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!

Use a software/app to meal plane. (Mealie/Tandoor) You pick the recipes you fancy for the days/week/whatever period. It generates a grocery list containing exactly what is needed for the meals you chose, nothing else.

I haven’t thrown away anything in a couple years now. Oh and freeze leftovers if needed.

Hey, thanks for the link. I haven’t looked at that type of parts because I’m not confident tinkering with the car, especially since it’s still fairly new and I’m too afraid to damage some plastic. And I also don’"t have any spare room available on the dashboard anywhere.

There’s a little nook to empty your pocket between the gear shifter (manual car) and the dashboard but it’s wide open, fairly hot, and probably still too small even to fit a raspberry pi in a case with the cooling I’ll need.

That’s why I’ve been looking at external solutions. If wires weren’t an issue, I’d put a trunk/boot organizer at the back and store the pi unit there during drives but it’s not practical with the wiring. Still routing cables in my head in case I’d get an idea.

Here’s a photo I found of the front of the car: https://www.ouestfrance-auto.com/sites/default/files/sandero_stepway_1_0.jpg

Yeah that might end up being necessary, I haven’t found any easy solution to provide the 5A/5V required by a Pi5. Still pondering the power supply issue.

Thanks! I’ve studied this option and Pi5 needs 5A/5V. I haven’t found something adequate yet for that power requirement. So I’m actually considering going for a Pi4 instead.

That’s the obvious route, indeed. But it’s not a fun one, I don’t get to own the data and the device is subject to poor updates which will render it useless in a few years. I’d rather buy an old GPS than buy a new phone honestly. The phone that is currently the culprit cost me 230, 23 months ago. It still works perfectly fine outside of the car for everything I need it for, it just doesn’t like being used in car. It’s too much for it I guess, though it wasn’t too much two years ago.

I considered a tablet, but I’m not sure if there’s a serious advantage over a phone at that point.

I didn’t take it as throwing shade :) I just thought I’d provide more context, though reading it back now it looks more like a rant.

Another person here pointed me to the Crankshaft too. It looks cool but it still uses a phone. I’ll try to erase this silicon slab from the equation entirely. From my personal experience over the years, phones have become a hindrance more than a supportive gadget.

I think i’ll go ahead and give it a try. I just need to figure out a way to cool the device properly in a hot environment.

Yeah, possibly, I might be a contrarian but I’m tired of cloud services, subscriptions, big corporations. I’m also tired of multipurpose devices that do plenty of things poorly. I just want a screen that shows me how to get somewhere, reliably. My phone from two years ago simply stopped being recognized by the car, bought a new one for that single purpose, and this fella already crashes too.

I didn’t go crazy on the budget but it worked initially and now it doesn’t at all so I’m tired of this bad tech. If I build my own, my hope is that I can make it more resilient and easier to repair/fix.

Almost, from my understanding of that page, you still need to plug a phone to mirror Auto. I want to remove the phone entirely from the equation, with local offline computing.

Yeah, that’s one thing still on the drawing board. The reason my phone crashes seems to be thermal throttling due to heat buildup with use. That’s another reason I want to build my own device instead of buying one from some company, I can factor in the cooling and try to adapt to the hot environment better.

That’s the thing, the phone never crashes otherwise. I don’t really use it anyway because I have zero use and interest for phones, it’s a device I have for 2FA, emergencies and satnav. My current one I bought 20 months ago at 230€. Fairly cheap, but not the cheapest either. In that short span of time, Waze had a total of 3 bad updates that forces me to go back to Google Maps until they patched it.

The whole reason behind the project is to get rid of the phone factor because it simply is unreliable. If not for the fun side of the project, I’d simply get an old school GPS that goes on the cigarette lighter.

I thought of a Pi because that’s the established brand, but if something else works just fine, then I might just go for it.

From some troubleshooting I made, apparently my phone heats up in the car because it automatically charges. The lower the battery, the harder it wants to charge and the more heats it generates. However, it doesn’t shed excess it fast enough so there’s a buildup until it crashes.

My car is, indeed, pretty hot. Getting a built device might solve it, or not, or temporarily until the device gets older, depending on the thermal management. Making my own device lets me handle it the way I see fit and go nuts on cooling if I want to.

I’ll take a look at the OSM screen update settings, that might actually help!

I have zero experience tinkering with cars so my first draft for power was simply a huge powerbank or two. In my use case, the device is meant for use when I drive alone, and when that’s the case it’s mostly very short trips of maximum 1 hour with standstill traffic, but more often than not max 30 minutes. Down the line I might improve the system and wire things more permanently but I need to build confidence first.

I was also looking at using the cigar plug for power, potentially, but I like the idea of a self sufficient, removable portable device.

I agree so much. It feels like I “understand” how a computer talks and interacts as opposed to most people I work with just learn processes by heart and have no clue what to do once their process breaks.