Patent ID: 7532963

Claim:
A programmed apparatus, programmed to execute a method of monitoring a set of operational characteristics of a vehicle, the method comprising: (a) wirelessly receiving, by a wireless appliance in a vehicle, a software component identifying a subset of a set of operational characteristics that are monitored by an on-board diagnostic computer of the vehicle, a user specified first schedule for automatically, repeatedly collecting said operational characteristics, and a user specified second schedule for automatically, repeatedly, and wirelessly transmitting to a base station said operational characteristics; (b) processing the received software component; (c) automatically, repeatedly collecting from the vehicle's on-board diagnostic computer data for the subset of operational characteristics identified in the received software component according to said user specified first schedule; and (d) automatically, repeatedly, and wirelessly transmitting to a base station the collected data according to said user specified second schedule, wherein the software component comprises a first field configured to describe a user specified first schedule for automatically, repeatedly collecting the data and second field configured to describe a user specified second schedule configured for automatically, repeatedly, and wirelessly transmitting to a base station said data.