Virtually a yr to the day after George Hotz canceled plans for selling a $999 after-market product that might present certain automobiles semi-autonomous capabilities, the famed iPhone hacker is again with an analogous piece of hardware from his company Comma.ai. But this time round, the open source product — referred to as Eon — costs $699 and is extra DIY dashcam than a shortcut to self-driving.
“You want three things on your dashboard: a dashcam, navigation, and music,” reads the order website for Eon. “Eon is all three. Eon is your new dashboard.”
The overall concept with Eon, which is built out of “telephone elements, a PCB, a case, a cooling answer, and a strong mount,” Hotz says by way of e mail, is that you simply’ll stick it to your automotive’s windshield slightly below the rear view mirror. From there, it is going to operate very similar to a typical dashcam, all the time watching, recording, and logging the info out of your drives.
But, because the gadget runs Android, it is going to be capable of do double- or triple-duty by operating apps like Waze and Spotify as nicely, making it a kind of punk rock various to CarPlay or Android Auto. “We need to substitute your present low high quality OEM dashboard. We need to make you're keen on your in-car expertise,” the corporate writes within the publish saying Eon.
In fact, this isn’t simply a few dashcam, navigation, and music. The Eon may also be plugged into and get knowledge from Panda, the OBDII dongle that Hotz started selling earlier this year. And for those who own a suitable Toyota or Honda, you'll be able to tie those two units to a third, the Giraffe, which plugs into these automobiles’ driver help methods, in line with Comma.ai.
Hotz stresses that this isn’t some sort of backdoor to show Eon into the product he was promoting last yr, which was referred to as Comma One. It had an analogous design to Eon (although much rougher around the edges), and the thought was that it might be used to drive the automotive by tapping into the driving force assistance hardware on those suitable Toyotas and Hondas.
However Hotz killed Comma One when the US Nationwide Highway Visitors Safety Administration despatched his company a letter urging it to delay the product till it was completely examined for security. He wrote at the time that he “would much somewhat spend my life constructing superb tech than coping with regulators and legal professionals,” and some months later introduced open source plans for the hardware and software program that powered Comma One. (I got a ride in a Honda powered by a version of this earlier this year.)
“The Comma One was a self driving automotive package, but as a result of laws it was cancelled. The Eon is a dashcam, it isn't designed to drive a automotive,” Hotz says. He argues the connection to Panda and Giraffe simply increases the amount of knowledge accessible to Eon, and developers or tinkerers can take it from there. Panda, for instance, helps decipher most of a automotive’s CAN buses, and Giraffe, he says, lets users entry knowledge from issues just like the automotive’s radar system so Eon might generate “extra correct ahead collision warnings.”
The Comma.ai website (and its announcement publish) is filled with warnings like Hotz’s, however is equally dressed in guarantees that Eon is “greater than only a dashcam.” (Though immediately earlier than that the submit says “This product is designed to be a dashcam.”)
There’s additionally (of course) at the very least one sly shot at Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO that Hotz has feuded with on and off since he entered the self-driving tech market two years ago, buried in all of this. On Eon order web page, it says that the product runs the very best quality music and navigation apps on the earth, referring to Spotify and Waze. Then, immediately after that: “It does not run slacker radio or Mapquest.” Slacker Radio is the one music streaming service provided inside a Tesla.
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