Working with techies - mental perks

For the past 3 weeks I have been working in a new tech company: geeks galore!

You may recall that under communism barter between workers from factories from neighbouring regions was common: shoes for TV sets, hats for apricot jams, vodka for rolls of toilet paper. (Uhm, or you may not recall: just that I am old enough to actually to have engaged in such under-the-table activities first hand, no shit.)

These days are not completely over yet: one of the benefits of working in a technology company is the barter of ideas. I teach my new folks here about the philosophical underpinnings of Lord of the Flies (they brought up the subject of free will and predestination first!), the most technical tips being the software handles of Outlook photo objects in Visual Basic or SharePoint implementation of the WebDav protocol. In turn, my techie colleagues teach me about the differences between OBD2 and CAN protocols, voltages of low-level signals being exchanged, or share their delightful tales of changing baby nappies the geeky way. (Oh yes:  engineers are capable of self-replication, vulgarly called procreation - only that the intricacies of changing the soiled clothes are compounded here by their habit handling the newest Android toy in one hand while holding their sprogs in the other one.)

Leaving the topic of Dilberts' offspring aside, I will share with you my newest "cable" discoveries now.


While waiting for the next skiing season with Fion, if only to test Enhanced Reality goggles on the slope, I learnt that my beat-up Volkswagen Passat B5 from 2000 is capable of a trick or two.







Basically, any car nowadays is a computer on wheels. As I learnt from my techie colleagues, since around 2000 all on-board car computers are mandated to be equipped with a standard signals interface, easily accessible to the driver. To simplify the description below, I will call this system OBD2.

Now, if you buy a cheap OBD2 cable, or even better, an OBD2 Bluetooth interface, and hook it up, you can read the signals and change the settings (basically, reprogram your car) with your notebook. Here are readings of my engine that I took when driving home from work: 

It looks much sexier on a telephone. Here's a sample visualisation program for the Android operating system:

You can either use your car as an oversized game controller!

Yes, your car, unless it is vintage, also has the OBD2 connector. You may just not know that it does.

I know that lots of guys and girls are busy working on commercial applications thereof, and there are well-established business consortia and companies, my own one included, aiming to further standardize the pieces of the puzzle, and equip cars with mind-blowing car HUD displays. Still, I feel that there is a market niche. Just by (re)using what we have had available for the past 10 years or so, we could come up something better, targeted at the mythical blonde driving a car, hers or to her significant other's.



How about a pink-themed kawaii OBD2 dongle, with feathers and a mirror, looking like this USB thingy on the left? A connector with a GPS module and a SIM card built-in and preinstalled? (It's a perfect example of market localization, by the way).

Expected benefits for the client? They can receive emails or SMS-es alerting them to looming car problems, get info about road code violations or tips about their driving style, locate their car left on the parking lot or learn if their significant one is drawing near: all via their regular mobile phone. Is it just the naive me, or also you can spot at least one Unique Selling Proposition among these?

The elements of the puzzle are already here. It's just a question of putting them together and marketing the solution to the target (granted, clueless) audience via shopping malls demos, TV, flower or fashion shows plug-ins, testimonials, or franchising. Think of such a tag: "Now I can prove to my hubby that he really slams on the brakes too often. And locate him at the same time!"

I feel I could put my project management and business skills to be put to good use here. I have direct access to the technical talent pool. Now it's time to find business angels...

Any takers? ;) If so, contact me via the comments below.