Ami Dash · for the BMW i3
So I built it the dashboard. An iPad on the dash reads the car, watches the road through its camera and draws everything as it happens, from the speed and the battery to the lanes, the car in front and the rain.
In the car
A 12.9-inch iPad Pro sits on the i3's dash, right above the climate controls, where your eyes already go. Magnetically mounted, almost floating.
The home screen
The car on the left, the road ahead on the right. Everything updates the moment it changes. Point at a number to see what it shows.
Large enough to read from the corner of your eye. The gear you're in lights up red.
Charge in percent. Tap it for the range in kilometres, worked out from how you really drive.
How hard you're pulling, and how much energy you win back when you lift off.
A 3D model of the i3, on the road the camera sees, in tonight's weather.
Spotify, right there. Skip a song without leaving the map.
Turn-by-turn directions, spoken in Greek or English.
When you'll get there, how far it is, and the battery you'll have left.
Climate, music, video, phone and settings.
The camera
The iPad's camera looks through the windscreen, and openpilot's open-source driving model finds the lanes, the edges of the road and the car ahead. The dashboard redraws them around your car twenty times a second.
Stopped behind a car at the lights. The dashboard puts it right in front of you, just as close.
The light turns green and the car ahead pulls away. On the dashboard it pulls away with it.
61 km/h on an unlit road in the rain. The drawn road bends left with the real one.
The line down the middle is the path the model expects you to take. Its colour coaches your speed.
And more
Every one of these was built for this car and tried on real roads.
It checks the forecast where the car is. Rain streaks down the screen when it rains and snow drifts when it snows. The road turns wet or white, the headlights light it at night, and on a clear day the sun flares in the corner.
Switch the car off and it turns to face you, lit and polished. Drag to spin it round, pinch to get closer.
Plug in and the car swings round to show its charging port. A glowing cable, the power in watts, and the time left to your target charge.
Pick a BMW straight-six or a V8. It plays through the car's speakers, revs with your right foot and shifts up as you speed along, with a turbo hiss when you lift. Chill or Sport.
It learns the way you like to drive somewhere and offers it next time. And it works out the battery you'll arrive with, counting every climb and descent on the way.
Every minute of road is recorded while you drive, in a loop that makes room for itself, and a close call is kept automatically. Drives sit on a calendar, play straight through, and save to Photos as one movie in a tap.
This is the drive from the film at the top, as the dashcam keeps it. Point at the speed line to find any moment.
Consumption for every stretch of road, green below your average and orange above. The range comes from how you actually drive, each trip keeps its own tally, and the 12 V battery is watched too.
A small computer in the car reads the i3 through its OBD port. The numbers on screen are the car's own.
Spotify is built in and the mic understands Greek. Ask it to take you somewhere, call someone or play something.
Ami Dash is a one-person project, designed and built for a BMW i3 and the iPad on its dash, and tried out on real roads, night and day.
Watch the drive again