Pondering a CarPC w/ Raspberry Pi; Anyone done it?

Nillaz

I have a Nexus 7 and toyed with the idea of doing this about 2 weeks ago. I highly recommend against doing so. There is plenty of room to fit it in the space but as I mentioned in my previous post the screen is damn near unreadable during the day. It washes out in sunlight and the screen is reflective enough that you can almost use it as a mirror. There may be tablets that work well for this purpose but the Nexus 7 isn't really one of them.

Also, unless you're extremely creative about how you put it in you're going to lose access to the volume and power buttons. The volume buttons aren't a huge deal but the power button is more important.There are some 3rd party rules based software methods to overcome the need to get at this but they are cumbersome.

OTOH If you become determined to do it there's 2 ways you could integrate the audio. One would be A2DP. The other is via the headphone out to aux in on an aftermarket head unit. Normally I would say to use the wired method due to audio fidelity but the Nexus 7 has a pretty atrocious DAC so it's pretty much a wash.

I don't know anyone who produces a generic bezel for this area. There is a forum vendor (I can't remember who off the top of my head. I believe they're based in California) who sells a system that is designed to specifically access Onboard Diagnostics info that uses a 7 inch screen that has been framed into the cubby area. I believe each one of these is custom built so it's not like the bezel is rolling off an assembly line somewhere.

One of our members here on the forum integrated a screen by taking the housing from a stock nav system and using his display in place of the OEM one. Another one created a mount for his tablet (a Galaxy Tab maybe?) from fiberglass and then covered it in suede. They look great! You could probably do something similar to both of these guys and come up with an acceptable result, though working with fiberglass can be a pain in the *** if you've never done it before. A reputable car audio shop that deals with custom installs could probably make something up that you would be proud to have in your car.