I don't understand why it was designed to fit nicely in your hand, and why it was made with bright colors.<p>#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.<p>#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, the first thing I would do is obscure it with hockey tape, but I would be concerned that the wireless capabilities would be hindered.
Worth noting since we're all supposed to be hackers, the connector hasn't changed over the years since '96 OBD II in the US, but there are several protocols and many vendor-specific subsets of interaction. Early "code readers" may not work on later cars despite having the same plug because the underlying protocol is different. It's easy enough to find out what the protocols are on wikipedia if you're interested. What's available greatly depends on the specific vehicle manufacturer but there is a minimum set of data including DTC's (diagnostic trouble codes) for all.<p>With manufacturer-specific details, there's an unbelievable amount of data and even commands and firmware download capability through that port. A decent PC-based system with specifics for your vehicle added-on is a worthy tool if you tend to do your own car repairs. Or at least you can go into the shop and tell them what part you need and know whether you're being quoted a reasonable price.
Considering the possibilities, I'm very much surprised that Google hasn't entered this space to supplement their traffic intelligence. Just look at the possibilities of the Torque Android app and this Mojio dongle to see how powerful it is.<p>If Google came out with a bluetooth OBD-II dongle, they could integrate it into Google Maps/Nav and Google Now, both on Android and iOS. And you don't need an expensive cellular connection for a lot of the functionality, driving down the cost.<p>In the long term, this would have positive effects for them. They would have realtime analytics from the roads to vastly improve traffic analytics in Google Maps. Google Navigation would also be improved for the user by providing realtime information about speed and fuel, which would greatly improve the user experience (more accurate directions, heads up display of speed, and "nearest gas station" when you're running low).<p>Best of all? It would be $20, and provide them with all the data they need to make their upcoming driverless cars navigate better as well as improving navigation for existing android users in normal cars. It would also tell them how inefficient people are using their vehicles, and use this real crowdsourced data to market the efficiency of their driverless vehicles.
I've recently done some work for a startup that is developing a highly comparable product.<p>I strongly doubt their "works on any car since 1995" claim. While OBD-II has been an official standard for very long, not all cars support it equally well at all. We've had serious trouble getting it to work with A-brand cars made in e.g. 1999.<p>Therefore, I believe that them making this claim can mean one of two things:<p><pre><code> - They're lying
- Their "prototype" has seen little field testing at this point.
</code></pre>
That said, honesty be told, we've been testing in Europe, where the OBD standard has been adopted later. My impression is that moj.io is a North-American only product. Maybe this makes all the difference.<p>Additionally, however, "Virtual Mechanic" based on OBD-II alone is going to be a half-assed feature (to my understanding). OBD-II contains little more error reporting than that related to emission (i.e. your engine). If your airbag or your breaks malfunction, then this may only be reported through manufacturer-specific protocols. Most importantly, this would mean that a light in your dashboard may be lit, while the Moj.io app says "Running Great!" I highly doubt that they have implemented all manufacturer-specific protocols to a sufficient extent for this feature to work well. It is technically possible, but it needs either a lot of reverse engineering, or a lot of purchased IP.<p>I really like the other features (FamilyConnect, etc), though, and how they're presented. Well done!<p>Still, while I like this approach, and while I want this badly myself (and a lot of moj.io seems better planned, marketed and designed than what I've been involved in), based on the above I have strong doubts.<p>Now, I understand that this may be hard criticism, and maybe I'm completely wrong about some aspects - I'm no real expert here. So if one of the founders reads this, feel free to correct me!
Wow! A HUGE market that escaped everybody’s attention! There are a few comments that come to mind:<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Just my $0.02. I’d love to hear your projections as well, or comments on something I missed.
There is a community of OBD2 hackers out there working on this same problem w/ Arduino / Raspberry Pie. In my opinion, this is a feature that will be replaced by manufacturers embracing open APIs for the benefit of a more connected environment. So, while timely now, it will eventually be displaced.<p>If you want to build your own, start with OpenGuage: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/opengauge/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/opengauge/</a>
Awesome. We are to 4 in just a few months [1]: Lit Motors C-1, Appcelerator+Denso, Ford's Open API, and now Moj.io. This space is exploding quickly and as a hacker and car enthusiast I can't wait to see what is next. Best of luck on your launch!<p>[1] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4746532" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4746532</a>
Will we be able to modify the software running on the device? I sure as hell don't want information about my car's problems or GPS whereabouts, not to mention a detailed record of when I'm speeding, to be uploaded to "the cloud".<p>And of course -- the increasingly likely case that "the cloud" gets owned, the hardware devices get some kind of pushed software update, which then proceeds to use manufacturer specific commands to upload new firmware into my car and drive me off the road.<p>Blah blah. There're good reasons to be reluctant about hooking your car up to the internet and sending your data over yonder.<p>It looks like potentially nice hardware. Now let me do the software myself.<p>While you're at it, it'd be nice to just make the software open-source, so that tinkerers can tinker.<p>Lest I have to JTAG the shit out of the flash chip. Which reminds me to ask -- can you at the very least keep some JTAG or serial headers on there? Please?
<p><pre><code> moj.io works in all major urban centers with coverage for
95% of the Canadian and US population
</code></pre>
I think this should be near the top. Kickstarter-like projects always forget to account for international backers, which is getting seriously annoying.
Most of the neat things that this device can accomplish could also be done with an OBD-II to Bluetooth interface, which can be had for ~$20 off EBay.<p>You don't get remote access to the bus, but it's much cheaper. Not sure how they plan to implement some of the non-OBD-II features (remote unlock is a major one) for all vehicles, since there's no standard. But it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
I see the advantage of having a sim (the real remote monitoring part) but also the disadvantage of needing a dataplan for the sim and security concerns ... why not just make a bluetooth dongle for a fraction of the price ...
Great comments everyone. We agonized about bluetooth. If we can get bluetooth into the mojio without affecting the delivery dates, we intend to include it in the current version - no promises right now though. That way, people have the option to go without a data plan as needed. Also, there's no data plan lock in to mojio so we are looking for ways where people can either add a device to their existing cellular plan or just pay for months where they need it. We are also exploring ways to offset data plan costs. If we can get a sufficient user base, we all get to enjoy the economies of scale.
This looks very promising. Good potential for affordable fleet-tracking.<p>I'm also excited to see a local (Vancouver) company with such a polished offer. I'll be following this one closely.
I had a roommate with one of these ODB connector dongles. He paired it with his phone, and was able to get <i>tons</i> of information about the car.<p>He could even shut off various warnings/status lights, which was handy (my car at the time had a faulty sensor).
Nice... though you don't talk about what the data plan will cost. I assume it's basically like having an iPad with various carriers. But I could see that as a possible issue.<p>Maybe if it could connect to the wifi of my house and send some data then?
Interesting, lots of products being made by much larger companies already in the market... Audiovox just launched their Car Connection at retail. Not sure if you considered the competition. Calamp, danlaw, xirgo, anydata, etc. etc
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??
I went to <a href="http://www.moj.io/obd" rel="nofollow">http://www.moj.io/obd</a> as instructed by the FAQ to learn more about the OnBoard Diagnostic port, but got a 404.<p>Edit: clarity