Show HN: Cargenta – We Make Cars Connected
Show HN: Cargenta – We Make Cars Connected

Hi HN,

I’m Emil and I'm the founder of Cargenta (https://www.cargenta.com). We produce plug & play IoT devices for car owners to connect their ordinary car to the Internet and use a smart phone to get the vehicle real time location, health status, receive maintenance assistance and configure advanced security and safety features.

Many years ago, it started with a problem: Maintaining my car was too expensive and time consuming. I am a techie and a problem solver at heart, so I decided to check how can I efficiently solve my problem. Efficiently is the keyword here. It turned out there weren’t many good solutions. I mostly found car diagnostics tools and the decent ones were expensive, professional units, definitely not suited for someone who wants it just for his car. So I thought: OK then, let’s build a simple and affordable diagnostics device that anyone can use.

This is how I started working on Cargenta Brain. Now, after years of hard work, the product is finally ready for the market and it ended up having much more useful features than just diagnostics. In a nutshell, it is an IoT device that is installed in the car OBDII port and can connect any contemporary car to the Internet. Then, the driver can interact with his car from anywhere.

The technology as such is not new but the approach to delivering value out if it is.

Most of all, it is a multi-purpose device: It integrates OBDII reader chip, GPS, GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth, Gyroscope, Battery and a Sim Card. The beauty of it is that we provide the HW device and the internet data plan for it in a bundle. So, people just need to plug it in, and it works. The mobile apps for iOS and Android are free to use.

We are soon to launch Kickstarter campaign. In the meantime, users can sign up at our website, where we have prepared some gifts and discounts for our early supporters.

Below are the currently available features:

* Read & Clear Vehicle Fault Codes (DTCs)

* 24/7 Vehicle Health Monitoring

* Remote Vehicle Diagnostics

* Live GPS Location Tracking

* Location & Route History

* Maintenance Reminders

* Maintenance History

* Live Vehicle Sensor Data: Speed, RPM, Calculated Load Value, Coolant Temperature, Fuel System Status, Short/Long Term Fuel Trim, Fault Codes & more

* Automatic Notifications in case of: Technical Problem, Crash, Theft, Towing, Over speeding, Geofence Breach, Battery Failure, Car Movement, Engine Start, Maintenance Due & more

* Reports: Fuel Consumption, Average Speed, Top Speed, Mileage Driven, Route, Driving Behavior & more

Features we might add in the future (please, comment below if you’d like to have any of them):

* Car Configurator – configure dashboard, lights, windows, instruments and features. Encode car modules, reset maintenance indicator.

* Car Remote Control - remote start and stop the engine, lock and unlock doors, turn air condition or heating, etc.

* Usage Based Insurance – auto insurance quotes based on personal driving habits. Drivers who drive less or drive safe pay less. This is a much debated feature, so we’d like to hear your thoughts about it.

Next steps: The hardware devices and the platform that we are building right now, are not tremendously groundbreaking but…we must start from somewhere. So, we start with something simple - a product that people need. We then use the knowledge and experience to take the technology to the next level.

Here is our vision for the future: Universal Vehicle to Everything Communication (V2X) for better safety on the roads, saving lives and enabling faster introduction of self-driving technologies.

The basic idea is to make all cars talk to each other and get live updates of their surroundings, speed, direction, braking, traffic flow, hazards ahead etc. That’s the plan. Execution is to follow.

Community Driven: Right now, we are focused on our Cargenta Brain unit and want to provide features that make sense to the users. That’s why we want to hear from you! Please, share below any thoughts, advice or recommendations that you believe will help us improve.

Beta users: We need limited number of beta users for specific countries to test the network coverage. If interested in participating, please send us an email: support@cargenta.com.

Get involved: If you like the project and want to be part of it, let us know: support@cargenta.com

Final thoughts. As many of you know, making hardware is hard. Consumer hardware is even harder. It’s capital and resource intensive and even the big tech companies struggle to get it right. For startups, the success rate is extremely low. Yet, if we give up before even trying only because it is hard, how can we hope to ever achieve something great?

Thank you for your time spent reading this post!

[1] Website: https://www.cargenta.com/

[2] Product video: https://youtu.be/j3XQn-H3Mnw

[3] Recommendations for features: https://www.cargenta.com/forums/topic/top-features-that-you-wish-to-have-in-cargenta-brain/