Noob to AA Questions on Stock factory fitted AA head unit - Android Auto General

Guys I expect to get shot by some on here for what will seem like basic questions but I have tried and tried to find answers.
I have a new truck with Android Auto on the head unit. I have a few questions that to some may sound stupid but to me I simply cant find answers.
1 Can stock Android Auto be launched with any other App other than the Actual Android Auto app.
2 Has anyone managed to mod this app on a rooted hand set
3 Can anyone get Spotify to play their playlists (doesnt seem to matter what I say to google I cant)
4 Are there any tips and tricks people are aware of on factory fitted units.
5 Can android Auto app be themed at all.
I am sure there will be a few people who have factory fitted head units who might benefot from answers but I can see any section or answers to basic use questions nor a catagory for such.
Any help will be greatly appreciated. My head unit is a VW stock unit
Thank you

are the 30 plus views without comment other people who wanted answers or people who just think im nuts because I dont know the answers?

Answers to 1 & 2

Related

[Idea] Building your own Android Auto System

I noticed a few threads about porting Android auto to specific systems but I'm looking to open it up to porting Android Auto to ANY system.
In short, like building CAR PCs, the vision is to build our own Android Auto system.
The challenges are how are we going to get our hands on the software? Anyone know of any leaks/demos/files that are being provided to manufacturers in order for them to implement Android Auto?
Lets start collecting it here so we can start up a development community around it.
windraver said:
I noticed a few threads about porting Android auto to specific systems but I'm looking to open it up to porting Android Auto to ANY system.
In short, like building CAR PCs, the vision is to build our own Android Auto system.
The challenges are how are we going to get our hands on the software? Anyone know of any leaks/demos/files that are being provided to manufacturers in order for them to implement Android Auto?
Lets start collecting it here so we can start up a development community around it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have spent many hours over many weeks searching everywhere and anywhere on the internet for any hardware specifications associated with Android Auto and have come up with absolutely nothing. It seems like it should be relatively trivial to build such a device as it is my understanding that the hardware mostly acts as a dumb terminal to the software on your phone. This of course assumes that you don't care if your head unit is completely inoperable when not attached to your phone but this seems like a limitation that personally I would be perfectly happy with and is the reason that I will not buy any of the new head units from the manufacturers currently releasing them.
Obviously it still has to interface with the rest of your car speaker system so you'd need an amp and whatever else to make that work (like I said, NO information anywhere!) and you'd also need a touchscreen controller, etc., but still it just feels like it should be doable for just a few hundred dollars.
Sorry I can't provide any better information. I hope someone else can be more helpful.
Copied from my other post.
I am sure we will see hundreds of posts asking this question.
Likely #1 FAQ for Android Auto.
See my post on the new app and it's developer mode.
If developers can see and use the UI pretty well without a head unit, presumably on a tablet or larger phone, then non-developers should be able to do the same.
search u tube video: YkdW9O6iwYm
Says video is not available
https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto

Create my own Head Unit with Android Auto?

Hello everyone,
I'd love to have a display to which I could connect my Android phone (via Android Auto) in a similar way like I can do in my Seat Ibiza, just so I could have Android Auto on a big(ger) screen on any car I'm driving (parents, brother, friends, work).
I've done some googleing, but couldn't find a successful project (there's one person who said it was quite unstable), so I came here to get confirmation for either side.
I appreciate your answers! Thanks a lot in advance!
You can install Android Auto app on your Android Head Unit, but you get the problem when you try to call. The app thinks that the radio is the phone, and does not recognizes it as a handsfree. If somebody could tweak it, it would be wonderful.

Help identifying unit

In my other cars, I have simple 2 DIN Android units which are easily identifiable and I have flashed different ROMS and MCU firmware to those to get the desired interface and features that I needed..
But with the new unit I purchased for my 2003 Mazda 6, I am having trouble working out what type of unit it is.. I have no idea if there are other ROMs available, or different MCU versions. I would like to figure this out, so I can potentially work on fixing some of the little annoyances that this unit has.
The unit was purchased from AliExpress here.
I have attached screenshots of the details in the settings app, and the 'car settings' app also.
Overall, the unit is very responsive, and the software isn't too bad.. but it has a few issues i'd like to attempt to fix.
Any help identifying it, or links to any MCU firmware or Android ROMs for it would be appreciated.
Thanks
The main issue I want to resolve, is the 'cold boot' each time I start the car..
Now, I have noticed that when turning off the car, the stereo backlight is turned off (yet the LCD is still on, and can be seen if there is light from the correct angle, and the touchscreen still works) and the stereo doesnt actually 'shutdown' until around 8-10 seconds later. This leads me to believe that its possible to configure the unit to not shutdown, but instead 'sleep'.
Would I be correct in assuming that the MCU is in control of the unit being sent the shutdown signal? Therefore, I would need a different MCU firmware to be able to achieve my goal?
I've seen lots of different MCU and ROM versions for other units, so surely there is some for this unit also.
I cant help you I m afraid, apart from telling you that they are deffo not MTCB/C or MTCD/E units.
As Typos1 has said, it's not an MTCx unit.
I did find some info here: http://4pda.ru/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t877165.html
marchnz said:
As Typos1 has said, it's not an MTCx unit.
I did find some info here: http://4pda.ru/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t877165.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for the late reply.. Im going through that post now (using Google Translate) but its hard to figure out what I need to do..

General Android Auto questions and specific ones regarding some units.

backstory: I never owned a car with a 3rd party head unit, never used android auto or had a car that supported it. Mirrorlink never worked on any car i've tested that should support it. So i'm here with pretty much here with little knowledge
I'm probably getting the AVH-2300NEX, I read some good stuff about it and it has android auto, its my main focus currently but i'm open to suggestions.
Here's my questions regarding Android Auto
1. Android auto isn't supported in my country via the playstore, can getting the apk from elsewhere bypass this problem or will it still be locked?
2. I remember reading that you can't use your device at all but some other news contradicting saying that there is a slide to unlock? if its the latter, what can you do on the device while its in android auto mode?
3. Does screen aspect ratio and resolution affect the quality of android auto? (I read that 16:9 QHD devices should switch to FHD, but that about 18:9 or 19:9 with QHD, will FHD fix any issues? do these still exist? or is this all dependant on the head unit)
4. Does samsung android pie has any issues with android auto currently? I read that in general some devices with pie had issues with android auto back in october, idk if google fixed it and I dont know if samsung has this issue.
Questions regarding head units.
1. similar to 4. from above Does the avh-2300nex work with note9? this post here seems to indicate that pie broke android auto usually samsung work differently than google so I'm not sure if its broken on note9 pie update if anyone here has it.
2. Overall, is the 2300NEX/2400Nex (they seem to be the same) worth getting for 300$ or so is there a better alternative for similar pricing (considering these are 2017 products)
3. is the 2300NEX even running android? should I even care so long it runs android auto?
4. Are there better units that better suit my needs? google maps navigation, music control and backup camera
Edit: one note responsiveness is a must I drove a car with an android unit that had horrendous touch sensitivity and was very slow (Had to click 3/4 times in the same spot for it to recognize my touch and was very slow to actually do the thing)
1) Based on a Google Search: you should be good to go. Don't take it as granted
2) There's a slide to unlock and pretty much you can fully use your phone
3) It depends on the head unit. If the head unit has a big resolution, though, you should be aware that your phone should be powerful enough to deliver a good experience
shmykelsa said:
1) Based on a Google Search: you should be good to go. Don't take it as granted
2) There's a slide to unlock and pretty much you can fully use your phone
3) It depends on the head unit. If the head unit has a big resolution, though, you should be aware that your phone should be powerful enough to deliver a good experience
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm wondering what would be the difference between my choice and this Xtron unit this one doesn't support android auto out of the box but i can install an app to let me do just that.

Looking for the Android Auto headunit Apk/protocol

Hi,
I have a 2015 Audi A3, which unfortunately didn't come with AA as an option (I think it was introduced in 2017). It's a real pain to install the 2017 MMI into an older car, but there are guys out there developing aftermarket Android-based headunits that basically put a whole android "phone" in the dash; which isn't a very eloquent solution and kind of overkill in my opinion. They've got their own SIM cards and you have to change the bluetooth devices the phone is paired to and whatnot. It's really not exactly what I'm looking for. I just want AA and that's it.
Anyway there's one guy who's kind of got what I'm looking for . Unfortunately because the car also didn't come with a touchscreen, I have to toggle through the menus with the knobs and steering wheel buttons, which is meh. I'd love to put a digitizer overlay on the screen and play around with it, maybe have a daughter board made up and inject the screen coordinates into the packets somehow before it's sent down to the phone. I'm more of an EE, don't really have a lot of Android dev experience but I've got a lot of microcontroller and firmware experience. Anyway that's my high level idea of how this might work, not sure if I'm going in the right direction. I did ask the guy at RSNAV (seems to be a one-man show) last night if I might have the source code after signing an NDA and I'm awaiting his response. In the meantime I want to get a plan of action going.
So I'm wondering how AA is integrated on the client-side. Obviously the manufacturer headunits aren't running Android, but they've gotta communicate somehow with the phone. I can't find this info anywhere, I'm guessing this is info Google only shares with Auto manufacturers and the Kentwoods and Pioneers of the world. But maybe I'm wrong. I'm assuming it's a protobuf-based protocol between the headunit and the phone, but I don't know.
Can anybody help me out here? Thanks.
All my android auto head units are running android operating system two Chevy and one Mitsubishi. Main reason why poplar cars get rooted head units and what not. But after market android auto head unit is probably your best choice.

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