Radio Head Unit – OpenAutoPro – Information Center

The Idea

I’ve had the Pioneer deck in the car for 2 decades, I bought it in 2002 and it has been a great radio, however it can only play CD’s. To stream from a phone, id either need to connect an Aux cord directly to it or a aux Bluetooth receiver. Both these options are acceptable for the amount I drive the car, and to be honest in the past 9 years I don't even think i turned the radio on when driving. But, when I get an idea for something, I have to try it.

I wanted something that looked like it was designed to be part of the car, like it could have been a factory option. I did try a detachable interface that would be mounted externally to the dash pieces, but it looked to cluttered and it didn’t have customizable features in its interface.

OpenAuto-Pro

I found OpenAutoPro software for the Raspberry Pi and also found a touch screen with dimensions that would fit very tightly in the din slot of the Mx6. I have “some” experience with the raspberry pi so i decided why not give it a shot.

This software has a lot of features and can be expanded on with coding knowledge. It also offers a lot of customization. From colors, wallpapers, boot screens, to font size.

The Plan

I started this project trying to make it for as low cost as possible. Originally only planning to make this radio a piggyback to the Pioneer deck. It would only feed sound output to the Pioneer that would control the volume and mixer controls to the speakers. I didn’t think that id need additional options like a backup camera or usb storage so i declined to get those componets.

If your interested in this software its : Bluewave Studio OpenAutoPro

To mount the new radio, it required some trimming of the plastic dash framing. It also required sanding on the inner side of the dash trim so that it didn’t push down onto the screen when it was snapped into place.

After many test fits and testing of the radio, I was rather impressed and began coming up with ideas to remove the pioneer radio to place all the Digital dash components in its place. I also figured why not get a backup camera and usb storage.

At this point, Ive already got a decent amount of money wrapped into this project, so I decided to make this an entire standalone setup. That required a 4 channel amplifier and digital audio processor. This was more then I wanted to spend, however it seemed reasonable that If I was going make a cool radio, it should be running a decent sound system.