project::GIGACAR in the year 2000
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1999
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2000

Sorry, not many photos for 2000. I used mobile internet in the car several times (for example to finish a programming project which could only be tested on a special server while driving to the EXPO) but that wasn't something new any more...

But I started work on a GPS application which runs on the Nokia 9000/9110 communicator, and as this introduced two features I also have in the current gigacar, I'll describe it here...

The basic idea is to connect a GPS receiver to a mobile phone which is installed in the normal hands-free car-kit, like you can see in the picture. The application on the mobile phone is now able to do various things with the position data, the GSM specific part is to send the car's current position over SMS to a central server.
9110 connected
to Magellan 315

I tested this on my way to and from the 17C3 in Berlin which this way could be monitored live on the web, here's an example image of the way back, during the test I had a map of germany in the background but I had to remove it for copyright reasons and I never found the time to adjust a new one to the coordinate system:

The two crosses are for two cars, each of which had a GPS receiver and a Nokia communicator on board and sent the position to my own SMS receiver station, the colors indicate the speed driven. Besides this GSM based function the application's also able to write a local logfile to the communicators flashdisk (which is larger than a normal GPSs tracklog capabilities :) and - and some might think this is the most important function in a car - use a local database of speed cameras to warn the driver of expensive photo locations. This also could be done on a notebook of course, but except for long journeys I usually don't have a notebook running in the car, but the 9110 is always in it's car kit when I'm on the road...


Display of the Applikation with connected GPS


Application on Nokia 9110
(older version)
Application on Nokia 9000