Dashboard Ultra

Introduction 

This article presents a concept for an Ultrabook app.  I call it the Dashboard Ultra.   This app, which harnesses the exciting sensor interface of the Ultrabook, will enable car driver to log and display in real-time there driving/racing activities.  

Essentially this app extends the dashboard of your car and making it interactive.  This is exactly what every F1 racer (commuter?) needs.   

Background     

Many car enthusiasts are interested in analyzing their driving and car performance over time in order to achieve there peak driving performance.  Typical measuring performance can be broken down into several metrics such as average speed, cornering accelerations, speed accelerations/decelerations, lap times and even for the daring your drift angles.    

This application aims towards giving car enthusiasts the power to examine there driving performance logging the various sensors of the  Ultrabook.  

 These sensors include: 

1. Compass            - sensing drift angles
2. Accelerometer  - cornering accelerations/body role   
3. Gyroscope         - cornering accelerations/body role
4. GPS                    - speed and location   

Touch Interface  

The user will be provided with an array of sensors on screen which the user will place by touch.  Various sensor readouts such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, speedometer,  top speed, average speed, maximum speed, maximum cornering accelerations, drift angle gauge, etc... to chose from and position as required.   Future  expansion may include connecting to the CAM/OBDII Buss to obtain engine and transmission specific information via USB connected car diagnostic readers.

Summary  

Consider this an application an extension to your car Dashboard (but to the extreme).   Consider it like high score logger in Mario Brothers from back in the day.

New Ideas to Consider 

* To make use of the on board GPU - the GPS way points may be drawn in color to represent the route and many of the sense activity - speed (red channel), acceleration(blue channel)...

This will probably would need to be done in DirectX.

History /Updates 

As the concept unrolls into the design the history of updates will be presented here.

Nov 5th:  

* I've received the UltraBook configuring Dev ENV.   The touch interface on a laptop is something to get use to.  So long for a smug free screen " src="http://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/smiley_smile.gif" />  

Nov 8th:  

* Doing some initial driving tests with the prototype (C# - windows RT).  The sensors sample at a really high rate which means I can do some filtering to clean up the signal.

* I'm considering adding some simple sensor calibration to level the output if the laptop is not flat.

* The prototype visual output is really crude at the moment so no photos yet.   

Nov 18th:

* I've revived code signing through Comodo after considerable work 

* Basic interface is working with accelerations and averaging filters

* Working on interfacing with the GPS output for heading/speed information

* Working on making custom controls for acceleration displays