What?
This is a project that allows me to run applications like Android Auto, music players, and any other app I would ever need in my 1990 Mazda Miata.
Why?
When I bought my Miata, it had an old aftermarket radio that could only play CDs. I quickly wanted to modernize it with Android Auto, Bluetooth music, and a few other features.
Luckily, I already had a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen lying around, so I started looking for ways to use them in my car.
That's when I found videos about Crankshaft-NG, a project that did almost exactly what I wanted.
However, I wasn't happy with its UI, it kept crashing, and the project seemed unmaintained.
So, I decided to build my own.
How?
After a lot of trial and error, I ended up using Arch Linux ARM, labwc, and Quickshell. This gives me the ability to build my own interface and add the apps I need.
For Android Auto I forked OpenAuto, fixed issues with newer versions of CMake and removed stuff that was useless for my use case minimizing the dependency list.
I also created a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically builds a flashable Raspberry Pi image when I create a release.
The workflow downloads Arch Linux ARM, creates the disk partitions, installs software, copies over my config files, copies the openauto binaries and then it uploads the image to the GitHub release.
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