We have a varied selection of transport at our current home. Some of it is for practical purposes and some of it is purely for fun. We currently have five cars and several bicycles and we are currently investigating fully electric vehicle options.
Some modern cars, particularly electric vehicles have remote query and control features exposed securely via a Smartphone app or other interfaces. These typically connect via a cloud service and can also be accessed via web browsers.
We are mainly interested in how our vehicles can be usefully connected to our contextual smart home to provide useful information into the wider pool of whole home context. We are also interested in understanding how we can connect any vehicle, regardless of manufacturer or age of the vehicle. We have some cars that are quite old and basic, including a Fisher Fury R1 'kit car', a classic 1990 Eunos Roadster.
Our initial focus is on identifying when vehicles are doing things in proximity to our smart home or have just arrived back home. This information can be used to provide useful features and often these can be personalised user experience, particularly when vehicles are owed and driven by just one person.
A key requirement is that any solution doesn't drain the battery when the ignition is not switched on. This doesn't mean that it won't do anything with the ignition switched off but the normal condition is that zero power is required.
There are many networking technologies available but for most purposes Wi-Fi meets our needs and this is the focus of our initial work. We plan to look at other networking technologies with longer range once we have concluded our initial research.
To keep things simple, our initial focus is on tracking vehicles arriving and leaving our home. To do this we are using an ESP8266 Arduino processor. The main reason for this approach is that these devices are very small, cheap and have in-built 2.4GHz Wi-Fi support. 2.4GHz Wi-Fi is preferable as it has longer range. This device will also work in other types of vehicles and not just cars.
A key feature of this project is that the processor must draw no power from the car battery when not in use. This is achieved by using 12V power switched via the vehicle ignition switch an the interior courtesy lights to provide the initial power to the processor. A permanent 12V power feed via a relay is also controlled by the processor, such that it can maintain power to itself until it wants to shut down, regardless of what happens to the ignition switch. This then allows it to inform our smart home that it has shutdown whilst still at home and hasn't simply left the Wi-Fi coverage area of our home. This assumes the processor is monitoring the ignition switch status.
We model each of our cars as a zone within the Drive zone and have extended our smart home zone model to handle the concept of "mobile zones" that may or may not be present. This is an extremely powerful concept.
It is also possible to buy 'remote start' kits that can be installed in modern cars. Typically these allow the car to be started and warmed up prior to entry. The key feature being that the car remains secure and can't be accessed and driven away by passers by. Many actually add more advanced security features.
Using remote starters is illegal in some places.
One area of our research is how these techniques can be applied to human powered transport, such as bicycles. The challenge here is more to do with the available power but our main bicycle has a hub dynamo (for LED lights and phone charging) and we are investigating the options.
Our research aims to push the boundaries of vehicles as smart spaces in their own right and to explore their relationship with our contextual smart home. We see transport as an extension of the smart home and we currently model them as mobile zones, as part of our smart home.
Companies like Amazon are already making a big push to get voice control via Alexa in vehicles. In reality though, a lot of these capabilities already exist in your car, via your Smartphone.
Knowing that a vehicle has been started is a key part of being able to track if it has been driven away or simply moved on the drive.
Our @smartest_home sometimes tweets when a vehicle has been started.
Knowing that a vehicle has just arrived back home means that certain things like external lighting can be automated regardless of who is driving, depending on the time or day and/or outside light levels. It could also be used to unlock the front door or a garage door. It will also add to the wider whole home context and enable more intelligent control of other things in the smart home. The length of time the vehicle was away from home may also be a factor in any adaptive behaviours.
Our @smartest_home sometimes tweets when a vehicle has returned home.
