This is a really good reverse engineering exercise but as a cautionary note:
If you are doing this in your real car most of the trim on the dashboard is secured by plastic clips. You need specialized car trim tools (similar to the phone case ones but well bigger) to remove them along the edges without denting the outer plastic edges.
Also most of them are meant to clip-on once. So if you take them apart too many times you might start seeing gaps on the trim and things not properly fitting.
Again it might not be something you care about but just thought I would mention. Ideally you would be better off getting one of these from after-sales or 2nd hand from scrap parts and working on a bench top with a 12V line.
They also explore using a serial connection at the bottom of the chassis. It is specifically that part of accessing the bottom of the chassis that I was advising some caution.
This reminded me of the time I installed a computer in my car, in 2005. There was a whole community built around making a windows interface suitable for a touchsreen in your dash. Surprisingly my build thread is still online:
https://www.vwvortex.com/threads/mp3.2194412/
Posting under a throwaway for obvious reasons, but I am sure all of these head units are all insecure. There’s a major manufacturer that had a head unit flaw+backed issue that allowed for the remote unlocking and starting of any car..
Hilariously, I would pay GM for a software upgrade on my headunit for improved UI and features/bugfixes. It even has a software update function but I've never seen one available.
I did some work on a programmable head unit in 2000, it ran a JVM written by the author of Drupal [1] and had a colour LCD with touchscreen, GSM modem, GPS, CAN interface.
I have Nissan Rogue 2016. I used to receive phone calls and mails from Nissan Connect enticing me into subscribing for different bundles at roughly 20$ a month. I did not want their entertainment. I was ready to pay for live traffic updates only. That was not an option.
Though this project will not let me display live traffic updates it enables custom software running on a headunit. I hope other projects will spring into existence.
I will be making a trip for USB-ethernet dongle. Thank you for posting it here.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 44.1 ms ] threadIf you are doing this in your real car most of the trim on the dashboard is secured by plastic clips. You need specialized car trim tools (similar to the phone case ones but well bigger) to remove them along the edges without denting the outer plastic edges.
Also most of them are meant to clip-on once. So if you take them apart too many times you might start seeing gaps on the trim and things not properly fitting.
Again it might not be something you care about but just thought I would mention. Ideally you would be better off getting one of these from after-sales or 2nd hand from scrap parts and working on a bench top with a 12V line.
If you're still game, a set of trim tools and replacement clips of all sorts are usually available from your favourite large online retailer.
I recently bought a set of trim tools for $AU28 and am assortment of trim clips and roof liner clips for a few more tens of dollars.
Definitely worth watching a couple how to videos on YouTube too.
Having said that: don't be surprised when you break something.
Anyone have an links to anything similar for Hyundai systems?
I know the Mazda system "MZD" has quite the active community, for example: https://mazdatweaks.com/
[0] https://github.com/ea/bosch_headunit_root/blob/main/images/0...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dries_Buytaert
“Kai” is probably 改, roughly translates to “Modified” or “Upgraded”.