Hey all,
I recently decided that I need to replace my car stereo. I currently have a cheapish Kenwood that I got about four years when my previous car stereo got stolen. Every time I do this I go back and forth on whether I should get an off-the-shelf head unit or make my own. I think this year may be the time I finally make the jump and build my own.
I was thinking I'd start with a raspberry pi, the nicer one (model b.) It looks like they already have a bluetooth thing built in, but if that isn't sufficient I might get one of those tiny usb bluetooth dongles. I suspect an aux in won't be hard, but I really have no idea there. I don't care about any kind of radio, cd, or satellite reception. A nice USB input interface would be nice.
I'd rather not do a full size 2 DIN (ie 7 inch~ screen) if I can avoid it. My car is just a 2007 Toyota Corolla with 4 speakers, so I doubt I need much to drive the sound, but I suspect some kind of audio driver is needed. Maybe I should just get a USB sound card + an amp?
As for the controls I was hoping to do something really basic. I hate so much how many buttons exist on most of my stereos and I tend to only use two or three. If possible I'd do a touch screen with at max 8 clickable "zones." Alternatively a nice (ie visible in direct sunlight) screen with buttons elsewhere (in the ashtray?) would be good too.
Have any of you done anything like this? Do you know of another forum more suited to this kind of project? Any advice? I think I'm gonna start by looking at vanilla carputer plans and then seeing if I can replace the main computer with a raspberry pi.
