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Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

moj.io

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Re: Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

#32

Post by 9999 »

fudged71 wrote: post #22

I don't understand why it was designed to fit nicely in your hand, and why it was made with bright colors. #1. This thing will be under your steering wheel 100% of the time, so being able to hold it ergonomically doesn't make a lick of sense. #2. If one of your advertised functionalities is for recovery after theft, the last thing you want is for the thief to be able to spot the dongle and remove it. If I bought one,…

Those OBD II connectors in cars can be kind of a pain to plug and unplug, so it does need to fit the hand well, but your point about the bright colors is very good. I hope they consider something more discrete.

Re: Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

#33

Post by fudged71 »

alpb wrote: post #31

Why "Works with any car built after 1995", what's special about 1995?

>All cars and light trucks built and sold in the United States after January 1, 1996 were required to be OBD II equipped. In general, this means all 1996 model year cars and light trucks are compliant, even if built in late 1995.

http://www.obdii.com/connector.html

Re: Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

#36

Post by fudged71 »

cleverjake wrote: post #25
coldskull wrote: post #23

i am surprised nobody talked about security...i am guessing the OBD interface in cars can be used to send commands to various components....could somebody hack into your car??

ODB means On Board Diagnostics. A majority of vehicles only report information - its not generally a control interface.

That doesn't mean that the security issue doesn't exist. Via wikipedia:

"Researchers at the University of Washington and University of California examined the security around OBD, and found that they were able to gain control over many vehicle components via the interface. Furthermore, they were able to upload new firmware into the engine control units. Their conclusion is that vehicle embedded systems are not designed with security in mind."

Re: Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

#39

Post by antonb2011 »

Wow! A HUGE market that escaped everybody’s attention! There are a few comments that come to mind:

First, this Modj.io company provides free testing ground for car companies to see if there is really a wide demand for such feedback mechanisms in public. At the first sight, I would say that there is, as they outlined in their sample use cases in the video.

Second, the only chance that Modj.io has for survival is a quick ramp-up of user base, because this technology is a perfect example of what car companies will try to use for customer lock-in. Kind of like iTunes for your car, storing driving and tracking data in the cloud. I foresee that every car company will try to develop their own platform, SDK, and an app, with unique synergies coming from having access to their cars’ deep engineering knowledge. Additionally, this will give car companies real-time feedback about the performance of their cars down to the last part that failed. This will allow them to know things like that the left windshield wiper motor batch that fails more often that average was assembled on a Friday night by John Doe. That’s scary level of detail and feedback.

Third, with such level of granularity, insurance companies will have a whole new set of market segmentation metrics, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see attempts in horizontal integration of car companies with such feedback information with insurance providers.

Forth, when each car company starts promoting their own SDK, we will see an aggregator-type company that will produce an abstraction SDK that allows you to write an app once to work on all cars.

Just my $0.02. I’d love to hear your projections as well, or comments on something I missed.

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