Car Radio Build Notes

PiCar: Raspberry Pi Car Radio with RTL-SDR, CAN Bus Hacking, and Retro Vibes

PiCar: Raspberry Pi Car Radio with RTL-SDR, CAN Bus Hacking, and Retro Vibes

Let’s be honest — factory radios are boring. I wanted something smarter, nerdier, and way more fun. So I built PiCar: a full-featured, Raspberry Pi-powered head unit replacement for my Jeep JK.

This isn’t just a media player — it’s a rolling testbed for software-defined radio (SDR), CAN bus hacking, GPS tracking, power management, and a handful of sensors.

Features

• VFD display to match the existing decor.

• Simple user interface, maybe just two knobs.

• Radio based on RTL-SDR software radio.

• 4 speaker audio (I am too old to care about subwoofers)

• Allow me to play audio from my iPhone

• Access to Jeep and GM CAN networks.

• GPS receiver.

• External temperature sensor

• Power management (don’t drain my battery)

• A clock that I don’t have to keep setting.

Articles

Most of the story is documented under the PiCar - Raspberry Pi Car Radio Project:

• Part 1 - Why would anyone sane do this?

• Part 2 - The Hardware.

• Part 3 - 1-wire temperature sensors

• Part 4 - An overview of the Software

• Part 5 - GPS, or where the heck are we?

• Part 6 - Can you hear me now? - Raspberry Pi Audio.

• Part 7 - Software Defined Radio.

• Part 8 - Who ate all the CPU?

• Part 9 - Play that funky music ...

In addition, I talk about the various pieces of hardware I constructed:

• Rings and Knobs - Rotary encoder and LED rings

• Power Management part 1 - Safe shutoff switch

• Power Management part 2 - Turning on the Radio

A few articles about talking to the CAN bus and Hacking your Car Network

• Part 1 - ODB vs CAN bus,

• Part 2 - Connecting Raspberry Pi to CAN

• Part 3 - Reverse Engineering CAN packets

• Part 4 - Writing code to talk to CAN

• Part 5 - ODB and older cars

The code

https://github.com/vinthewrench/carradio

Demo

See the readme at https://github.com/vinthewrench/carradio