Your car’s path to wireless enlightenment

Your car’s path to wireless enlightenment
Although you might think that wireless is a new topic for your car, in fact,
your car has been wirelessly enabled for years. Your car stereo gets wireless
AM/FM signals from afar, and with the advent of satellite radio, now even farther
than ever before. (See the nearby sidebar, “Satellite radio.”) Wireless
phone options — cellular and Bluetooth-based technologies — are quickly
filtering into the car. (We discuss Bluetooth and cars more in Chapter 15.)
And then there’s the new wave of electronic toll systems that also predominantly
use short range wireless technology to extract from your bank
account that quarter (or dollar) every time that you cross a toll bridge. So
wireless is all over your car . . . but just not centralized on any sort of wireless
backbone, like we talk about for your home.
Satellite radio
Your wireless home is not always just about
802.11 technologies . . . other forms of wireless
will enhance your home, and satellite radio is
one of them, particularly for your car. If you’re
like us, you live somewhere where there isn’t a
whole lot of programming that you really want
to listen to. Check out satellite radio, which
offers a huge number of stations (over 100 each)
beamed to your house or car from a handful of
geostationary satellites hovering above the
equator. We find a ton more diverse and just
plain interesting stuff coming across these
space-based airwaves than we find on our local
radio today. Satellite radio services, from startups
such as XM Radio or SIRIUS, require you
to — gasp — pay for your radio (about $10 to
$12 a month).
Check out the Web sites of the two providers
(XM Radio, www.xmradio.com; and SIRIUS,
www.sirius.com) to find the programming
that you prefer. Then get your hands on a satellite
radio tuner. (You can find a bunch of different
models listed on each company’s Web
page.) The majority of these satellite tuners are
designed for in-car use (because people tend to
listen to the radio most while they’re driving),
but XM Radio offers some really cool tuners
(from Sony and Delco) that can do double duty:
You can put these tuners in your car, and when
you get home, pull them out and plug them into
your A/V receiver. As of this writing, SIRIUS
doesn’t yet offer a receiver for in-home use, but
we expect that it will shortly.
Remember: These satellites are down by the
equator, so no matter where you live in the United
States, put your antenna in a south-facing
window to pick up a good signal in your home.
Your car is also becoming more outfitted for computing and entertainment
devices and functionality as manufacturers add as standard and optional features
things such as DVD and VHS tape playback systems, Global Positioning
Systems (GPSes), and even computers to operate your car.
All this spells “opportunity” for wireless. Bluetooth and 802.11 technologies are
infiltrating the car, creating the same wireless backbone as in your home — a
universal wireless network that any device or function can access to talk to
other parts of the car, like your stereo, and to points outside the car. In fact,
your wireless home network is going to play an important part in helping consolidate
and integrate your car’s wireless network within the car and with your
home as these two areas converge towards each other.
The response has been a flurry of activity by the auto manufacturers and
others to network-enable cars with wireless phone, data, video, audio, and
control mechanisms that resemble (in a lot of ways) the same efforts that are
going on inside your house by the other consumer goods manufacturers. In
fact, you’re starting to see whole product lines that include home and car
wireless network products.
Linksys, for instance, has teamed with Zandiant Technologies (www.
zandiant.com) to extend its digital home media products to wireless MP3
players in the car and other products that enable vehicles to connect with
home, office, and hot spot networks. Very cool. A version capable of doing
video is expected by the end of 2003, probably based on 802.11g. Other familiar
home wireless product companies, like Kenwood, have similar efforts.