Hello everyone!
I already posted a first time here a while ago: https://lemmy.world/post/30549957
My goal was to replace my Android Auto + phone setup for satnav in car with a dedicated Raspberry Pi.
Here's a status update of the project so far!
Choosing the parts and getting them here was obviously fairly easy even though it took quite bit of research to find a way to power the Pi4 in car reliably.
It's a pi4 with an adafruit ultimate gps dongle, an SD card and a 2.5 SSD. The SD for OS installs, and then I clone them to SSD for better stability and performances.
I first tried to go Pi OS route. I figured Linux might open more possibilities and I'm more comfortable with Linux. I tried a few options in Pi OS, namely Navit. I banged my head quite hard on that one, trying to figure out how to make it work, but I never managed to get a good navit.xml config file. After hours upon hours of trials, I gave up.
Tried Organic Maps then, but it was a flatpak which introduced a lot of permission issues and I never got the GPS dongle to talk to the app.
After a few failed attempts, I decided to try Emteria OS, an android spin available in the Pi Imager. It doesn't boot without SD card as opposed to PiOS, so I was glad I spent the 5€ for the SD card. It booted easily, SSH was harder to enable than on Linux but it's likely because I just know Linux better. Installing apps was easy, but I stopped there and didn't even try to get the GPS working because 90% of my RAM was used idling at boot, which makes the whole project impossible on Emteria. Not sure if there's a bug in the current version or what, but I simply moved on.
Then I went to LineageOS. Similarly to Emteria, installing apps was very easy. Getting the GPS from Adafruit to talk to Android was fairly easy if you read the docs carefully. I needed to install android dev tools on my main PC and connect to the Pi using ADB as root to edit some config files. That's it, the GPS worked and I had a working GPS unit.
Now I'm at the point where I need to introduce the package into the car. For now , the pi still doesn't have a case because I didn't want to limit my options in the car. I still haven't found a good way to bring the pi with me and have it being safely transported without breaking or even becoming a deadly cannonball in case of crash.
My current idea that I'm exploring and checking is getting a Pelican Case, not sure if any of their cases has vent holes. The pi would go inside the case, and the case would be attached to a strong anchor point like the seat rails. Not sure how, yet. I'm thinking maybe about carabiners from Petzl since they would be much stronger than needed, I'm just not sure the anchor point on the case would be strong enough.
So there you have it, I've made good progress on the project and I'm confident it will work out reasonably well.
For the audio, I'll first try the obvious and plug the Pi to the USB A of the factory car unit. Maybe it'll detect it as mass storage media and give it access to the built in audio system. Else, I'll just use a bluetooth speaker I have at home. I don't need good audio for "turn left/turn right", just to hear it.
The whole project is an attempt at getting rid of Android Auto and having my own standalone unit that will free me from unwanted updates both from the OS and the apps. I've had Waze become useless three times in the span of two years because they pushed updates that made the app unstable enough to not be reliable.
For the viewing angle, on the car next to the existing head unit screen, there's a mounting bracket. I'll use that to mount a 7inch display I got. It'll sit right above the existing one if that doesn't obstruct the view too much, else I'll have to get one of those arms with joints and lower it somewhere not annoying.
My bluetooth speaker is the perfect size to sit in the cup holder so if the car audio isn't possible, then there's a plan B.
I'll try the recovery mode for my phone and see if that helps!