Ares

AI copilot for your truck.

Voice-first vehicle intelligence that plugs into any car or truck made after 1996 through a $15 OBD-II adapter. Real-time diagnostics, hands-free control, trip intelligence, and a personal safety system built for the road.

260M+
Compatible Vehicles
3,000+
DTC Knowledge Base
225
Unit Tests Passing
$15
Hardware Cost
Demo Coming Soon
Voice + Diagnostics
Pulled Over Mode
Safety System

The problem

Your truck talks. Nobody's listening.

Your check engine light comes on at 70 mph. The dealer wants $150 just to plug in a scanner. The $30 app you downloaded shows "P0455" and nothing else. Meanwhile your truck has been telling you exactly what's wrong this whole time — you just need something that speaks the language.

Siri and Google weren't built for drivers. They can't read OBD codes, don't know your vehicle, and have zero concept of driving context. Ares was built from the ground up for people who live in their trucks.

Capabilities

12 systems, one voice command away.

Conversational AI
Hybrid intent engine — local regex classification for instant response, backend Gemini AI with RAG for complex queries. 40-message context window.
Vehicle Diagnostics
Live OBD-II data via Bluetooth ELM327. DTC scanning and clearing, freeze frame capture, VIN decode, plain-English explanations with repair cost estimates.
Voice Interface
"Hey Ares" wake word. Whisper STT with hallucination filtering. ElevenLabs TTS with severity-calibrated tone adjustments.
Trip Intelligence
Background trip tracking with fuel efficiency analysis. Automatic trip detection, distance logging, average speed, and fuel usage per trip.
Location Learning
Recognizes home, work, and frequent stops. Visit pattern detection. Learns your routine without you telling it anything.
App Control
Natural language app launching with 50+ alias table. 3-tier fallback resolution. Smart play disambiguation for media apps.
Media Control
Play, pause, skip, previous, volume — works with any MediaSession app. Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, podcasts. Universal key event dispatch.
Navigation
Natural language to Google Maps or Waze. Contact address resolution. Nearby search for gas stations, food, shops — anything.
Communication
Voice-initiated calls and texts. Compose SMS hands-free. Reply to notifications by voice. Read incoming messages aloud.
System Control
Toggle Bluetooth, WiFi, flashlight, DND, airplane mode. Set timers and alarms with natural language parsing.
Calendar
Query events, check availability, create appointments — all by voice. "Am I free at 3?" gets a real answer.
Pulled Over Mode
One voice command triggers dashcam recording, GPS capture, document display, and trusted contact notification. Safety-critical priority.

Passive intelligence

Always watching. Always learning.

Ares Auto runs in the background as a foreground service — tracking trips, learning locations, and syncing intelligence to the cloud. No interaction required. It just gets smarter the more you drive.

  1. Trip tracking — Automatic start/stop detection. Distance, duration, average speed, max RPM, and fuel usage logged per trip.
  2. Location learning — Recognizes home, work, and frequent destinations. Preserves labeled locations indefinitely.
  3. Visit detection — Logs visits to known locations with timestamps and dwell time.
  4. Cloud sync — Uploads trip and visit data to the Solstice backend when connected. Cross-device continuity.
  5. Data hygiene — Automatic TTLs: trips 180 days, visits 180 days, learned locations 90 days. Home and work preserved.

Personal safety

"Ares, I'm getting pulled over."

A single voice command transforms your phone into a personal safety system. This intent is checked first — before all other commands — because it's safety-critical and should never be swallowed by a lower-priority classification.

  1. Dashcam starts recording — front camera, HD video with audio. Saved to encrypted app-private storage. No visible camera UI on screen.
  2. GPS location is captured and reverse-geocoded to a street address.
  3. Trusted contacts are notified via SMS: "[Name] has been pulled over at [location]. They are safe — Ares is recording."
  4. Document viewer opens — a clean, officer-facing carousel showing insurance, registration, and license. Neutral colors, professional layout.
  5. After the stop — recording continues for 60 seconds as a buffer. Follow-up SMS sent. Video saved to encrypted private storage.

The officer sees a professional document viewer. Nothing else. The notification reads "Documents Ready" — clean and neutral. All recordings are encrypted with SQLCipher AES-256 and stored in app-private sandboxed storage.

Privacy & security

Your data. Locked down.

Ares handles sensitive data — GPS coordinates, vehicle identifiers, dashcam recordings, trusted contacts, trip history. Every layer is hardened so your information stays yours.

Encrypted Database
All local data — chat, vehicle snapshots, traffic stops, trips, visits, contacts, documents — encrypted at rest with SQLCipher AES-256.
Hardware-Backed Keys
Per-device encryption passphrase generated via SecureRandom and stored in Android Keystore-backed EncryptedSharedPreferences (AES256-GCM).
Certificate Pinning
SHA-256 pinned connections to ares.solsticestudio.ai — both at the Android network security layer and OkHttp transport layer. MITM-resistant.
Sandboxed Recordings
Dashcam videos saved to app-private storage — invisible to other apps, excluded from gallery, excluded from cloud backup.
Clean Logs
No PII in debug output. GPS coordinates, VINs, contact names, stop IDs, and device addresses are stripped from all Logcat statements.
Data Retention
Automatic TTL cleanup — learned locations: 90 days, traffic stops: 90 days, trips: 180 days, visits: 180 days. Home/work and safety contacts preserved.

Personality

Direct. Confident. Knows his stuff.

Ares isn't a generic assistant. He's the friend who actually knows about cars — gives you a straight answer, tells you when something's serious, and doesn't waste your time. Severity-calibrated tone means he's casual for routine stuff and dead serious when it matters.

Ask him "what's wrong with my truck?" — not "initiate diagnostic scan." He maintains a 40-message conversation history, so you can say "tell me more about that code" and he knows exactly what you're talking about.

In practice

Ares in the real world.

Check Engine Light on the Highway
Driver: "Ares, my check engine light just came on."
Ares: "Let me scan... Got 2 codes. P0455 — large evaporative emission leak. Usually a loose or cracked gas cap. P0442 — small evap leak, same system. Try tightening your gas cap and driving for a day. If it sticks around, we're probably looking at a purge valve — $150-300 at a shop."
Driver: "Am I good to keep driving?"
Ares: "Yeah, these are emissions codes, not engine damage. Your truck runs fine with them — the fuel system just isn't sealing right. Not urgent, but don't ignore it forever."
OBD-II scan (Mode 03) → RAG lookup across 3,000+ DTCs → plain-English explanation with repair estimates → contextual follow-up
Pre-Purchase Inspection
Driver: "I'm looking at this used truck. Can you check it out?"
Ares: "Let's see what we're working with... No active codes, check engine light is off. Coolant at 195°F — normal. Battery at 14.1V, alternator's good. One thing — distance since codes were last cleared is only 340 miles. That's low. Either someone cleared codes recently or they just replaced the battery. I'd ask about it."
Full sensor scan + contextual interpretation. Detects suspicious DTC-clear distance for a used vehicle.
Daily Commute
Driver: "What's on my calendar today?"
Ares: "Three things. Team standup at 9:30, lunch with Mike at noon, dentist at 4."
Driver: "Text Mike I might be 10 minutes late."
Ares: "Sent."
Driver: "Navigate to the office. Play my morning playlist."
Ares: "Routing now — about 22 minutes. Throwing it on."
Four intent types (CALENDAR → COMMUNICATION → NAVIGATION → MEDIA_CONTROL) handled seamlessly by voice. Phone never touched.

Vehicle portal

Everything at a glance.

Swipe right from the chat screen. Live data from your vehicle organized into swipeable categories with real-time graphs, sparklines, and historical trends.

Vehicle Info
VIN, year, make, model, engine, transmission, drive type
Error Codes
Active DTCs with severity indicators and explanations
Engine
RPM, load, throttle position, timing advance
Fuel Economy
MPG (instant + average), fuel level, pressure, trim, MAF
Electrical
Battery voltage, alternator status
Temperature
Coolant, intake air
Trip History
Distance, fuel used, average speed, max RPM, per-trip breakdown
Weather
Conditions, wind, humidity, UV, driving impact
Gas Prices
Nearby stations with price comparison
Maintenance
Service schedule: Good → Due Soon → Overdue → Critical

Differentiation

Not a scanner app. Not an assistant. A copilot.

Feature Ares Google / Siri Torque / OBD Apps Dealer Apps
OBD-II diagnostics Yes No Yes Own brand only
DTC translation (conversational) Yes No Code only Basic
Voice-first (hands-free) Yes Yes No No
Works with any car (1996+) Yes N/A Yes No
Safety recording mode Yes No No No
Trip intelligence + learning Yes No Basic logging No
AI with vehicle context Yes No No No
App/media/nav control Yes Yes No No
Encrypted local storage AES-256 No No Varies