Teardown: The BMW / Harman IDC23H Infotainment Unit (B423)

A friend had a nice job of driving BMWs for a manufacturer of such a system (it was early 2000s and the system was more embedded than Android/Linux). One test was setting a calendar alarm (because yeah of course the BMW needs an on-board calendar), and while cruising down the highway, wait for the alarm to go off, and then open a door. He said a colleague did this and the system crashed and went dark...

I suppose even driving 20kmh should trigger the "door open!" alarm.

It went like this:

We need a team of very good sw developers.

Maybe we can have 20% of the team be cheap "developers", people that have no inclination towards sw development to do the boring stuff.

Maybe 20% of real developers is enough in a team. The rest will learn from them.

Let's have 100% cheap developers, the project only needs changes.

We can get even cheaper developers, come to us with no prior experience and in 3 months we will teach you what you need to know.

Our projects are delayed due to covid.

Oh no, the Chinese!

BMW has a talent in that space. Over engineered modules with terrible software. I recently drove a Toyota rental and they seem to have hired some former BMW software people as well.

I don't need 120hz Apple-like design, but it's crazy how they can't even keep a basic 30fps UI running smooth. And they still try to throw in more and more bad running animations.

> good devs are hard to find and expensive

> company contracts offshore agency

> devs costs drop by 20-40%

> offshore agency grabs any warm body off the street, JS-adjacent experience and minimum English is only requirement

> keeps 40% of the money

> "how many story points for the 360° camera React component, guys?"

> ... to determine the technique they use to get massive frame drops on hardware they fully control

I understand that's really lame but... who the heck gives a flying f--k about framerate in a car?

Are we talking about videos lagging for people sitting at the back (like kids)?

Right, but there's a mismatch in priorities between when I'm driving and when I'm walking around. I would rather not lug around a big-ass phone when I'm out and about. My iphone is already too big as it is. But when driving, its screen should be way larger.

So while I'm fine with having to connect my phone to my car to get useful functionality, I'd like the car to provide something, too. I don't need it to be "smart" in any way, just a big, well-placed dumb screen that displays whatever the phone sends over.

This is already what I do when I drive a car, so I couldn't care less about whatever infotainment system is provided by the car. The only thing I use, because my phone isn't always practical for that, is the radio (as in listening to actual radio broadcasts).

In the US, reversing cameras have been mandatory since 2018, and in the EU since 2024, so any new car sold there will need a display for the camera output.

I wonder if the law specified a minimum display size and resolution, otherwise a car company could sell a car with an Apple-watch-sized display to save costs. I imagine selling a car where the display depends on the user's phone and complying with these laws will be virtually impossible.

It’s rendering the driver’s display (i.e. the gauge cluster), the driver HUD, the central display, watching a driver-facing camera for fatigue alerting, handling Bluetooth, WiFi, navigation. Calling it an “infotainment” system is underselling a bit

It’s obsolete anyway. If the board is analysing video for safety purposes it’s a core part of the car.

While I didn't know it did for cars, Garmin is one of the most popular manufacturers of airplane avionics (which are basically plane "infotainment" screens), so I guess it makes sense.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/axis/overview/

Garmin makes so many things, from dome radars to bicycle lights, to car audio and golf gear, and everything in-between. All of the stuff I've bought with Garmin also manages to be really high quality and long-lasting. Not affiliated, guess I'm just a happy customer.