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AutoPi | Our history

AutoPi began as a small engineering project in 2016, built by three founders with a shared interest in vehicle electronics and software. The first product direction was validated through a Kickstarter launch, which pushed the project from prototype work into a real production roadmap.

Early development focused on connecting to vehicles through standard interfaces such as OBD-II and CAN, and on making data accessible outside the vehicle. As deployments grew, the scope shifted from individual hobby use to professional use in fleets and engineering projects, where repeatability, support, and long-term availability matter.

The current product stack is built around telematics hardware and cloud tooling. The focus is a reliable telematics unit paired with a management cloud for provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and data access. Many customers use AutoPi as a complete system, while others use it as an integration layer that forwards data into existing backends.

AutoPi operates as a Danish IoT company with engineering centered around vehicle communication and embedded systems. Work typically involves constraints from real vehicles: mixed ECU support, varying bus load, intermittent connectivity, and power conditions that are not lab-clean. The approach stays practical: stable hardware, predictable firmware behavior, and platform features that support day-to-day operation.

How does it work?

Your right to extend

You ask, we customize

AutoPi provides telematics solutions that are designed to be adapted rather than locked down. Hardware, firmware, and cloud components are built to support changes in data flow, configuration, and system behavior, which is often required once a project moves beyond a pilot phase.

In many deployments, AutoPi devices act as a gateway layer between the vehicle and an existing customer backend. Data can be forwarded to external systems using defined formats and transport methods, while the AutoPi platform continues to handle device provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and operational tooling.

Customization work typically involves practical constraints found in real vehicles. Examples include limited ECU access, mixed protocol stacks such as CAN, CAN-FD, J1939, or proprietary OEM frames, intermittent connectivity, and strict power conditions. These factors shape how firmware, buffering, and data delivery are implemented.

Engineering efforts are handled by the same teams that design and maintain the core products. This keeps changes aligned with the underlying architecture and avoids one-off solutions that cannot be maintained over time. Projects range from small adjustments in signal handling to larger changes in device behavior or cloud-side workflows.

Scalability is treated as a baseline requirement rather than an add-on. Custom solutions are expected to run across fleets, survive software updates, and remain supportable as deployments grow. This applies equally to hardware configuration, firmware logic, and cloud integrations.

Read more about the AutoPi device

Open source as a technical baseline

AutoPi Core is built on Raspberry Pi OS and follows an open-source development model. This choice is rooted in practical engineering considerations rather than ideology. Access to the full software stack makes it possible to inspect behavior at every layer, from system services and drivers to application-level logic.

In vehicle and machinery projects, this level of visibility matters. Real-world deployments often expose issues that are difficult to reproduce in a lab environment, such as timing differences on CAN buses, power interruptions, or interactions with OEM-specific ECUs. Open access to the system allows these issues to be analyzed and addressed without relying on black-box components.

The open-source approach also supports long-term maintainability. Customers are not tied to closed firmware images or opaque update mechanisms. Instead, they can audit changes, maintain forks when necessary, and align device behavior with internal engineering standards or compliance requirements.

Community involvement plays a practical role as well. External developers contribute fixes, improvements, and extensions that often originate from real deployment scenarios. These contributions feed back into the platform and help keep it aligned with how the hardware is actually used in the field.

Read more about the AutoPi Cloud

Open source software and development
Mission and Vision

Delivering IoT Telematics globally

Mission:

We will enable vehicles around the world with advanced technology and customizable solutions with one IoT platform, and consequently strengthen our customers’ operations and make them more profitable.

Vision:

We seek to convey more innovation, efficiency, and abundance of opportunities in the world by pushing the telematics industry into our current century.

Worldwide Innovations

Trusted by customers globally

Global reach, real-time insights, and high-performance solutions for your success.

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