision on Connected Car to valuable technical audience at Google Developers Group in Dublin. I also had a chance to listen to two presentations and engage further discussions.

Google Developers Groups are worldwide communities which are interested in technologies provided by Google and ways to leverage them, but in most cases are not Google workers (Googlers). It was my first presentation to such large audience from industry and I find it very valuable.

Experimenting with Google Play Services – Activity Recognition

At Google IO this year, Google announced a new Activity Recognition capability for Android as part of the new Google Play services. It is realized as an API which relies on low-power sensors and a machine learning classifier to track users’ activities. We did a little bit of experimentation to test this API to learn how accurate it is and how it can be exploited in the field.

Videos: Demonstrations of Ford Applink Emulator

Part of Zylia’s contribution to Carmesh has focused on Ford Applink recently; Zylia is very interested in how advanced services will be realized in the automotive context and Applink is an important part of this landscape.

Ford’s AppLink Emulator: First Impressions

Last month Ford released the beta version of AppLink emulator, which can emulate the in-car interface part of Applink, enabling mobile apps to interfere with the car. The emulator provides output (via the emulated screen) and input (via emulated buttons) and offers the same interface to these as would the car. The Carmesh team was very keen to explore what is possible with this exciting new framework.

The objective of our initial work was to understand how the communication works, the I/O capabilities of Applink and how and Android application can access these functions.

Facebook Graph Search – How can the in car mobile app benefit?

Recently Facebook launched beta version of Graph Search service for English-language users from the U.S. Graph search is a search engine that provides personalized results, taking into account the an individual’s relationships, ultimately returning objects within the Facebook Open Graph. Here, we consider how this may be used in the vehicular context.