The NS1 Dashboard Android App is the software component of the NS1 Gauge System, which is a complete replacement for the stock gauge/instrament panel on all late model snowmobiles.
The NS1 Dashboard App has had Gotenna support for realtime location sharing for a few months now, but only in the last month or two has the Gotenna support really been stable enough to call useful.
The features of the realtime location sharing that makes use of the Gotenna include:
Transmission of realtime location information every 13 seconds, which is needed since a snowmobile can move out of Gotenna range in 30 to 60 seconds.
Indication of which direction another rider is moving.
Indication of whether a rider is moving or stationary, which can tell you whether a rider is stuck.
A track to show the previous locations received for a rider, so that you can get a good idea of what direction they were heading if they are now out of range, or how they got to where they are.
The NS1 Dashboard Android App is designed for 7 or 8 inch tablets running at a resolution of about 1200X800. It will work on most Android devices, but you’ll likely run into screen formatting issues if the screen ratio or resolution is drastically different. It uses high contrast colors to ensure good visibility in direct sunlight. The application is meant to be paired with the NS1 Gauge System hardware, but it is definitely useable without the hardware.
You can find the NS1 Dashboard Application in the Google Play Store here:
Very cool device. Seems oriented toward the typical and expected plug-and-play experience, which is good for most who’ll buy one. Either they have the adapter/firmware for your unit or not.
My thinking is that a snowmobile isn’t that much different from a motorcycle or tiny 4x4 and those aren’t all that different from standard automotive systems. Which makes me curious as to what protocol is used to connect to the snowmobile. Does it feed only digital data to the NS1 or are the signals still analog at that point, then digitized by the NS1?
The first route will be more generally useful in the future, since everything is going digital and it offers further opportunities to parse and interpret data, but would seem to require some sort of standalone unit to collect and digitize the data before feeding it to the NS1 if used in anything other than the listed snowmobiles.
The second “analog” route makes it much more widely useful now, as anyone who’s worked on car or whatever can simply set up the sensors, feed the output via standard wiring to the NS1 and let it digitize things. No need to do anything to the vehicle itself in many cases, meaning the NS1 could work with virtually any vehicle made in the last several decades or even further back.
Combine that with wireless control and, well, be careful. Even major players with access to lots of AI power seems to be having some issues with building and operating autonomous vehicles. but this could be a real game changer for many robots, drones, etc. With basic stability being built into most autonomous robotic systems, it’s easier to rely on a wireless link because the data stream doesn’t need to worry as much about that aspect of the workload .
It really depends on the vehicle. The NS1 hardware was designed to accept many different types of inputs, which allows it to work on different vehicles by having a daughterboard specific to that vheicle. The daughterboard mainly just contains a connector specific to the vehicle so that no rewiring is needed. The snowmobile manufacturers have definitely moved towards a communication bus implementations, but there are still a few inputs that are either analog or simple digital.
Unfortunately the Location Sharing feature that uses the Gotenna wasn’t released until mid snowmobiling season, so there were only a couple of users that managed to try it out. One of them had stability issues that I’ve since resolved, and the other found it to be quite useful! I personally used it quite a bit when I was out West riding in the mountains, and the ability to know the location of everyone in the group is very confidence building when you are leading a group.
When you are riding in the mountains you usually move from spot to spot, and stay at each spot for 15 minutes or so before moving onto the next. When you’re playing around at a spot you are usually within 1/2 mile of everyone, but quite often you have a tree line or other terrain that keeps you from seeing them directly. The Location Sharing using the Gotenna really helps in those situations since riders get stuck mostly when they are playing around. Often when someone gets stuck it will be in a tree well or some other not obvious area, so having a map that guides you right to them, along with knowing how they got to where they are, is incredibly useful. You can also be sure that everyone in the group is moving to the next spot when the time comes, preventing someone from getting left behind and then going in the wrong direction to find the rest of the group.
For trail riding it also is very useful for keeping the group together. Often the leader is the fastest rider, and every 10 minutes or so will have to stop and wait for the rest of the group to catch up. With the Location Sharing feature the leader can ensure that the entire group is together, which usually requires stopping the whole group except the last rider.
I’ll be adding support for Arctic Cat Wildcat side by sides in the next month or two, so I imagine I’ll have feedback well before next snowmobiling season.
Excellent. I totally see why NextStageGauges would go this route with the primary aim of its consumer sales.
But it also sounds like the inputs can be configured to suit a wide variety of needs. With a few tricks, this could be applied to autonomous robotics, for instance, in addition to helping humans on the trail.
I’m thinking the auto industry has moved on from the OBD II monitoring and diagnosis system in our 1997 Land Cruiser, but this makes me wonder if the newer versions offer any links or data exchange within it to or from the onboard GPS/mapping display that could be exploited with your technology, yet provide a very neat and tidy install? All of that plus goTenna in the dash could be very useful.
The NS1 Gauge System is a combination of off road focused navigation and off road vehicle system monitoring. This is why it has such extensive Garmin compatible map support, aerial and topographic map support, highly configurable gauge faces, and solid data logging. The new Location Sharing feature using Gotennas works well for the off road market since the speeds are lower, and cell coverge is quite often not available in riding areas.
A lot of the street vehicle OEMs already have some sort of navigation functionality built into their products. For street vehicles this is pretty easy to do, since Google Maps, Map Quest, and Open Street Map among others have solutions available. I believe that Google Maps is experimenting with some sort of realtime location sharing that uses the celluar data connection, which since highways and roads are often near cell towers, would work reasonably well.
Sounds very adaptable to a wide variety of applications. While it’s not directly a marketing initiative, you might check into university programs that the NS1 could support to give student-experimenters some hands-on experience with the technology.
As an example, locally at the big U, they have a number of ongoing projects that might find the NS1 with goTenna support very useful. They have a solar-powered project car, multiple robotics competitions, and several alternative energy projects where the NS1 might serve to manage data and functionality. With Tom Siebel’s help, they also are building a new center for creative innovation that will be open to students across the university, not just in Engineering, to use for hands on engagement with technology.
This is just one example of where you might derive immense benefits by sponsoring opportunities for students to come up with ideas of where the NS1 could be put to use. There’s probably a school that is closer to your location and heart. I imagine a handful of these put into the hands of some prepared students could lead to a number of creative ideas.
