1. PROJECT OVERVIEW

A voice-controlled, AI-powered carputer in a 2014 RAM 1500, built on owned workstation hardware. Provides:

Voice assistant (offline LLM) for commands + conversation
6–8 camera awareness system + factory backup cam with dynamic lines
NVR continuous recording (Frigate) with AI detection
CAN bus integration (gear, RPM, trans temp, speed, steering)
Relay control of accessories
Smart tiered power management (truck battery protected; solar-sustained parked)
Touchscreen control (tablet now, Phoenix Android radio later) — multi-screen capable
Off-grid mesh networking (HaLow) + remote access (Tailscale) — later phases
Personal RAG document server at home

Philosophy: Three power/compute tiers (ESP32 always-on brain → Pi 3 B+ always-on light tier → OptiPlex 5080 on-demand heavy tier, with heavy reasoning offloaded to Fireworks cloud), everything reachable as web pages, voice-first, truck battery never drained, loads matched to available energy.

‹ 0. THE BINDING CONSTRAINT — READ THIS FIRST2. HARDWARE — ALREADY OWNED (No Cost) ›