CarPlay on Raspberry Pi demo

Getting CarPlay running on a car system like OpenAuto has been a target for my electrical vehicle conversion project. I couldn’t find an OpenAuto solution that uses a CarPlay dongle, so I had to look elsewhere. The good news is I’ve put together a solution using Lineage OS (see my previous post) that I’ll be using moving forward if all goes well. Here though, I wanted to review the CarPlay functionality a bit more.

CarPlay performance

I’ve added the video below, but in general, this CarPlay solution seems to run quite smoothly. I haven’t tried tons of factory CarPlay systems, but it seems to run as well as others that I’ve tried. Note that I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4G of ram, so its as much Pi performance you can currently get.

I was using an older Pi power supply (2A) for initial testing and noticed the undervoltage lightning bolt on the screen indicating it was current limited. I’ve since updated to a Pi 4 power supply (3A), so that has gone away. I haven’t looked into optimizing LineageOS, so there might be performance available there too. The dongle and/or CarPlay itself might be the limiting factor. Either way, I’m happy enough with the performance at this point. It easily out performs my 2016 Subaru Outback’s horrible infotainment system, so it looks like I’ll be happy with this Pi CarPlay system.

I’m also pleased to see that Deezer is supported by CarPlay (I didn’t know that), as its the music streaming app that I’ve been using for years. I’ll have to follow up with an amplifier so you can actually hear music playing, so that will be coming.

Infotainment platform

This is exciting, as its a great platform for the rest of the infotainment features. For example, I plan to add a back up camera and a dash camera. I also want to add the electric vehicle’s stats like battery charge, mileage, etc. For these other features, I’m looking at writing standalone Android apps. Stay posted!