McLarens and CarPlay | Hacker News Reader

McLarens and CarPlay

blog.adambell.ca

43 points0x011 comments

Really enjoyed reading this write up. For exotics there is typically less people tinkering with them and that makes it even more cool when you manage some hack/mod!

For Porsches, it's easier as they do share infotainment stuff with other VAG vehicles and there is an online community that also tinkers with PCMs (Porsche's infotainment).

In my old 991.2 I managed to unlock Android Auto which was never officially supported using that community's efforts - it was completely functional, just disabled in favor of a CarPlay-only offering. (This changed with the 992 where it comes with both systems standard). And by plugging in a Motorola MA1 one has Wireless Android Auto on a car that never supported even the wired version. Sweet.

One day we might see a real Doom on 911 write up because the viral video from a few years ago is sadly fake. But just by going with the information/tools available in the modding community it's completely possible. Most of the GUI on it is Java apps BTW :)

> And by plugging in a Motorola MA1 one has Wireless Android Auto on a car that never supported even the wired version. Sweet.

I find wireless Carplay, especially when using Google Maps, drains the battery like crazy. I always plug it in anyways to charge for any ride longer than 10 minutes.

I bought a wireless dongle for Android Auto, which was convenient for a while, but I also stopped using it in favor of plugging it in, since it drained the battery.

Why not have a little lipo battery or battery bank with the rpi, and have it charge/run off that? Make it like a little UPS where the rpi shuts down if it gets too low. Then you don’t have to wait 7 seconds for it to boot unless you haven’t driven in a while.

This is my biggest complaint of Linux being where bare metal should. For whatever reason my car takes multiple seconds on startup between starting the music and registering my inputs to lower volume or pause. Older cars didn't have that problem.

That said, cars have 12v batteries. If the pi was better (again another gripe, choose better products not just what everyone else uses) you could put the thing to sleep. Even a good low power Linux machine can go years off one of those (quick math says like 100 years, so negligible draw). Or you could cut yourself off if the level gets below a threshold for too long. Plenty of solutions.

Actually are there any SBCs with low power sleep?

I have reverse camera connected to SBC with Allwinner H6. It easily saves around 5 seconds compared to Pi (their closed bootloader takes ages to even start loading kernel). I considered early booting the system when opening the door, but really it is fast enough already.

Not too terribly sure, but NXP puts out power consumption numbers and they get pretty low in sleep modes with self refreshed DDR and whatnot. I think it's just something the market hasn't demanded enough. I'm not really a SBC person, usually just uC, where it's trivial to get microamps of sleep current. I'm sure there's an SBC out there that allows for it.

That specific problem sounds like you just have bad software in your car. My car takes a second for the infotainment system to boot, but it doesn't start blaring anything until it's ready to process input.

Interesting design choice. One alternative would be to not send any output to speakers until the controls work? I would wonder what else is wrong that isn't immediately obvious.

Interesting that it says CarPlay but it doesn't seem to support maps or other apps, just music playback? For me, maps are the real killer feature of CarPlay

Fantastic read!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com