I realize this is probably way out of left field, but I am curious about this. Searching the web doesn't really turn up much so I've decided to pose the question.
My new car stereo has an SD card reader, bluetooth, and a beautiful touch screen. It's backbone is probably either Unix or Java. Seems to me it would have all the ingredients to enable it to be hacked. I could think of a hundred things it could do which it can't in its current stock state (games, enhanced sound features, apps, and better phone interfacing: video playback on screen, display texts or emails on screen, utilize phone GPS, Talk to text, text playback, web browsing, google now, etc...)
I'm somewhat aware of the android based radios that are out there but it really seems that they are not ready for primetime yet. I suppose I'm more curious about those that have found a way to reprogram their current stereos (essentially rooting them) to install more feature filled roms.
If you think about it, many people have touchscreen/bluetooth capable radios in their cars nowadays. Also, a car stereo is something you are typically forced to live with a very long time (longer than your smartphone at least). When you get down to it, there have to be millions of people who all have the same stereo system and that is true for multiple different systems. Many could benefit from the advance capabilities that could come out of such an endeavor. As a novice, I suppose I don't see how it would be all that different than flashing your dreamcast or blu ray player with new roms (which is commonplace nowadays). Is anyone already working on this? Maybe I'm missing something here.
In case you are curious, I would love to learn how to hack my 2013 VW Jetta Premium VIII Audio device.
Well I doubt it runs on the Linux kernel so "rooting" wouldn't necessarily be possible per se. Java might be it, in which case it is probably not open source and it would be a pain to reverse engineer it.
You might think about just putting a Nexus 7 in dash and hooking it up to the aux input of your stereo or something like that.
edit:
just to add it might be possible,but probably fruitless to spend so much time hacking something so specific as that. Running homebrew on a Dreamcast is a bit of a different animal.
Related
Only saw one mention of this in these forums (ViewSonic in particular), but being a big fan of random acts of technology, I am totally into the home automation thing.
Been using X10 for a number of years with fairly good success but recently started building my Insteon house of power. Much more expensive but also much more powerful and reliable. Still getting it up and running, but wondering if anyone here has played with the Insteon SmartLinc Web Control on this thing. It was designed around the iPhone/Touch in particular, but any web-enabled device should work.
That being said, anyone here find apps that work well with this format to control home automation? The closest thing I can find is Conductor but you need to have the ISY-99 in order to use it.
I have read about some others, AutoHTN and HCA: Home Control Assistant most notably, but not really getting a good sense that those are the best avenues to tread down.
Perhaps the best breakdown I have found is at "The Android Authority" that I unfortunately cannot link to yet.
What hardware are you using? I have some X10, and Autom8 is compatible with the cm15a usb controller. Run the server on windows pc, and then software on android.
Link is autom8 dot clangen dot org
onezero1010101 said:
What hardware are you using?
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I have switched to pure Insteon components right now. As it stands I am running just the SmartLinc, but I foresee myself going the ISY-99 route in the future as I continually expand my system.
I have some X10, and Autom8 is compatible with the cm15a usb controller. Run the server on windows pc, and then software on android.
Link is autom8 dot clangen dot org
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will check that out. I have a certifiable butt-load of X-10 stuff, but I am hesitant to mix and match the two systems at this point as I have researched quite a bit and read about constant interference issues between the two interfaces.
I am really excited to start playing with this, as the potential to have a full size touch screen whole house remote with all the other things that it is capable of. I need to head over to the Insteon forums and see if anyone else is working on custom apps for Android related to this as well. A few mentions of things elsewhere on these boards, but nothing really mind blowing that I have found.
Hello there, I'm about to make the big jump from android to windows phone 7!
I love android but I hate so much of it at the same time, for instance the lack of a decent media manager, doubletwist has too many issues and a lack of features!
Regardless I'm now making the switch to the Lumia 900 thought I've got a few uncertainties I'm hoping people can clarify for me.
1)Contacts- At the moment, I love google contacts, it works so seamlessly and gmail is a pleasure to use! However switching to WP7 is going to mean I have to use live, which is alright but it's a laggy mess in comparison to gmail I find. It's a mess to work around and it keeps shoving ****ty Bing in my face! Any way I can still use gmail or at least make the whole live experience less...crap?
2)Zune- I love the zune interface, one of the main reasons I'm switching but how are updates coming along for it? It's beautiful to look at however it hasn't been updated in quiet some time and there's vital features missing, for instance a repeat button! How well does this sync with WP7, I'm hoping beautifully with my entire library and all my custom playlists? One of the main reasons I'm switching
3)Docking- no docks i'm assuming, I want iphone docking abilities but since there's no feature on microusb to output audio that's a lost cause =[ However there's talk of a microsoft dock, what's that all about anyone know?
4)Updates- with talks of WP Apollo I'm worried about when to get a phone. I really like the lumia 800 and i'm holding out for the 900 just for those extra few features like a front facing camera since my contract just finished, not to mention my HTC desire is dead hence I'm using a replacement.
In fact would you say it's even worth waiting for the 900?? Since it's really not that different!
5)Bluetooth- I presumed this was standard but I can stream music via bluetooth to bluetooth speakers right with the 800/900???? I heard people saying it wasn't capable?
6)Dual-Boot?- Any hope of dual booting android?
7Free games/apps- Android had thousands of free apps and games, how does WP7 fare in this department?
Thank you for your help!
1) WP7 can use your Google contacts, Calendar, and sync your Gmail account just fine. You need to have a Windows Live account, but you don't really ahve to do anything with it. If you already have a Xbox Live account or Zune Tag, just use that. FWIW, I personally really don't like either the Windows Live or Google web interfaces, but prefer Bing over Google for first-try searching (I'll try the other if I don't find what I want right off the bat, but I usually find what I want faster if I start with Bing).
1.1) Be aware that Bing is pretty integrated into Windows Phone, while Google is not. In fact, Google has very few apps for the phone. Although the integration with Google services like Gmail and Calendar is good, others like Talk, Voice, Docs, and G+ is not. Google has (not a huge surprise) shown very little interest in developing apps for WP7.
2) Zune gets updates every now and then. The last was just before Mango came out, call it five or six months ago. It definitely supports Repeat though, both on the phone and on the PC... As for syncing with WP7, it's very good. You can choose what types of media to automatically sync, you can manually sync anything, and yes, things like custom playlists are certainly supported. If you've added a folder to your "Libraries" in Windows, the Zune software will see it and be able to sync it. You can also manually add additional folders.
3) I don't know anything here. There's a "Dock Mode" app on HTC, but as far as I know there's no standard dock interface on WP7. All the phones use MicroUSB, but they don't put the ports in the same place or anything.
4) So far, all updates have been available for all phones. I don't know how long that'll keep up, but Mango isn't even slightly laggy on my first-gen HD7 so I expect it'll remain true for a while. The only reason to wait for a newer phone is if you want new hardware features; the software is almost entirely the same across all phones and all generations. None of that Android fragmentation, where a device may be running an obsolete major version at its release, never be brought fully up to date, and abandoned six months later while there's still a long wait on your contract.
5) WP7 can stream music to A2DP BlueTooth devices, and can use Headset profile BlueTooth as well (of course). It's a little more limited than other smartphones in terms of BlueTooth - no native support for file transfer or BT tethering, for example - but it's generally suficient and MS has added capabilities in previous updates so hopefully that will keep going.
6) So far, no natively WP7 devices can run Android. It's theoretically possible, but you'd need both an unlocked bootloader and a port of Android to the device's hardware. The only phone I know of that can run both WP7 and Android is the HTC HD2, and that actually comes with Windows Mobile, not WP7 *or* Android. It's also a bit old and becoming hard to buy.
7) There are many thousands of free apps, or apps with functional trial versions, in the WP7 Marketplace. That includes games. It's certainly not as vast (yet) as iOS or Android, but those platforms have huge head-starts. It's growing very rapidly. Microsoft has also put some effort into "must-have" apps and games, although generally those end up costing a few dollars. Almost all paid apps have trials, though.
Thanks for the help. =)
How is tethering as a general? I love my wi-fi hotspot on my desire. One of the BEST things about the phone. How is it on the Lumias and WP7 in general?
Didn't realise Zune had been updated(updating after this post!)
So it is definitely possible to keep my WP7 contacts synced with google? if so YAY!
Also iOS jailbreaking, android rooting. What about WP7? And as bad as it is, is there a way to install 'free' apps. Not that one ever would partake in such criminal activities, I'm just curious I guess?
Most WP7 devices offer WiFi hotspot tethering. It depends on the carrier (some disable it entirely, others charge for it) and the phone (I've heard surprising claims that the Lumia 710 doesn't permit it, even though T-Mobile US generally does - hopefully they push an update soon to fix that). Where it's supported, it works well.
The last Zune update was, as I said, months ago... but yeah, if you don't have a Repeat button you're ona very old version. The current version is 4.8.something.
Yeah, syncing contacts with Google is very easy. When I create a contact on the phone, I get the option of storing it on my Google account instead of my Live or Exchange accounts.
So far, nobody has managed to root the Lumias or install custom ROMs, but they're still quite new. Until a month or so back, the same was true of the Samsung WP7 devices (at least for custom ROMs; they were rooted months ago). I'm sure that, as the Lumias become more popular, they too will be rooted and have their bootloaders unlocked.
Discussion of piracy is quite frowned upon here on XDA-Devs. The only legit reason I can think of for a potential user to ask about it is if they're also a potential developer and are concerned about their apps being pirated. That said, there are some protections but they can be worked around. Microsoft has said they're going to start encrypting the Marketplace apps though, and that will make it much more difficult.
If you're seriously interested in dual booting, I'll have a Telstra (fully AT&T compatible) HTC HD2 available for sale as soon as Internet Sharing becomes enabled on the Lumia 800. It's a hard to find version of the phone.
It is possible to get 3 different phones with ubuntu phone now, none of them too expensive.
good.
i wonder what people's experience or informed opinion is?
ubuntu is pushing "convergence", which basically means that one operating system runs on all devices, that i can use my smartphone as a computer...
how far along is it?
now there's loads of blog articles and reviews out there, but most of them focus on comparing ubuntu phone (UP from now on) to other phone OSs - with their fully grown app universe. of course UP comes up short!
but that's not what i'm interested in. OS stability, and the standard browsing, music and video, and of course phone and sms is good enough for me.
but, i want the same freedom i have with my linux desktop install: to Do Things.
(my most important project is still to get a usable connection to the data & media stored on my kitchenserver.)
the day before yesterday i had a chat with someone on #ubuntu-phone - i think it was a dev.
i asked if i can use & upgrade it like any normal ubuntu/debian-based, install apps and utilities and so on.
basically he said, gui apps are difficult because UP uses a different gui model than Xorg, but basically yes, but you loose you guarantee that OTA (over the air) updates will work. but they should, regardless.
yesterday i was browsing the ubuntu phone section on ubuntu forums; of course people only post if something doesn't work - it looks like a normal and healthy distro forum to me.
OTA updates come in almost daily, i gather. very lively development.
there was, however, a lot of familiar discussions about how to get some app or other working; familiar from my 2 android phones: convoluted and fragile solutions, like installing ubuntu desktop in a chroot.
UP even recommends adb (android debug bridge?) as the only way to access the phone from your computer. or the standard mtp connection. so it's the same **** as everywhere.
the other aspect is this:
- ok, android is big, evil google, but there's a few established solutions around to use it without an account, use f-droid instead of play store, well documented security hacks and so on.
- UP certainly isn't the white knight here, but if not google, what do they use, is it really "better" than google and can i opt out easily?
yes, i am seriously considering to buy a UP phone, as soon as i get the feeling that it is an improvement freedom and security wise.
i wonder what people's experience or informed opinion is?
bump
...just a gentle one before the weekend ends.
i'd love to get some answers...
I would like to create an IoT device by buying new, cheap android phones, strip them down and remove the screen, rebox into my own physical box, install a custom ROM without any bloatware (and that will boot without a screen!), and install my android app on the device to do stuff.
An example of a purpose for this could be a GPS tracker for a car. The box would be placed in the car, and record GPS and accelerometer readings, posting these readings back to a central server via the cellular network. (This is just a random example, so don't focus too much on the detail of this, but there are thousands of uses for a IoT board with the sensor, CPU, RAM, storage, and connectivity capabilities of a budget android smartphone)
The reason I want to use existing phones is that they are wonderful, mass produced, cheap devices with a variety of sensors I can use.
The reason I want to use Android is because it is because of the customization ability, and the mature development ecosystem.
To me, it seems an obvious thing to do, but I don't seem to be getting much joy trying to search for examples of this sort of thing (either here, or on the internet in general).
So some questions:
1. General thoughts? (Good idea? Am I missing some fundamental problem?)
2. What are the challenges of running Android without a screen connected?
3. Are there any custom ROMs you know of that specialize in this sort of thing?
(I've seen Google Brilo, but it still seems a bit early yet, and I really like the idea of just using the standard Android SDK to develop the app - and the abundance of help and information that comes with it)
Thanks!
(i tried my best - if i got this in the wrong forum, sue me )
In general, I'm happy with Android (currently running 7 on a Galaxy Tab S3, and 8 on an S7 phone), but there is one thing that is probably going to drive me to a different OS: Android's "networking".
Can someone explain the philosophy behind the way it "works"? It seems each app has to handle networking on it own. For example: I have a really great ebook reader on my tablet. I have a really great library on my NAS. There appears to be no way to get the reader to see the NAS. In a real OS, i could just 'map a drive' (to use Windows terminology) and the contents of that drive would be available to all apps on my tablet. Similarly, i have a great music player on my phone, a huge collection on my NAS, yet ne'er the twain shall meet, so to speak.
Why? Is there some reason for this frustratingly primitive networking model? Is it yet another Android 'feature' to protect us from ourselves? (God I hate that attitude Android has that everyone should be cut off from any functionality that is 'risky'. I hate having to root. I hate SE Linux. It's my freaking device - I want full control.)
It's worse than things were in the '80s. Much worse. I can get to my movies and music using a streaming protocol (again, specific to each app), but contrary to what everyone but me seems to accept, streaming from a NAS to a single endpoint is a dumb answer to a simple question. 30 seconds of thought will give you a dozen reasons why.
Have I missed something? Is there a hidden setting that makes this possible? Is there (ugh) an app that will enable real networking? My next tablet is going to have to be Windows, I guess. Not sure what to do about a phone that isn't baby-proofed.
many thanks for any (reasonable) response.