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Android Car Stereo

BruceMe

BruceMe

Well Known Member
I was wondering if anyone has installed an Android Car Stereo as a poor man's glass panel running iLevel or Avare?


Thanks,
-Bruce
 
Interesting idea... Mind you, most of the Android car stereo units i've seen are severely underpowered (not much RAM or storage, older, slower processors, etc.).

Why not panel-mount an Android tablet instead?
 
Snowflake said:
Interesting idea... Mind you, most of the Android car stereo units i've seen are severely underpowered (not much RAM or storage, older, slower processors, etc.).

Why not panel-mount an Android tablet instead?
Click to expand...

Yup... http://a.co/iEKmm6E this one is 1920?1080 pixels videos, Quad Core Intel SoFIA 3GR CPU, DDR3 2GB Ram & EMMC 32GB Rom, more storage(ram) for Apps and Others.


71mPpE2AbML._SL1500_.jpg


At $400, it's also not "cheap" (by car stereo standards) but it's cheap compared to anything you'd install in a panel.

-Bruce
 
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screen

Good idea plus it comes with back up camera that you can mount in cowl to check engine or see whats in front of taildragger.
Bob
 
Bare in mind that Android car stereo's have no sensors at all in them. They come with an external GPS antenna for driving but there's no guaranty an aviation app would work with it.
 
I use my wifes old Galaxy 4 Android phone to run Avare and it has all my music on it as it allows use of up to 64 GB micro SD card. I can make all the playlist I want and play them thru the intercom.
 
I had looked at the Android in-dash units too... but I couldn't come up with any advantages they would have over a panel mounted tablet. It's not like you're going to put speakers in the plane for music, and there are dirt cheap little Bluetooth adapters for piping music through the intercom. The in-dash units seem to have a bunch of switch inputs and maybe a couple of relay type outputs for power antennas and stuff, but I didn't see any documentation at all about how they could be used by any apps other than the original one.

What am I missing? What's the advantage?
 
Though elegant in mounting, I would not give up the portability of the phone/phablet. I create flight plans on Avare and the GRT remote. Sit in plane, mount phablet, sync bluetooth to GRT EFIS flight plan and crank.

Similar to Foreflight/Garmin suites, just all freeware.
 
FasGlas said:
Bare in mind that Android car stereo's have no sensors at all in them. They come with an external GPS antenna for driving but there's no guaranty an aviation app would work with it.
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If you were flush mounting a tablet in a panel, you may end up with spotty reception with the internal GPS anyway, so an external one may not be a bad idea. I'd be surprised if an externally mounted GPS on one of the in-dash units didn't appear just like an internal GPS to the OS, so it might be a *better* solution for GPS. If the external GPS is a multi-system unit (A-GPS, GPS, Glonass, etc.).
 
BruceMe said:
Yup... http://a.co/iEKmm6E this one is 1920×1080 pixels videos, Quad Core Intel SoFIA 3GR CPU, DDR3 2GB Ram & EMMC 32GB Rom, more storage(ram) for Apps and Others.
Click to expand...
From experience, I can say that a quad-core Android unit with 2GB RAM will not be a "stellar" performer. Yes, it'll work, but you may have issues trying to run more than one app at a time. It may bog down if you start flipping between FltPlanGo and your mail / music / inflight movie app / etc. It's probably not "future proof" either, in that going to Android 7 may not be possible, and it may not have an SD slot for more memory (although it probably does with that large box on the back).

At $400, it's also not "cheap" (by car stereo standards) but it's cheap compared to anything you'd install in a panel.
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Just a data point that i'm familiar with as I just bought one:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-SM-T713NZKEXAR-32GB-Black/dp/B01DXVKQU6
2048x1536 AMOLED, Octa-core, 3GB/32GB (expandable with MicroSD), for $275. That leaves $125 for a case that you can mount to the panel, cables for charging and audio integration, and probably some left over for AvGas. No space required behind the panel.

[edit] Oops, I just saw that the unit you were linking to was 10". To keep it apples-to-apples, Samsung makes the same tablet I linked to in a 9.7" as well, for $349, so about the same price point.
 
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How the heck do you keep up with all this stuff, Rob? My Gen 1 Nexus 7 is sitting her gathering dust. I wonder what I'll use to replace it. I'll ping you to get an update before I'm ready to buy! :)
 
The stereo idea is something I never thought about and is interesting. Seems like it could work but I'd probably use a tablet instead. Easy to upgrade the tablet in the future, portable, good performance and similar price point. The Samsun S2 would be my choice.

Some food for thought; I was going to use a tablet, levil AW, and a GRT EIS in my build. When GRT released their Sport EX it made it possible for me to have the same features as the levil/tablet system for the same price but also provides great upgrade options that can be down with software downloads.
 
I've been happy with my Galaxy Tab S2 8". Found out by accident that it fits iPad Mini gen 1-3 mounts perfectly. The screen is very readable even in direct sunlight, and it has enough horsepower to run Avare with its external I/O app (to listen to my Stratux) and stream music, with no discernible performance hit to either.

The only down side... You really, really do not want to damage the screen. You really don't. Like, $200 for the screen alone don't.
 
Canadian_JOY said:
How the heck do you keep up with all this stuff, Rob? My Gen 1 Nexus 7 is sitting her gathering dust. I wonder what I'll use to replace it. I'll ping you to get an update before I'm ready to buy! :)
Click to expand...
It's not easy. I had a 1st-gen Nexus 7 as well, that eventually got too slow to run FltPlanGo, and I sold it about 9 months ago. I have been looking for more than a year for it's replacement. nVidia and Google have both been rumoured to be releasing updated 7-8" tablets "any time now" but nothing has been forthcoming for the last year. Eventually my desire for a replacement outpaced my patience and I hunted around until ending up with the S2.
 
Did you try rolling back the Nexus' android operating system to an earlier version? I've got both 1st gen & 2nd gen nexus 7's, & the older versions of the OS are available for download. The older tablet still works fine with Avare, but it boots so slow now that I could drive there faster. :) I haven't actually tried rolling back the OS because I haven't been doing any cross country work & haven't actually needed it, but I do plan to try it in the future. I'll probably 'root' it at the same time, so I can supply ship's power to both the tablet and the little attached SDR (for ADSB in).

Are the newer Samsung, etc tablets as bright in the cockpit as the Nexus?

Charlie
 
I did roll back the 1st Gen N7, and that helped, but was still very slow. The tablet got a lot of use, and I think eventually the memory does start to wear out.

The AMOLED screen in the Samsung tablet is part of the reason I bought it. It has excellent sunlight visibility. I added a Spigen gorilla-glass screen protector to it this weekend, expecting it to cut down some of the readability, but it didn't affect it at all that I could tell. Still fully readable in direct sunlight.
 
I bought a used 2nd gen Nexus7 a few months ago, because I hadn't seen any recent info on tablets with good sunlight readability since the Nexus products.

That's good news about the Samsung products; thanks for the info. Good to know there are options out there with more powerful processors.

Charlie
 
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