Siri goes Knight Rider with a new car control hack

By Jeff Hughes November 28, 2011

At the top of the list of things everyone’s favorite iPhone assistant can do is now the ability to start your car. All that’s needed is the Viper SmartStart System, a homebrew proxy server, a plugin and of course an iPhone with Siri.

Developer and tech enthusiast Brandon Fiquett is the person responsible for this latest Siri hack, which allows him to start his silver Acura TL by spouting voice commands at his iPhone 4S. Current commands allow him to start and stop the car’s engine, pop the trunk, panic as well as lock and unlock the car doors.

The car commands work using the same Siri proxy server used in a hack by Plamoni a week ago, which gave Siri control of a thermostat. The proxy server allows for the creation of any custom plugin, essentially hooking up Siri to control almost anything.

Fiquett created a new plugin using Ruby which in turn interacts with a PHP script he developed months ago which runs on his web server. The script sends the commands from his iPhone to his car which contains a Viper SmartStart module installed. Though the Viper SmartStart system already does the heavy lifting for this trick, it’s a good example of eventually consolidating our gadgets into our smartphones. Plus, he looks Hasselhoff slick by talking to his car that way, all we need now is to figure out how to get Siri sounding like William Daniels.

For those of you that want to try it out, Fiquett has made both the SiriProxy-ViperControl plugin and the accompanying PHP script available on his website. Other recent Siri hacks include the aforementioned Wi-Fi thermostat control using Siri by developer Plamoni, as well as a Plex hack to play shows on the TV by Hjalti Jakobsson.

Via The Verge

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I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

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