CarWatch
AI
in-car voice assistant
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
3 positive, 17 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 14 critical, out of 34 comments about the project. Thread score -0.29.
Idea: 2 for, 3 againstPerformance: 0 for, 4 againstDocs: 0 for, 4 againstPricing: 0 for, 2 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive local model performance on a Pi
From 1 comment
Maker reports low hallucination rate with RAG on manual
From 1 comment
I've been very impressed by it's intelligence and lack of hallucinations. The dynamic Q3 is a good balance between accuracy and size keeping the 35B just below 16 GB. It is not…
petruspennanen on HN
Objections
Model choice too slow and too heavy for Pi memory bandwidth
From 1 comment
The issue is not RAM size. It's memory bandwidth! The 12B and 31B models will be useless on a Pi 5; maybe the 12B can be persuaded to run, but it may not manage more than one…
dofm on HN
Unclear use cases beyond what buttons already do
From 2 comments
I think you should provide better use case scenarios that make clear why this project is useful. I can already change AC and lock doors with two buttons, why it should be better…
fedeb95 on HNAt one point, every machine on earth is going to be its own agent, asking and answering questions and expressing concerns. Its like a good example of that, but I think the…
sshussain270 on HN
Local models unreliable on specific car details
From 2 comments
Fair warning, I have found local models and frontier models to be very bad at the specifics when it comes to cars. Small differences like month and year model can impact oil…
ehnto on HNIt makes stuff up about my car all the time, even when provided with factory and/or aftermarket service manuals to peruse in a custom GPT. That car is a ridiculously-common Honda…
ssl-3 on HN
Readme includes unverified claims and reads as AI-written
From 3 comments
I'm currently integrating one for simple diagnostic readouts to integrated small touchscreen. The main goal being a retro looking display that mainly dumps ODB data/monitors, but…
Reubachi on HNFrom readme: """ Unverified against the real car — it will confirm or refute itself on the next drive """ Looks like a ton of this is aspirational. For your project -- do you…
VTimofeenko on HNI scanned this README looking for the part written by a human and gave up when I realized there wasn't one. the Mermaid diagram doesn't even render.
tessierashpool on HN
Requests
Clearer use cases with status indicators
From 1 comment
Thanks point taken, will add clear use cases with proven / in testing / planned status indicators!
petruspennanen on HN
Support for more car brands via cloud integrations
From 1 comment
Yes Qwen runs local. Manufacturer cloud workw via existing integrations (they have many) in Home Assistant. The Pi makes a secure tunnel to my home assistant running on a Mac…
petruspennanen on HN
Try a smaller, faster reasoning model
From 2 comments
The issue is not RAM size. It's memory bandwidth! The 12B and 31B models will be useless on a Pi 5; maybe the 12B can be persuaded to run, but it may not manage more than one…
dofm on HNHmm could try Ornith - wouldn't mind if answers came a bit faster. Probably hard to reach Qwens intelligence level though.
petruspennanen on HN
Questions
How does it handle trim/year ambiguity and show sources?
From 2 comments
I’d be most interested in how it handles uncertainty when the answer depends on trim/year or service history. For a car assistant, a useful default might be “I found the relevant…
jiangriver66 on HNIt refers to the manual page, that's really all you can do in that case especially offline.
petruspennanen on HN
What hardware is needed for OBD data?
From 2 comments
What's the hardware situation to get OBD data?
yjftsjthsd-h on HNAny standard OBD-II ELM32 will work, they are like $15.. Mine is a Vgate iCar Pro over bluetooth. A USB ELM327 v1.5 also works
petruspennanen on HN
Alternatives named
Freematics One+ for OBD and GPS
From 1 comment
I have no idea on OP, but as far as a waypointer, have been in the area of building bespoke automotive telemetry solutions for a while now (including reversing some existing…
rpcope1 on HN
Perplexity for fact-checking
From 1 comment
For prompts that needs fact-checking, I like these days to use Perplexity directly instead these days. It's way faster than the default websearch tool + give a link to the…
ygouzerh on HN
Pitstop app
From 1 comment
I will shamelessly plug https://pitstop.app. I've been working on this for years and I work on/race cars regularly. I wouldn't fully trust LLMs with this :p BUT this project is…
Robdel12 on HN