from Hacker News

Using Google Assistant with AutoPi to enable voice control of a car

by MurdocTannen on 5/12/17, 12:59 PM with 37 comments

  • by Jaepa on 5/12/17, 3:45 PM

    First off this looks cool.

    But these 4G connected smart ODB dongles scare the crap out of me. You are giving an IOT device the ability to disable breaks, the transmission, and lock you inside. I'm not really worried about a Maximum Overdrive type situation, giving this much control to a category of devices that was able to take down Dyn because so many of these devices used a subset of 60 common factory default usernames and passwords.

    I think there is a good use case for these type of devices, but I think ODB, isn't the right mechanism for it. But I don't know if there will be a new standard.

  • by tylergetsay on 5/12/17, 4:10 PM

    How do you control windows over OBD2? I've never seen any universal car control over OBD2, only specific model/ECU tuning.

  • by Jun8 on 5/12/17, 5:48 PM

    I didn't see Dashbot (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/dashbot-a-49...) mentioned here: it's pretty much the same thing but instead using Alexa and not using (potentially scary) OBD port connection. With Ford announcing Alexa integration coming this summer to SYNC3 (https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017...) it seems devices such as these will be more commonplace.

    Question to HN: What can Alexa/GA integration enable in a car other than the mundane music search, ask directions, etc. scenarios? How many of you would want to use it to send short messages (e.g. "Sorry!" after cutting someone off) to a small LED display mounted on your rear bumper?

  • by Severian on 5/12/17, 1:46 PM

    Heh, it would be cool to script it so that if it detects someone talking for a minute or two with the window down, then accelerates quickly away, it loudly plays the Knight Rider commercial break theme music.

    Best example I could find is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTcvE5ptk6Q

  • by geniium on 5/12/17, 2:59 PM

    Just a question of time until you can say "Hey Kitt, come to me!"

  • by 3chelon on 5/12/17, 1:32 PM

  • by laumars on 5/12/17, 2:25 PM

    This looks an amazing project however I am very concerned about just how secure it is. Anyone remember the vulnerability disclosures of the existing in car systems and their ability for remote exploit resulting in a malicious party having control over things as essential as the cars velocity? AutoPi, while undoubtedly cool, definitely feels like quite an exploitable attack vector if not very carefully engineered. So I'd personally wait for an independent audit before buying this product.

  • by blacksmith_tb on 5/12/17, 5:33 PM

    It looks like a promising piece of hardware (though I am not sure if it's an RPi Zero they're adding BT and Wifi to, or actually an RPi Zero W - which would be easier, you'd think). My last two cars both put their OBD II ports exactly where my left leg is under the steering wheel, so I hope they ship it with a short right-angle extension cable (I use a much shorter BT dongle to connect to my phone current, it doesn't project too far).

  • by benkarst on 5/12/17, 5:04 PM

    When is AutoPi going to add the option to go keyless through facial, voice, optical, or fingerprint recognition?

    I guess Ford already patented something like this but it would be nice to have it open source too.

    http://www.biometricupdate.com/201502/ford-granted-patent-fo...

  • by carlmcqueen on 5/12/17, 3:18 PM

    I was actually hoping this was more a hardware sale only where they give us something like Automatic* that we can tweak ourselves.

    [*] https://www.automatic.com/

  • by daveguy on 5/12/17, 1:34 PM

    Cool, and no offense, but let me know when a third party reviews it.

    Voice recognition and personal assistants are annoying enough in a quiet house (but arguably useful). I would be surprised if it is useful yet in a noisy moving car.