Lynk: Smart Car Adapter
A car can report a great deal about how it’s running, yet little of that detail reaches the driver. I designed and built Lynk as an independent R&D project to make that information accessible in vehicles that predated built-in connectivity. The challenge was to turn live diagnostic data into something a driver could understand on a smartphone.
- Client
- Personal Project
- Deliverables
- PCB DesignEmbedded FirmwareEnclosure DesignMobile App Design
- Year
- 2020
- Role
- Design & Engineering
I designed the adapter’s circuitry to draw power and communicate through the OBD-II port beneath the dashboard. I wrote the embedded firmware to request and decode live data from the vehicle’s CAN bus, then modelled the enclosure in CAD and prototyped it through 3D printing.
I also designed the Lynk Connect app, translating raw readings into live metrics and alerts about vehicle health and driving behaviour.
The prototype demonstrated the complete system on vehicle hardware. A driver could plug Lynk into an existing diagnostic port and see what the car was reporting as it happened. By designing both the electronics and the interface, I could trace each reading from the vehicle’s control units to its presentation on screen and establish which connected services the underlying data could support.