What good are your fancy build-in automotive media accessories if no one delivers the content you need for yours! This project takes this challenge on — reclaiming the car LCD display and building the system he needs on a RasPi. This project has several updates under its belt, so take a look at the hardware and software dev posts for this project elsewhere on the site!
Why?
Some time ago, I got myself a Raspberry Pi. Initially it was supposed to replace my home-theater PC but I found it’s too slow. So, I had a problem- what to do with such a nitty device of Pi.
This was not the only problem I had- my old Volvo has built in navigation system, with motorised LCD and neat keys on steering wheel. The problem, you may ask? Volvo stopped doing new maps for it 5 years ago. Heck, just use the old maps! You see, I live in Latvia and as you could have guessed- there are no maps available in the country I live in.
What?
I am currently building a navigation system to replace original navigation system. As a bonus feature, I’d like to hook into car’s audio system- the original head-unit only has CD and casette trays and no aux input. Since no one burns CD’s these days I am aiming to use Raspberry Pi for audio as well.
The display itself is a 6.5″ TFT LCD screen with (admittedly, quite low) resolution of 400×234. My thinking goes- if it’s good enough for factory navigation, it will be good enough for me….
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.
We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!