[Help Needed] Vehicle infotainment system using Rock64

[fender90]

Hello guys!

I just bought a Rock64 board and plan to use it for building a car infotainment system.
I've previously used an Odroid XU4 but since I need a device with possibility of adding a DAC hat I switched to Rock64.

I have several questions regarding the board since this is the first Pine64 product I have.

1. I see that the official Android builds for Rock64 have this TV-ish launcher and have some limitations in terms of app compatibility (ex Hangouts). I also saw a post from one of the moderators/admins that there is an early build of "Regular" Android for Rock64. 
Is there an approximate ETA when this rom will be available officially?

2. I used a smart power supply with Odroid XU4 for shutting it down automatically when I turn off car ignition . Odroid has a PWR_ON pin which shuts down the device when connected to 1.8-5v power pin. So the power supply simply closes the connection between PWR_ON and 1.8v pin when I turn the ignition off. I see that there is no such pin on Rock64. 
So my question is if I can connect the power supply to the power button pins to achieve the same result? The power supply should close the connection between pins and hold it for around 2-3 seconds so the shutdown dialog would appear. Is there also an option to shut down the device without "Restart/Reboot" dialog box?

3. Is it possible to use GPIO pins with official Android roms or are there any GPIO libraries (ex wiringPI) available for Rock64 which can be implemented into the kernel?

I guess since many people use SBCs in their cars I will create a step by step tutorial on how to create a CarPC with Rock64 in this thread since I didn't find any existing ones. So it would be quite useful for them to find the answers to the most relevant questions here.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

[evinrude]

hi fender90, I also bought rock64 to build an infotainment system for my car. However, I am completely ignorant of programming and development. So I look forward to your guide and in the meantime, I wish you good work

[fender90]

Anybody here?  

[nJoy.]

Hey, I am currently waiting for my RockPro64 for similar project. i am thinking of having it as an addon for the existing head unit. I wouldnt want to completely switch them, because I drive Volvo and they do not really like when parts from the car are removed. At least for now. Also there is other problems, like steering wheel controls and audio... Maybe you have did something already as this topic isnt really new.

[fender90]

Hey, I am currently waiting for my RockPro64 for similar project. i am thinking of having it as an addon for the existing head unit. I wouldnt want to completely switch them, because I drive Volvo and they do not really like when parts from the car are removed. At least for now. Also there is other problems, like steering wheel controls and audio... Maybe you have did something already as this topic isnt really new.

Hey. I switched from Rock64 to Odroid XU4 for my carPC project.
For steering wheel controls there are a couple of ways to do. You can use Arduino ProMicro to connect the buttons on the steering wheel as a USB remote device. What I did is I used a specialized board called Joycon EXR which is specially built for such applications. However you need to check if your steering wheel buttons are resistive to know which Joycon board you need. They have other boards which work with CAN bus. The board is very easy to setup. First time you need to connect it to your steering wheel buttons on one end and to a Windows PC via USB. The board has a PC software for configuring. You just need to open the program and press the the buttons on the steering wheel. As soon as you press the button the software recognizes the keypress and you simply select the button action from the menu (ex volume_down or next_track). You  can set up long press, short press and double press actions as well. It took 5 minutes from me to do that.

For audio.
 With Odroid XU4 I used an external usb DAC board which is connected to my amplifier. In your case you can connect it to your AUX input.
Here is the link on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RKW...UTF8&psc=1
If RockPro64 can be fitted with a DAC addon board from pine64 than you can use it as well. 


As I was making all the system from scratch I got some weird noises from the speakers when the car engine was on. It's called "ground loop" Make sure you use a "ground loop isolator". I used a cheap one from Boss
Here is the link
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LP...UTF8&psc=1
This goes between the DAC output and AUX input

For power, (just in case you are interested :-) )
I had a smart power supply called Mini Box DC-DC USB 200 lying around from another project. It's not the cheapest solution but it is smart and can shut down your board safely as it detects when car ignition is turned off. Moreover it can automatically start the board when you turn the ignition back on. 
Here is the link
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C6C...UTF8&psc=1

The harder way would be using the same Arduino sniffing for ignition switch and transistors to shorten the power management pins on RockPro64 (if the board has such pins)

I would love to move the project back to Rock64 if the guys from Pine 64 make an Android image which can be used with a touchscreen. Rock64 has an add-on DAC board for high quality audio however the TV-ish UI and the system overall are currently almost unusable with touchscreens. Don't know about RockPro64 though.

Hope this helps.
Good luck with your project!