Frequently Asked Questions

What is the relationship between Crankshaft and OpenAuto?

OpenAuto is the heart of Crankshaft, the very core software that makes Android Auto communicates with the Pi, and makes everything possible. Crankshaft is a layer on top of OpenAuto and Crankshaft makes it easy for newcomers so you don't have to worry about compiling and tweaking your Raspberry Pi to make OpenAuto work well.

Both OpenAuto and Crankshaft offer basic functionalities -- they will work when you connect a phone to the Pi, but many things are not obvious at the first glance. For example, you don't want your car battery to be drained when you forget to turn off the Pi. You don't want the SD card to corrupt when you accidentally lose power to the Pi. While you have to tweak all those matters manually for the vanilla solution of OpenAuto, Crankshaft does it by default for you so you can focus on other more important tasks.

If you want a system that works right now on your Pi 3, get Crankshaft. If you want a system that you can develop new features, test new ideas, then try to clone and compile OpenAuto.

I have a Pi3. How can I test Crankshaft compatibility with my phone before I spend the money to buy the official screen?

Write the Crankshaft image (later than 2018-03-10) on a microSD card. Connect the Pi to an HDMI monitor. Find a jumper or jumper wire, put it on GPIO26-Ground (they are right next to each other). Start the Pi. When you see the white android, plug your phone in. If you see the Android Auto interface displayed on the HDMI monitor, Crankshaft is extremely likely going to work with your phone. You can't control the mouse cursor now, but the official screen will take care of that problem.

I see a lightning bolt in the upper right corner. What is it for?

The lighting bolt comes from the kernel for the pi. It's telling you that it is currently being underpowered. Make sure you have a good power supply and USB cable to power your pi. 2.5A is recommended for the raspberry pi 3.

Why should I purchase an 800x480 resolution screen instead of a higher resolution 1024x600 screen?

Android Auto only supports a few fixed resolutions, of which 600p is not an option. A scaled 480p video stream from the phone will look worse on a 600p screen because 600 is not an integer multiple of 480. The known supported resolutions of Android Auto are as follows:

• 480p
• 720p (requires dev mode enabled)
• 1080p (requires dev mode enabled)

I want to run this on an Android tablet...

Say no more. Use this program: Android Auto Head Unit Emulator :).

I want feature X, Y, Z...

The distro is in an early stage of development, so certain things are more prioritized than others. For example, if possible, bugs get prioritized over enhancements. Earlier milestone bugs are prioritized over others when possible. To see in general what the developer(s) are prioritizing, please see the philosophy page.

Personally, Huan is currently writing his thesis so he might get extremely busy and none of the things that he promised to do might happen at a reasonable time at all. However, this project is hoping to get to a point that anyone can build the system automatically, so Huan can step down from being the dictator to release new versions of Crankshaft.