Using Raspberry Pi for Android Auto

[jonesy20]

Bought a 2011 Genesis Sedan 4.6L this week. So far so good. Been doing some research and I see there's a TRRS RCA 4-wire connector in the armrest. I connected it to a Raspberry Pi 3 (cheap single board PC running linux for those not familiar). I installed the image for Crankshaft which is supposed to do Android Auto using your phone.

I got a TRRS RCA cable but I think the wires are in a different order than I need. I pulled the cable out partially and got video. I'll have to experiment and probably hack the cable to work with video and audio.

I still need to do a little work to get it to pull up Android Auto on my phone but I'm sure I'll get it sorted in a few days. Anyone else tried this?

I'm anticipating that once the car is in motion it's going to kill the video. Is there any cheap trick (besides a $300 adapter) for this? I also ordered a canbus adapter for the Raspberry Pi. I might try to sniff the canbus data when I move the joystick around and see if I can tell what data packet it is. If I can an option might be to map those joystick commands back to Android Auto. Would be cool to be able to use the OEM joystick instead of putting in some other method of controlling android auto.

If this all works it'll be full Android Auto for less than $100. If anyone wants to help out or has already figured some of this out let me know!

 

[kenpile]

I hope this works out. I can't help out but I'll be watching this thread.

If you intend "installing" the R pi permanently in the car don't forget it needs to be booted and shutdown, not just have the power cut.

 

[jonesy20]

I'm thinking of using either a small supercap or lipo battery. When voltage drops the small battery will keep it powered long enough for a proper shutdown. The tricky part is keeping the video signal live when driving.

 

[daviderle]

Bypassing the video disable is not trivial, over the years, many have tried with both G1s and G2 without any success.

 

[jonesy20]

Bypassing the video disable is not trivial, over the years, many have tried with both G1s and G2 without any success.

I've been searching and haven't found much. Do you know what's been tried? Anyone look at CANBUS messages?

 

[daviderle]

I've been searching and haven't found much. Do you know what's been tried? Anyone look at CANBUS messages?

Indeed, there is very little info regarding the different parameters, as well as there is encryption between many subsystems, having said that, no one have played enough, originally the focus was on cracking ECU, which has since been done.
I went the software route by tinkering a bit around 2010 and 2014 in the R-Spec, but never could allocate the appropriate time to get anywhere useful...
It was a bit easier to speculate how things where done in the R-Spec, since the head unit firmware was part of the map update, you know, Windows CE, with a Decent emulator, DeSomeThingOrAnother...
I could have pushed it a bit, but these TECH / DIS units are pretty fragile as it is, and I did not want to brick the unit.
Now on touch only models, they run an LX flavor and are much easier to recover, if only I had time to play, on my 2015, I could probably do some interesting...

I did end up with an add on solution that worked well for me, but never tried to share it with the rest of the community after I saw what happened, after I shared my ‘remote ESC disable’ mod....

 

[jonesy20]

Maybe a standard double din Android unit with some custom mounting brackets in place of the factory screen would be easier. A higher res screen would be nice too.

 

[daviderle]

Maybe a standard double din Android unit with some custom mounting brackets in place of the factory screen would be easier. A higher res screen would be nice too.

Alas, that approach had its own draw backs, like losing the ability to adjust the temperature and seeing what the air vents are doing, etc.

In my case, all I wanted was screen mirroring, so I went old school, got an old iPad mini that was lying around, modified it with special OS that enabled me to mirror my phone to the iPad, mount it using Universal CD tablet mount, hard wired it to the USB port and called it a day, not exactly CarPlay but it was close enough for I wanted at the time.

On Android I think this idea could work even better, using something like airDriod

 

[jonesy20]

There's a developer on the forum from Russia who has figured out all the canbus messages for AC/temperature, etc and has it displaying in an Android app. I think he's selling his Android app for $19 or so.

 

[daviderle]

There's a developer on the forum from Russia who has figured out all the canbus messages for AC/temperature, etc and has it displaying in an Android app. I think he's selling his Android app for $19 or so.

Indeed, I was the first person that commended him on his efforts, however, beside the security concerns of giving an external entity complete access to my vehicle, there is the matter that the app was developed using the base model (blue screen).

______________________________

Help support this site so it can continue supporting you!

 

[MrBrady]

Kinda guessing this thread died. I'd LOVE to get Android Auto working on my 2014 R-Spec. Wouldn't mind swapping out the headunit if there was something compatible with the camera, HVAC, etc. that's built-in to the stock unit.