Hello, I would like to create custom hardware to use android in a car. I used a car PC years ago with WinXP and specific software, but Android should be way better for this job. But first, there are quite some problems to solve. android-porting sounds like the correct group for my questions, if not, it would be nice if you could give me a hint where to ask.
To have a working car entertainment system, there needs to be some support for things that mobile phones or tablets do not offer, some other features that mobile phones offer need to be replicated with USB or other hardware. - Audio Output I would need 5 channel output for 2 front speakers, 2 rear speakers and a subwoofer channel. There are USB sound "cards" that offer this. Some kind of Android "Mixer app" would be required, but this wouldn't be a problem as I could program the client app myself. But I would need Android to support 5 channels as audio device, I assume that a specific/new driver had to be created for this to work, or is there support "out-of-the-box" in Android for this? - Wifi Wifi could be on the board directly or as USB interface, how about drivers for these "generic" devices? Can I buy some D-Link Wifi interface and it will work directly? - GPS The same applies for a USB GPS interface, is there hardware support in android for this? Are mobile GPS chips connected by some sort of "internal USB" or by other interfaces? - Hands-free-equipment To be able to use my mobile in my car hands-free, there needs to be microphone support but additionally, the Android device should be able to show up as a hands-free bluetooth device in my mobile. A second SIM slot is not an option, but SIM access profile would be of course. Many other things should work out-of-the-box I think, things like music player, navigation and such. How do I start such a project? Do I really need to compile android and put custom drivers for specific hardware in it or does Android offer some sort of "generic drivers" as other big linux distributions such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE etc... do? Help is greatly appreciated. Regards, Nils -- unsubscribe: [email protected] website: http://groups.google.com/group/android-porting
