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Talk Intermediate

alpaDrive: standardized car infotainment; open sourced

Proposal status is Rejected
Session Description

Before going through the talk points, I'd appreciate if you could keep in mind what this project is. This is a FOSS system that includes a hardware which can be plugged into any car on the road today. It will then enable a load of features in the car, including access to a full blown desktop Linux environment, right on your dashboard. The device itself will be connected to the car at all times and be aware of what the car is doing. This enables many things which I'll talk on stage. Earlier, I had presented the mini version of this project in FOSS meetups at both Kochi & Bangalore. This version builds upon the idea. Now, onto the talk itself.


The talk will begin by introducing the audience to infotainment & cloud connectivity and what it means for cars today. It'll then go on to discuss the current status of this tech in India, since alpaDrive primarily targets third world countries like India, where the economy isn't as strong as the west. Then, there'll be a quick glimpse of what we're aiming to achieve with the project, aka, a short video of what the final version would look like (just to ignite some curiosity).


Afterwards, some of the currently existing solutions (in India) would be shown and comma.ai's openpilot will also be familiarized with the audience, just for good measure. Some aftermarket android devices would be familiarized as well.


Next comes alpaDrive itself, where I'll explain the hardware choices, components used & how we intend to make the hardware development open source as well. After that, the talk will dive into the software architecture of the system, how it ticks & a general behind the scenes overview. I also intend to walk the audience through the story of this idea from inception to reality. As stated at the beginning, this project was built as a mini device initially and presented at FOSS meetups, where I had guaranteed that a bigger version was coming. The whole project story will be discussed there.


Following this will be a short session where I'll talk how a normal user can use our docs to setup an alpaDrive device by themself. We also will bring a device on stage and show how it looks and feels. I'll finish the talk by taking the audience through what's left to contribute & fix, and how they can be a part of it.


Last but not least, we intend to bring a rental car to the premises, and once the event is over, I'll use the device we just showed on stage to do a hands-on demo in the car itself! Everyone will be able to use and feel the thing in real life, and how it feels in a car.

References

https://github.com/alpaDrive

Session Categories

FOSS

Speakers

Vishal
Vishal developer

I'm Vishal, yet another software developer on Earth. I'm currently pursuing my bachelor's degree at St. Thomas Institute for Science & Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. I've worked on a couple of projects throughout my time of building & breaking stuff, some of which are FOSS. Here are some of them. I'm omitting alpaDrive itself from this list since it is the talk.


  1. alpaDrive mini: It's a system for enabling cloud connectivity in legacy vehicles, aka cars on the roads today. This is a mini version of alpaDrive itself, without the screen and UI but with the core, say alpaDrive headless. You can view the source at https://github.com/alpaDrive.
  2. selseus: This was a solution (which didn't really succeed) to the post COVID fear surrounding public spaces like offices & schools. During the time, we had to wait in a long queue every day just to get our body temperatures recorded to enter our college campus. So, we came up with the idea of automating the whole thing, and thus, selseus was born. View the source at https://github.com/selseus.
  3. ShopScrap: side project to build an alternate search engine for consumer products. Yeah, didn't fare well 😅 anyway here's the source: https://github.com/vishalkrishnads/ShopScrap
  4. Grovit: Stupid idea, if you ask me, it's a device that helps automate house gardening. As you might've guessed, didn't really stick lol. Here's the source: https://github.com/vishalkrishnads/Grovit.
  5. FlashGrab: was an app I built for grabbing something from Flipkart/Amazon flash sales, which were a thing back in 2020. Had to shut the whole thing down due to no revenue (and mounting server costs). It was FOSS, but I archived it since (rather than showing the trash code to the world).
  6. EduHelper: It's a humanoid robot I built at high school along with my friend Mufeed VH (co-founder at stition.ai & creator of devika). Got featured in the Indian Express at the time. But then again, got trashed shortly after.


As far as my work experiences go, I've worked at a couple of early stage startups, mostly doing client work. Except for Lyminal, all of the startups have been a disappointment honestly, leading me to quit. So as of now, I'm actively looking for new opportunities.


If you want to connect/chat with me, drop an email at 321vishalds@gmail.com, or a message on Telegram. I'm just a student who's pretty chill & look forward to hearing from you!