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I’ve often wondered why there hasn’t been someone that developed a good Android headunit project. What is it about Android that has made it difficult to make a

I’ve often wondered why there hasn’t been someone that developed a good Android headunit project. What is it about Android that has made it difficult to make a good/safe car UI? Couldn’t one just mimic Android Auto? Or even just run Android Auto?

jefft255 8y ago
You can buy aftermarket Android Auto headunits: https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-auto-head-units-791179/ https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-auto-head-unit...
- TomMarius 8y ago
  You can build your own using https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto
- driverdan 8y ago
  You can but that list is garbage. They just pulled a list off of Amazon so they can spam their affiliate links. Without a hands on review it's hard to know if they're any good.
- tristanb 8y ago
  I have one in my car - pumpkin audio. It does the job great. Talks to my back up cam - smart mirror, and i've written scripts so it takes pictures of the driver at ignition, opens my last spotify track, last google map search etc
  - exhilaration 8y ago
    The pumpkin audio website isn't super-informative -- do you know where I could find out if their units support my Toyota's backup camera and steering wheel buttons?
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Well, Android Auto is proprietary as all get-out, it does what Google wants it to do and nothing else. Google is going to decide what it feels is safe to allow you to do for their own liability purposes, and most of that is going to revolve around Google's own apps and services. (Kinda like how Toyota has decided that it's unsafe for me to type in a phone number at more than 2 miles an hour, even though that's insane, and also locks out my ability to dial 911 while driving.) And you do need a good car UI if you want to use something in your car, a normal phone interface isn't well suited to safe operation in a car. You want large, oversize buttons, large, oversized text, extremely high contrast (basically, throw Material Design out the window), and the key, where relying on random Android apps is going to fail: You want a unified UI across your functions. A lot of other UI assumptions go out the window in a car, you need people to be able to interact with it, drop what they're doing, and pick it up again later, so you can't have things that time out or assume you are done with them. You ideally want people to be able to touch-feel some controls if possible, but at the least, you want minimal borders so people can aim for the center of a button and probably hit it without looking at it the whole time. Swipe is a complete no-go, you're in a moving vehicle. So you don't want phone apps that aren't designed for a car really... at all, which removes most of the perks of using an Android. I'd much rather build my own system that does the basics I need as quickly as possible than try to get a phone OS to be halfway safe in a car. Command line utilities on a Linux box thrown behind a simple UI screen is a pretty easy bet. (I'm running a Windows box, but I condemn myself at my own risk.) If you're developing for yourself, you can get much further much faster writing simple code purpose-built to do what you want.
- dbuder 8y ago
  Android Auto asked to have access to my messages again and again, I always said no, and then I'm driving along and it reads out a message to me.
voltagex_ 8y ago
https://getcrankshaft.com/ https://getcrankshaft.com/ - featured on HN previously. Android Auto sucks because VNC over USB 2 sucks (same as MirrorLink).
- gambiting 8y ago
  Sucks, because the voice interface is an awful way of doing anything. I have it in my car and I hate the thing. "Hey google, open audible" <audible opens> "hey google, play" <audible closes, google play music opens and starts playing music> or: "hey google, read message" <proceeds to spout intelligible garbage because the message contained a long URL, or wasn't in English> No, thanks, I'll take a good tactile interface over this nonsense any day.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    If you can abandon the crapware, audible user interfaces are amazing. I designed one for my CarPC in the early 00's. I used a combination of voice commands, a remote control and USB numpad, with feedback from the computer as text to speech and a HUD. I implemented offline mapping and navigation, MP3 and video playing by category/artist/file hierarchy, wardriving (yes I was that guy), ODB-II, and more. Not having to ever look at a control to use it is freeing when you're in the driver's seat.
    - a3n 8y ago
      Your HUD displayed on the windshield? How did you do that?
      - gambiting 8y ago
        You can get things like these, you put it on the dash, and stick a slightly darker patch of foil on the window right above it, then it reflects during night and day: http://www.dx.com/p/a8-5-5-screen-hud-head-up-display-system-for-car-black-382255 http://www.dx.com/p/a8-5-5-screen-hud-head-up-display-system...
nabilt 8y ago
My theory is Android is too difficult to maintain. There is a significant amount of work that has to be done to keep up with the latest version of Android especially if you are going to make heavy modifications to the functionality of the OS. That's why most aftermarket head units don't bother and you get out of date systems with security flaws. It is much better to build a system from scratch like Tesla and most other auto makers do from a support perspective. Android Auto is probably the best of both worlds for most people.
maxerickson 8y ago
It's a just enormous project for incrementally better versions of stuff that people barely use anyway.
nradov 8y ago
After market head units are a slowly dying industry. More and more new cars are coming with infotainment systems so tightly integrated with the rest of the car that they effectively can't be replaced.
- nickysielicki 8y ago
  Even in my 2006 Mazda 3, a 12 year old car, replacing the stereo with a single-din stereo would mean losing easy display of things like my fuel economy statistics and ambient thermostat. If you pull in the CAN bus you can get it back, but that's just another hurdle.
  - bronco21016 8y ago
    I had that car and feel your pain. I searched a long time for a nice aftermarket solution and gave up.
- 15155 8y ago
  I thought the same, but China is pumping out Android-based CANbus-compatible units every day, with factory-compatible fascia/climate controls/wiring harnesses. Android is still better than everything the manufacturers are pumping out, despite being very obviously for phones.
neuralRiot 8y ago
Most of the car radios includind OEM units run either Windows CE or Android. Denso and Becker units run RTOS for their super H MCUs.
sircastor 8y ago
I've been looking at putting this one in my car: https://github.com/viktorgino/headunit-desktop https://github.com/viktorgino/headunit-desktop

jefft255 8y ago

You can buy aftermarket Android Auto headunits: https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-auto-head-units-791179/ https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-auto-head-unit...

TomMarius 8y ago
You can build your own using https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto
driverdan 8y ago
You can but that list is garbage. They just pulled a list off of Amazon so they can spam their affiliate links. Without a hands on review it's hard to know if they're any good.
tristanb 8y ago
I have one in my car - pumpkin audio. It does the job great. Talks to my back up cam - smart mirror, and i've written scripts so it takes pictures of the driver at ignition, opens my last spotify track, last google map search etc
- exhilaration 8y ago
  The pumpkin audio website isn't super-informative -- do you know where I could find out if their units support my Toyota's backup camera and steering wheel buttons?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Well, Android Auto is proprietary as all get-out, it does what Google wants it to do and nothing else. Google is going to decide what it feels is safe to allow you to do for their own liability purposes, and most of that is going to revolve around Google's own apps and services. (Kinda like how Toyota has decided that it's unsafe for me to type in a phone number at more than 2 miles an hour, even though that's insane, and also locks out my ability to dial 911 while driving.) And you do need a good car UI if you want to use something in your car, a normal phone interface isn't well suited to safe operation in a car. You want large, oversize buttons, large, oversized text, extremely high contrast (basically, throw Material Design out the window), and the key, where relying on random Android apps is going to fail: You want a unified UI across your functions. A lot of other UI assumptions go out the window in a car, you need people to be able to interact with it, drop what they're doing, and pick it up again later, so you can't have things that time out or assume you are done with them. You ideally want people to be able to touch-feel some controls if possible, but at the least, you want minimal borders so people can aim for the center of a button and probably hit it without looking at it the whole time. Swipe is a complete no-go, you're in a moving vehicle. So you don't want phone apps that aren't designed for a car really... at all, which removes most of the perks of using an Android. I'd much rather build my own system that does the basics I need as quickly as possible than try to get a phone OS to be halfway safe in a car. Command line utilities on a Linux box thrown behind a simple UI screen is a pretty easy bet. (I'm running a Windows box, but I condemn myself at my own risk.) If you're developing for yourself, you can get much further much faster writing simple code purpose-built to do what you want.

dbuder 8y ago
Android Auto asked to have access to my messages again and again, I always said no, and then I'm driving along and it reads out a message to me.

voltagex_ 8y ago

https://getcrankshaft.com/ https://getcrankshaft.com/ - featured on HN previously. Android Auto sucks because VNC over USB 2 sucks (same as MirrorLink).

gambiting 8y ago
Sucks, because the voice interface is an awful way of doing anything. I have it in my car and I hate the thing. "Hey google, open audible" <audible opens> "hey google, play" <audible closes, google play music opens and starts playing music> or: "hey google, read message" <proceeds to spout intelligible garbage because the message contained a long URL, or wasn't in English> No, thanks, I'll take a good tactile interface over this nonsense any day.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  If you can abandon the crapware, audible user interfaces are amazing. I designed one for my CarPC in the early 00's. I used a combination of voice commands, a remote control and USB numpad, with feedback from the computer as text to speech and a HUD. I implemented offline mapping and navigation, MP3 and video playing by category/artist/file hierarchy, wardriving (yes I was that guy), ODB-II, and more. Not having to ever look at a control to use it is freeing when you're in the driver's seat.
  - a3n 8y ago
    Your HUD displayed on the windshield? How did you do that?
    - gambiting 8y ago
      You can get things like these, you put it on the dash, and stick a slightly darker patch of foil on the window right above it, then it reflects during night and day: http://www.dx.com/p/a8-5-5-screen-hud-head-up-display-system-for-car-black-382255 http://www.dx.com/p/a8-5-5-screen-hud-head-up-display-system...

nabilt 8y ago

My theory is Android is too difficult to maintain. There is a significant amount of work that has to be done to keep up with the latest version of Android especially if you are going to make heavy modifications to the functionality of the OS. That's why most aftermarket head units don't bother and you get out of date systems with security flaws. It is much better to build a system from scratch like Tesla and most other auto makers do from a support perspective. Android Auto is probably the best of both worlds for most people.

maxerickson 8y ago

It's a just enormous project for incrementally better versions of stuff that people barely use anyway.

nradov 8y ago

After market head units are a slowly dying industry. More and more new cars are coming with infotainment systems so tightly integrated with the rest of the car that they effectively can't be replaced.

nickysielicki 8y ago
Even in my 2006 Mazda 3, a 12 year old car, replacing the stereo with a single-din stereo would mean losing easy display of things like my fuel economy statistics and ambient thermostat. If you pull in the CAN bus you can get it back, but that's just another hurdle.
- bronco21016 8y ago
  I had that car and feel your pain. I searched a long time for a nice aftermarket solution and gave up.
15155 8y ago
I thought the same, but China is pumping out Android-based CANbus-compatible units every day, with factory-compatible fascia/climate controls/wiring harnesses. Android is still better than everything the manufacturers are pumping out, despite being very obviously for phones.

neuralRiot 8y ago

Most of the car radios includind OEM units run either Windows CE or Android. Denso and Becker units run RTOS for their super H MCUs.

sircastor 8y ago

I've been looking at putting this one in my car: https://github.com/viktorgino/headunit-desktop https://github.com/viktorgino/headunit-desktop