[TriLUG] Made in Raleigh - Raspberry Pi Free Software for your Car

[Huan Truong via TriLUG]

Hello everyone,

I am new to the area. I attended the TriLUG meeting last time on AI/
Self-driving cars and the topic of putting software in people's car
got quite a bit of attention.

In that spirit, I would like to present to you something I've been
brewing in the last three weeks or so right here in Raleigh. The
distro Crankshaft. It's a GNU/LInux distro for your car that
transforms the Raspberry Pi to an Android Auto head unit. Unlike AI,
this software doesn't drive the car for you, it just makes your life
easier. This is to help you focus on the road and not fumble with the
phone on the road. It projects your car-optimized apps from the phone
to a bigger screen of the Pi, so now you have a big screen with big
and clear buttons and voice control. Plus, it is Raspberry Pi, it's
GNU/GPLv3, and it's Linux -- it's free software. And I hope it is
functional, too.

ZDnet has an introduction for it:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-goes-android-auto-now-you-can-build-your-own-cheap-car-head-unit/
(Note that since the article was written, I have squashed the
stuttering problem that you see in the video, I just haven't gotten
time to make a new demo video).

The product is based on Open Auto and aasdk -- a respectable
reverse-engineering effort of Michal Szwaj, a Polish software
engineer. I made a complete distro out of it that has everything tuned
up and ready, all you need to do is to supply it with a Raspberry Pi
and a touchscreen for it to work (the official touchscreen works best,
but if you don't have it and is a NCSU student, go borrow a Raspberry
Pi kit in the library, and start Crankshaft in X11, it will work just
as well too).

It's Pi day tomorrow and I have just released a new version to
celebrate it. I have seen quite a bit of adoption for the software and
people have actually put this in their cars in the US and worldwide
[1]. I hope to maintain the software so maybe 2018 will be the year of
Linux on the dashboard ;-).

You can learn more about the project at GetCrankshaft.com. It's free
software, designed to be hacked and improved upon, and I plan to keep
it that way. You can also reply to the list what you think or ideas if
you have a chance to try it. I thought I would demo it in the Pi Jam
last week @Redhat but I forgot, so that's a pity. But I'd be happy to
show anyone interested in future occasions if you can't obtain a Pi
right now to try it.

Cheers,
- Huan.



1: See https://photos.app.goo.gl/81hQ6wTuLFNGmRHh2