Android Car Infotainment System

Being impatient by nature, I decided not to wait for car manufacturers to introduce Android - equipped models (which will inevitably come to market in the near future). I ripped away the old navigation system in my Subaru Forester and replaced it with the ViewSonic ViewPad 7 Android tablet. It took me good two days of work, and as you see on the photo on the right, there is still some finishing masking to be done. But the upgrade is working and it opens a new chapter of bringing together the Android OS and my car.

"Why the ViewsSonic?", you may ask. Well, the choice has been driven here by the size factor alone. It simply fits the best the original Subaru dashboard console. I wanted it to look as close to the factory - installed system, as possible. Anything looking different always attracts unnecessary attention (you know what I mean...). Then there was the short list of other requirements: capacitive touch screen and built-in GPS receiver. And a few nice - to - have's like an on-board 3G modem and a microSD card slot. The ViewPad 7 has them all. The only thing missing is an USB OTG connector, limiting my storage options to the single microSD card (32GB).

The ViewSonic integrates as close as possible with the car. The most important function - being able to start when I start the ignition and suspend turning the screen off is built into the system. Under the Applications -> Debugging menu there is the [Stay Awake] option. When turned on it makes sure the screen will never sleep while charging. This way it turns on and off just like the original system used to. Of course I had to provide a 12V charger, but the ViewSonic charges via the USB port, so just about any car charger does the job. It also has two very good speakers, giving very good sound for system interaction and navigation functions. Obviously not enough for multimedia output, but this will be done by connecting the 3.5mm audio output jack to the car stereo.

Bringing Android on board brings a completely new experience. May functions you would dream of having installed even in the most expensive models are here out of the box. As I said there is a 3G modem, so the thing obviously is connected and on-line. Which allows me using the built-in Google Navigation as a standard tool. With all the goodies like the traffic layer, showing the road congestion and traffic jams real-time. You can even drag traffic shortcuts of the most popular destinations to the home screen, so it shows real time route estimates based on current road conditions. One look and I know it will take me 39 minutes to drive home from wherever I am at the moment. Or you can even drive in the satellite mode, admiring the panning overview of the streets around you. I have not tried the street view yet, but it must be fun too! The last but not least is the Glympse app, handy when we will be traveling in a group of cars.

Of course I have the [Tethering & portable hotspot] enabled too, so the car operates a WiFi cloud on its own, enabling the passengers to use their tablets or other WiFi gadgets to connect to the Internet.

Finally I will be looking at gadgets like the Bluetooth OBDII interface. When paired with the ViewSonic it will be able to deliver fantastic real - time dashboard using the Torque App.