No affiliation, but I've bought stuff from Next Thing Co. before.
Kickstarter - Dashbot: A $49 Robot For Your Dashboard
It's sort of a smart assistant for the car that isn't heavily cloud-based. They have a nice promo video up at their Kickstarter page.
It does a lot of the work independently of your phone, and looks to be somewhat hackable. It's built on their latest development board (think Raspberry Pi competitor) and runs Linux. I like the idea of not having to dock my phone, and having the smarts stay in the car. I've already backed the project.
Cyber Formula makes another spot-on prediction:
What happens if I yell "ALL DOWNFORCES!" into Dashbot? 
On a more serious note, I might get one of these. Seems like a good, modular way to add bleeding edge nav/com features to a "dumb" car.
I've been eyeballing cheap obd2 based hud systems, this could be a nice alternative
Maybe if I clicked on the link I'd have the slightest inkling of what it does. But from the OP's post, I got nuthin'.
But, then again, I only came in here because I thought you had misspelled dashpot, like what goes on top of an SU carb.
I believe they missed an opportunity on the LED layout.
Although their legal department may have had something to do with that.
Basil Exposition wrote:
Maybe if I clicked on the link I'd have the slightest inkling of what it does. But from the OP's post, I got nuthin'.
But, then again, I only came in here because I thought you had misspelled dashpot, like what goes on top of an SU carb.
It's a fifty dollar box that sits on your dashboard and texts, navigates, plays music, and optionally talks to OBD II for you.
I thought dashpot too
damn if I ain't outta the loop
Mike wrote:
Basil Exposition wrote:
Maybe if I clicked on the link I'd have the slightest inkling of what it does. But from the OP's post, I got nuthin'.
But, then again, I only came in here because I thought you had misspelled dashpot, like what goes on top of an SU carb.
It's a fifty dollar box that sits on your dashboard and texts, navigates, plays music, and optionally talks to OBD II for you.
Ah, yes, watched the video. But doesn't Siri or other smartphone equivlents do those things, except access your OBD II?
Basil Exposition wrote:
Mike wrote:
Basil Exposition wrote:
Maybe if I clicked on the link I'd have the slightest inkling of what it does. But from the OP's post, I got nuthin'.
But, then again, I only came in here because I thought you had misspelled dashpot, like what goes on top of an SU carb.
It's a fifty dollar box that sits on your dashboard and texts, navigates, plays music, and optionally talks to OBD II for you.
Ah, yes, watched the video. But doesn't Siri or other smartphone equivlents do those things, except access your OBD II?
Yeah, sorta. Most of the time, when I get in the car, it's for fifteen minutes or less. For me, hooking up the phone is less attractive than having the smarts in the car, because spending a minute or two putting the phone in the holster, opening an app, and plugging in the cords is too "expensive" for hearing between half a song and maybe two songs. Plus, these folks are open source and documented. In car terms, these people would never put the spark plugs somewhere that would require unbolting a motor mount. If you don't like how it works, change it. You don't need permission from them, Google, or Apple.
