[Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Forum rules
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
Locked
User avatar
rechargecar
 
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 9:08 am

[Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Post by rechargecar »

Hello Everyone,

This place is awesome. Just thought I'd post a quick introduction and some of our thoughts as we start up our Electric car conversion product business.

A few years ago, a group of us built an electric car. In the process, we found that there are tons of items that we needed that either didn't exist, were very expensive or inadequate for electric vehicle (EV) conversions.

As a result, we decided to start a business to develop these things for the DIY crowd. The result being better, safer and more efficient electric cars.

We are getting ready to start announcing some of the more innovative and useful products we came up with - USB and CAN based EV sensors. The idea being that people will use our sensors to read generic values like Amperage, Temperature, RPM and manipulate that data on a computer to get the desired information. For example, Instantaneous efficiency, average efficiency, estimated range, etc.

Which brings me to the reason I post to this forum. We are mainly a hardware group and feel our strengths are in design, manufacturing and production. However, sometimes our hardware depends heavily on software. We want to encourage creative and fluid use of our solutions (using every platform), and have decided to start by documenting and publishing the 'Communication protocol', i.e. Packet structure. Of course, to get things moving, we will release some initial software.

Is there already a term for this? - 'Open Interface'? 'Open Communication Layer'? There has got to be a better name for this.

Also, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on our strategies and goals.

Thanks!

Josh
RechargeCar Inc.
http://www.rechargecar.com

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: [Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Post by adafruit »

rechargecar wrote:Which brings me to the reason I post to this forum. We are mainly a hardware group and feel our strengths are in design, manufacturing and production. However, sometimes our hardware depends heavily on software. We want to encourage creative and fluid use of our solutions (using every platform), and have decided to start by documenting and publishing the 'Communication protocol', i.e. Packet structure. Of course, to get things moving, we will release some initial software. Is there already a term for this? - 'Open Interface'? 'Open Communication Layer'? There has got to be a better name for this.
protocol is a common term used to describe this, a lot of web companies say "open API" as well. it usually means a documented ready-to use method of communication between to "things". an open API for an electric car sounds cool :)

cheers,
adafruit

charliex
 
Posts: 179
Joined: Sat Nov 28, 2009 5:54 pm

Re: [Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Post by charliex »

I usually just hear it referred to as a public api.

for cars a lot of the open standards are done by the SAE, example J2534

User avatar
rechargecar
 
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 9:08 am

Re: [Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Post by rechargecar »

Open/Public API - there you go. I think we will come up with something a little more Jazzy too.

By the way, the system we are designing will communicate via USB with our packet structure and via CAN with SAE J1939 standards.

Thanks for the feedback!

User avatar
rechargecar
 
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 9:08 am

Re: [Open?] Electric Car Widget manufacturer ramblings.

Post by rechargecar »

Well, its official:

Announcing our 'OpenAPI EV Management Initiative.'

Read all about it, tell your friends!

http://www.rechargecar.com/openness

Locked
Forum rules
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!

Return to “Kitbiz”