Vehicle GPS emulation with Raspberry Pi

[jackm1120]

Hi everybody! Im Doctor N....

Anyways, my touch screen gps has died which came with my 01 Acura MDX.  Unfortunately sending the unit in for repair will cost about 600$ And the only reasonably priced units i can find on ebay are for newer models.  Im less concerned about the GPS aspect of the unit and more concerned with the climate control which can only be altered by using the touch screen GPS unit.  I dont care if the GPS works, though i would like it to.  I was wondering if anyone has dealt with cars and potentially emulating the software from Acuras GPS units, or coding something entirely new, in order access the climate control.  I thought i could use a raspberry Pi and connect the 3 cables which deal with the climate control.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Also i have very little to no coding skill and I hate doing the damn stuff but im willing to buckle down in order to save 600$

[Squirrel724]

It is all proprietary and locked down so you would have to reverse engineer the entire system.

[Mark77]

Yup, if you have the skills to actually do all of that, you probably have the skills to find a job in the field for which buying Acura parts pulled from a junkyard would be of trivial expense.

 

But seriously, check out the junkyards or look at www.car-part.com for parts pulled from junkyard cars.  Probably won't cost you $600. 

[AshleyAshes]

Yeah, it's going to cost you a lot more than $600 in materials and man hours to backward engineer a hackjob control interface for a car's proprietary interface system.

[SCHISCHKA]

try second hand. it will take you some time to reverse engineer the electronics. if theres only 3 cables that suggests its using serial communication. it will cost you more in equipment to figure out the signals used.

[Huntsman]

As above mentioned, if you had the skills and/or capability to reverse engineer the climate control stuff and put in a rpi based solution, 600 bucks would be nothing to you.