Infotainment System

NADS has developed an extensible architecture to model interactive displays in simulator vehicles. These displays support touch screens, and the application logs the user’s interaction data synchronized with the miniSim data acquisition system. Applications include infotainment systems, instrument panel displays, heads-up displays (HUDs), etc.

The standard system available with miniSim models a typical OEM infotainment system including the following functionality:

• Radio (requires internet connection)
• MP3 playback
• Navigation (NADS Springfield map only)
• Platform Independent (iOS, Android, Windows, Raspberry Pi)

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Architecture

The core of the Infotainment system is written in Node.js. It establishes an Express web server, then uses Socket.IO to manage connections to different control and/or display surfaces. Because display, audio and control surfaces are coded as web pages served up by the Express server, the Infotainment system creates a device-agnostic ecosystem, where any number of devices on any combination of platforms can participate (assuming they support a semi-modern browser).

In general, the Infotainment System can be logically broken down into three parts: the host script, the audio handler(s), and display/input pages.

Host script

The host script operates as the beating heart of the Infotainment system. It manages the services for the interfaces, listens to variable stream information from a miniSim, coordinates interface input, and broadcasts system state data back to the miniSim.

For it's real time interface to a miniSim, the Infotainment system leverages the Route Table to supply miniSim variable data streams (speed, position, ...) as well as write it's own back to the miniSim's shared memory.

Audio handler(s)

By default, a single audio page (infotainment_audio.htm) is included. This page can handle 3 channels of stereo playback:

• Media playback
• Alert (temporarily mutes media playback on play)
• Notify

These are the first three types

Display/input pages

This is where it gets interesting.

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