Using Raspberry Pi for conversion of dumb truck to smart truck

Came across an article on the Raspberry Pi, which is a $35 pocket sized single board computer designed to teach kids about computers. Wondering if any of you smart people have ideas to connect to the Tacoma to extend use of Entune display, stream videos, act as a 1-4GB song archive, etc.

Anybody used this? Ideas? Talk amongst yourselves

 

As long as you've got a good power supply for it, a Pi can do so so so many things. If Entune has a external video/audio input thats HDMI compatible, it could work.

 

I have a co worker who used these all the time to do whatever the hell he wanted really. Possibilities are endless

 

I just play old Nintendo games on mine.

 

Yeah, I do the same. Old nes, snes, genesis, TG16 etc...

 

I do the same with mine it works great, I have an insane number of ROMs that i got from a guy I used to work with. Think it was around 5000. I have to find my old computer to look

 

Crazy how far technology has come

 

So we can play 30 year old video games.

 

So true haha

 

Everlanders have a great setup and something I'm building. Trying figure out the best way to do cameras.


There's this and many other projects on youtube and the interwebz


I got this case:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081VT2CPW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This screen:

$86 Raspberry Pi 7" Touch Screen Display

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0153R2A9I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

OpenAuto OS:
http://www.bluewavestudio.io/index.php/bluewave-shop/openauto-pro-detail

And I'm going to mount a RAM ball to the case to it so I can have it on my TPAM.

 

Raspberry Pi is much more powerful than a teaching tool. You're only limit is your imagination.

 

I've been tossing around the idea of building a relay control board that lives under the hood, with an interface powered by a Pi on the dash. It could be touchscreen, but I like buttons better. The nice part is with some good design you could control an unlimited number of relays with one control unit and one set of wires to the front of the truck. All the high current stuff would stay out of the cab, and you could even make it wireless.

Unfortunately I have exactly zero extra electric accessories on my truck that need controlling, so its a super low priority.

 

I went down the rabbit hole of raspberry pi and the possibilities are eennddlesss. Kinda overwhelming if you don’t really have an idea already in mind

 

I’ve got prittymuch this, but mine is behind the radio not under hood. Also used Arduino clone and not pi, as it has built in ADO so I can read the steering wheel controls, and use those to control the relays. Also has Bluetooth and Wifi, so I can control the relays from phone.

 

Very good. I don't have steering wheel controls, but that's a great idea.

Which Arduino clone did you use? There's certainly no lack of capable Arduino boards. Only real reason I was thinking about pi was for driving a larger display, maybe talking to an obd adapter.

 

It’s an esp8266 based board with integrated relays (which there are many varieties), But this one was the only one I found that also had spare GPIO pins so I didn’t need so solder to the chip myself for external input.
https://aptinex.com/product/aptinex-iot-relaynode-rn4ce8/

I’ve got a ton of experience with Pi, if you want a screen then it’s the best option, but it has a ton of pitfalls for this style project. Make sure you read up on read only root, or use a distribution that has it, it’s the ONLY way you’re going to make a Pi reliable for this style project.

 

Nice. Mqtt built in even.

Yeah I'm torn on displays. If I could come up with information that I actually wanted to display beyond just making a button board, then a pi would be the ticket.


And yeah pis can be a pain. There's just a lot of extra complexity dealing with Linux. I've done a ton of it, but sometimes it's just nice to toss an Arduino at it and have things just work. I think the microsd card is the biggest Achilles heel for a project like this, they tend to just not boot sometimes if they get a little dislodged. Something like a beaglebone with onboard eMMC would be more reliable.

 

I’ve had great luck on Pi’s by using the cf card read only (Ie RO root Linux, my own distribution) then any old USB thumb drive for data will do. Just make sure to use ram drive for anything write intensive (like logs). They are rock solid from any corruption that way, then you just need to worry about their Finikey power.

As for that board I posted, I threw away the firmware and used my own, don’t think I even powered it up with theirs. Use it to control different camera input , camera override, Gps lockout override, ECT always on and probably some other things I’ve forgotten ...

 

I am in the process of building a Relay controllor using an Arduino, Rasp Pi, and an Android Head unit. The relays and arduino are in the engine bay and are controlled with a 2 wire serial connection going back to the raspberry pi. I then wrote an android app that will wirelessly send commands to the Pi. I have all of the software done and I am now trying to clean up the wiring and mount everything. Future plans are to connect to the trucks canbus so I can monitor engine parameters and maybe even control some factory features.

 

Any updates on your project?
I want to use a touch screen to control the Offroad lights like the spod.
Monitoring the engine parameters would be like the screen saver and once I click on touch the screen it would then switch to the screen controlling the aux lights