Volumio in car

Hi,

I’ve been using Volumio for some time at home (running on RPi), and have been thinking about installing one in my car, permanently. The main problem is - connectivity.

Having an android phone, I would have liked to use it to control Volumio (either from the web interface or from some MPD app). This can obviously be achieved by using ad-hoc wifi on the RPi, but that would mean that the phone would be connected to the car’s wifi and not to mobile data - which I must have (Waze, whatsapp, etc). I also looked at the option of running the android as a hot-spot (despite the enormous, and not very necessary, load on the battery), but it seems that in this mode the phone itself is only able to use the WAN, thus unable to communicate with the RPi (on the LAN). I even considered installing a mobile router in the car (e.g. the TP-link WR702N), but that would require an additional data-enabled SIM, which my operator does not provide. As far as I can tell, this rules out all wifi related options.

Bluetooth would be my next thought. The phone can connect to several devices simultaneously (RPi and the car’s hands-free speaker), and the small bandwidth is surely enough for MPD control. The only problem ? there are actually two - both Volumio & the controller app need to support BT…

Any other ideas ? What have I missed ? And more importantly - are there any plans for adding BT support ?

Thanks everyone,
Itay

There should be an hack on Android to have both wifi and ps internet activated :wink:

I too am looking into this. However they’re two issues:

  1. I want to be able to see the Volumio web GUI on my 7" TFT directly connected to the Pi.
  2. I still want to be able to listen to FM radio.

Thoughts?

Interesting idea.

spotify ----- 4G ----- Phone (volumio web app) ----WIFI---- Car router -----ETHERNET----- Car pi & tft ------ANALOG------ existing car deck Aux input

The only way I can see you getting around the router are setting up some software router on your phone or on the Pi. Neither will be as easy as running a small d-link off the car battery.

I don’t see how bluetooth would help at all… ?

I have looked into this as well and came to sort of a solution. I was never able to find a solution that made android access both a private network and the cell network. The solutions i found were too invasive to the phone and i believe required rooting. The last thing that i never did try was the bluetooth PAN (personal area network) profile. Using this profile you should be able to create a network between the phone and raspberry pi. It is supported on iOS too, which is a perk. The only thing that i am unsure if is if the phone would then try to route all internet requests through this connection or not. I do not believe it will as long as you dont give the phone a gateway. Getting autopairing…etc to work in linux on the pi is a bit of a pain.

In the end my solution was to use a little known protocol called Android Open Accessory Protocol 2 to get audio out of the USB port of the phone and to pass it basic playback commands. I wrote some scripts to make it work and you get 16bit 44.1hkz audio out. The audio quality is fine for a car since the noise floor in a car is 70-85dB. I switched to the beaglebone black so I could put the device on my cars CAN bus to receive steering wheel button commands. Its all working and has been in my car for around a year now.

heres some more information and some code
android-audio-docking-usb-audio-from-android-device-t2764.html

Hi there

What about using the A2DP blue-tooth profile on the rpi for receiving audio?

Here is some info on how you might be able to do that:

instructables.com/id/Turn-yo … uetooth-A/

This way it would also work for any phone that support the A2DP profile no matter if its Apple, Microsoft, Android or any other maker.