Porsche NEXT OI Competition: HOME

As we kick off with the Porsche NEXT OI Competition 2019 we thought now would be the perfect moment to give you a quick rundown of the three themes we’d like you and your development team to embrace when thinking about applications for connected Porsche sports cars. Those three themes are: HOME, DRIVING and ARRIVAL.

HOME

In today’s post we’re looking at HOME, the starting point to many of our most important journeys.

For this year’s competition, we’d like teams to think of an innovative and life-enhancing app related to the home. But not just the home in isolation — this app needs to transition between the home and the car to improve the driving or car-owning experience for the Porsche customer.

We’re sure you’ve got plenty of your own ideas, but in case you’re still undecided, or unsure which APIs you need, here are some of our ideas as well as a look at the all-important APIs you could use to build them.

Insurance

A car and home insurance app that provides users with the cover they need for the contents of their connected home, their connected vehicle and potentially any visitors or passengers would be a great starting point for the HOME theme. Your application could offer discounts or package deals for multiple vehicles or homes, and alert users to, for example, extreme weather conditions that may be likely to cause a car accident on the road or roof damage to the house.

There are numerous APIs you could employ to build this kind of application, but here is a list of a few which would certainly come in handy.

• VEHICLE LOCATION
• SPEED
• THEFT ALARM
• LICENSE PLATE

Charging

If you’re interested in exploring electric vehicle charging as part of your app offering for the competition, there are a few routes you could go down. What’s important for the HOME theme is that an element of your project is integrated with the connected home and makes the transition from home to car (or car to home) as seamless as possible.

The Home Charger API allows for three different states: disconnected, plugged in or charging and allows a developer to get to know what plug type the charging device has. Solar power charging can also be activated or deactivated. Location, charge current, Wi-Fi hotspots, hotspot security, Wi-Fi hotspot password, starting fee, currency and price can all be accessed and controlled using this API.

Theft prevention

It’s obvious that theft prevention is extremely important to car owners, with many drivers looking for new and innovative ways to prevent their cars from being stolen or vandalised. With a host of sensors and alarms in the connected home and the connected car, the sky is really your limit as to how you want to implement your idea, but the Theft Alarm API should certainly be your first port of call when you do.

The Theft Alarm API could help you offer a valuable asset to your users wanting to protect their vehicles from vandals or thieves. Via the sensors in the vehicle, unusual activity in or around the vehicle or vibrations to the body of the car will be picked up by the Theft Alarm API and alert the user that someone is potentially trying to break into their car. When unusual activity is picked up by the car’s sensors the alarm will be activated.

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We hope you’ve found this short rundown of ideas and APIs for the Porsche NEXT OI Competition useful for your own brainstorming, testing and building. Next time we’ll be looking at some application ideas and APIs which complement the DRIVING theme but, until then, best of luck with your projects for the competition; we can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!