Why must it be so difficult to watch Youtube in my car???

That was the question I asked myself one morning as I was rushing to get to my 8:30 AM Linear Algebra class on time. There was a quiz as soon as class began that morning. I just wanted to watch a few demonstration videos on Youtube so I was prepared for the quiz.

My solution was to mount my phone to the dash and connect bluetooth audio through my speakers so I can hear. The problem was the screen was too small to be able to make out the whiteboard content.

I wanted a bigger screen.

My next attempt was the same idea using my Ipad and attaching it to the dash. While this worked it was not sturdy and would be falling down constantly in the stop and go traffic of my two hour commute.

One day I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a 7 inch Sony receiver with Apple Carplay. I was so excited to install and have my problem solved. Unfortuately this wasnt the end. In fact the car play receiver gave me less functionality. I only could press pause or rewind the video from the dispaly.

I began to wonder if I could build a radio with all of the functions I wanted.

I began with a list of functions I would want the unit to accomplish:

1. Watch YouTube in the car while driving.

2. Have the ability to store my Amazon music playlists locally to save data.

3. Be able to see live lyrics while a song was playing.

4. Ability to upgrade/modify DAC.

5. AM/FM Receiver.

6. Do proper turn on and shutdown sequence when car is turned on and off.

7. Interface with steering wheel controls.

8. Run OBD2 Star Diagnostics program for Mercedes

• On my first atempt I ordered an Android dev board running an older Snapdragon 450 SOC.

• Next version I used a Raspberry PI4 8Gb to run android. Too Slow

• Final version used intel nuc platform with i3-3217 CPU

The initial intel prototype was built by purchasing a "for parts or not working" 7 inch touch screen radio off Ebay.

The ebay unit was fully gutted and only the metal housing and volume buttons were kept from the donor unit.

Next a new capacitive touch screen was ordered and installed in place of the resistve screen included.

For this design an MCU was needed to handle:

• System power on/off sequence

• GPIO buttons for Volume Up/Down, Play/pause, and Next/Prev track

• Amplifier remote turn on

• RGB Capacitive Button Backlighting

• Interpreting steering wheel control inputs

• Screen: 7 Inch Capacative Touch 1024 x 600px

• Intel NUC DC3217IYE Motherboard

• Processor: Intel I3-3217U

• Ram: 16GB DDR3 (2x 8GB SO-DIMM)

• Storage: 128GB SSD (Samsung MSATA)

• USB: 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

• BT 4.2, WiFi 802.11N

• Screen: 9 inch Capacitive Touch 1280 x 720px

• Intel NUC7I7DNB Motherboard

• Processor: Intel I7-8650U

• Ram: 32GB DDR4 (2x 16GB SO-DIMM)

• Storage: 1 TB SSD (Samsung EVO 850 M.2)

• USB: 6 on board USB 3.0 Ports

• BT 4.2 WiFi 802.11AC