Comment on Need a second opinion on a project idea (Pi5 car headunit)
tal@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
I have a ~400 Wh powerbank in my car. It charges off the cigarette lighter when it needs charging and the engine is running. That greatly increases my ability to run higher loads on a short term basis, and gives me wall power. I can also haul it to a power plug and charge it if need be. It also lets me power a laptop if I’m parked.
I use my phone for navigation, and a mount for when I’m on longer trips.
I think that a Pi might make sense if you need something that a phone can’t do, more-intensive compute, but if a phone can handle it, it might be preferable, since you’re probably going to sporadically upgrade your phone anyway and probably have it with you.
Natal@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That’s the thing, the phone never crashes otherwise. I don’t really use it anyway because I have zero use and interest for phones, it’s a device I have for 2FA, emergencies and satnav. My current one I bought 20 months ago at 230€. Fairly cheap, but not the cheapest either. In that short span of time, Waze had a total of 3 bad updates that forces me to go back to Google Maps until they patched it.
The whole reason behind the project is to get rid of the phone factor because it simply is unreliable. If not for the fun side of the project, I’d simply get an old school GPS that goes on the cigarette lighter.
I thought of a Pi because that’s the established brand, but if something else works just fine, then I might just go for it.
From some troubleshooting I made, apparently my phone heats up in the car because it automatically charges. The lower the battery, the harder it wants to charge and the more heats it generates. However, it doesn’t shed excess it fast enough so there’s a buildup until it crashes.
My car is, indeed, pretty hot. Getting a built device might solve it, or not, or temporarily until the device gets older, depending on the thermal management. Making my own device lets me handle it the way I see fit and go nuts on cooling if I want to.
I’ll take a look at the OSM screen update settings, that might actually help!
BuccaneerScientist@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
I’m rooting for you! Also because i wanna do this too!
Just in case this doesn’t work out for you, but you still want to tinker; your car puts out 12v from the cigarette lighter, and that’s a common voltage for computer-style fans. You could build a cooling rig for your phone? That’s definetly not as cool a project, but if it’s the øjne that ends up happening, it would still be a fun story to tell.