Adding Carplay support to a cheap Chinese car headunit

[Tomek20225]

Hi guys!

 

I’ve recently been gifted an unbranded, Chinese headunit. I haven’t yet connected it to my car, but I’m almost certain that it’s the PODOFO Q3508. It most likely isn’t the PODOFO Q3570, which supports Carplay.

 

As I really want Carplay, I thought that I might turn this situation into a fun project. So I want to add wireless Carplay to the device that I have.

 

This is my current plan:

1. The headunit supports wired MirrorLink with touch and audio passthrough for Android Phones. So I can buy a cheap Android phone which supports OTG.
2. Then I can buy a USB hub for phones, with external charging and OTG for data transfer, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/TUSITA-Adaptor-Charging-Adapter-Raspberry/dp/B00LTHBCNM
3. I can then add this CarlinkIt adapter into the mix: https://www.carlinkit.store/products/carlinkit-usb-dongle-wireless-carplay-android-auto-box-wired-mirrorlink-for-aftermarket-android-screen-car-multimedia-player-bluetooth-auto-connect
4. And lastly, I can connect it all together. The hub would be connected to the phone. Into it I’d plug charging from the cigarette lighter, a USB cable from the headunit for MirrorLink and a CarlinkIt adapter. I’d also install the necessary app. The phone should charge and the data should transfer properly between the devices.
5. Now I should be able to connect via Bluetooth with the Android phone. The phone would open Carplay in the app. I’d then be able to display and control the app through MirrorLink.

However, besides being pretty bonkers, this plan may have issues:

1. The USB port from the headunit  sends a charge into the phone (I think). If I turn the switch on my little hub to charging mode, then the charge will be sent into the headunit. Won’t things fry in that scenario, or todays electronics are capable of handling that?
2. The headunit supports microphone input. However, if my iPhone will never be connected to the headunit itself, but to the Android phone, the mic won’t work, right? What should I connect the mic into then, the hub or the iPhone?
3. I’ve seen MirrorLink behave overly ‚securely’ on YouTube and turning off basic apps like maps during driving. Is that possible to happen here too?
4. Is there anything else I should consider?

 

I need your help in checking my plan and its issues. I want to identify potential issues before I spend a lot of money on this project. Also if anyone here has attempted anything similar then sharing your experiences would be awesome.

 

 

Alternative plan:

I can politely ask the support team of Podofo for their latest firmware and software and hopefully be able to flash it to this device, but I think that receiving the files has a chance of 20% and another 20% of not bricking my headunit.

 

I don’t think I can do anything else. Sophisticated methods like a separate device that supports Carplay, being connected into the headunit’s display directly, probably won’t work because the unit doesn’t have the video input (except for the reverse camera, which I want to use). I attached the connections below.

 

Huge thanks in advance!

[Tomek20225]

Update on the project:

 

I decided to ditch this idea.

 

Firstly, the headunit seems to support official MirrorLink for Android devices, but for iPhones it has implemented a screen sharing feature under the same name. That should’ve been obvious to me, since there is no official MirrorLink spec for iPhones, but I didn’t think about it. This fact doesn’t change the merits of the project, but it makes me think whether the Android MirrorLink implementation works as officially described in the spec. Because of that, I can’t be sure which device is responsible for hosting the microphone until I plug everything in.

 

Secondly, when I added up all of the necessary costs to make this project work, I saw that it’s going to be around 3 times as expensive as just buying the Carplay-native model, not to mention the fact that I can sell the original radio and that this project may not work fully in one way or another.

 

Finally, customer support responded to me and said that this model can’t be updated via software to support Carplay or to ‚become’ the Q3570 model. I believe it’s more of a ‚we’ll not give this to you’ type of situation.

 

So in conclusion, I’ll sell the original radio, I bought a new radio and tonnes of additional stuff for my car, and it’s still cheaper than this project would’ve been.

 

I’ll leave the thread open in case someone else is interested in doing such project or if someone wants to discuss this theoretically for fun. For some this may be the cheapest option of adding Caplay and Android Auto to their cars. If that’s the situation you’re in then you also may be interested in OpenAuto software for Raspberry Pis and in react-carplay package. With that you may be able to create your own car radio with these features. Or just use an Android tablet directly for the screen and skip the middle-layer-Android-phone part.

 

Good luck and have fun guys!