The MOST Cooperation – standardisation organisation for the leading automotive multimedia network technology Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) – presents the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) standard for use within MOST networks.
“While smartphones and other mobile devices are integrated into our daily lives, they are not integrated into our vehicles,” stated Rainer Klos, MOST cooperation administrator. “MOSTCO now provides an approach that allows the close integration of consumer devices in MOST based vehicles. Through UPnP, we can offer the potential to extend consumer devices with the seamless controlling capabilities currently experienced with integrated automotive head units.”
The vehicle user interface can be more personalised and it can keep up with the short lifecycles of consumer electronics. In addition, shared car environments would particularly benefit from user preferences, such as a favorite radio station, stereo presets or climate control temperature, stored in personal devices and automatically applied when connecting with the vehicle.
One use case is the exchange of audio data between a media server and a media renderer via the MOST synchronous channel. The connection establishment and the audio stream are managed by a standardised UPnP control point. The communication between the control point and the media server and renderer is transmitted by a gateway via the MOST Ethernet channel. The actual audio streaming is mapped to the MOST synchronous channel. This example consists of one audio/video control point and two controlled devices, a media server and a media renderer. In the automotive use case, the control point would be a smartphone with UPnP control point software. The media server and the media renderer would be integrated into in-vehicle devices, such as the head unit or the rear seat entertainment.
