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[Hilton]

Hi Guys

I have JRemote/Pi2 MC along with Spotify, Neutron and other apps running in the car flawlessly.  If you want to move this to my thread here>>https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,113302.0.html  I'll leave that to you.

---------------snip

I've just been through the whole range of options to upgrade my RNS 510 on a 2010 R36 I've owned since new.
No problems with my current one, i just wanted something more up to date and looked around at all the Android RNS510 replacements but they all seem to have their own draw backs, particularly in the sound quality department.

Im also fussy about audio quality and wanted to try get bit perfect playback of FLAC and DSD files via Aux line-in with option of fully integrated bluetooth and also get an Android Auto type setup.

Compressed MP3s over Bluetooth sound pretty decent with the 9W7 BT kit but what I've come up with sounds loads better and works WAY better than Android Auto or Apple Car Play!

What I've come up with will blow your mind!

Before I get into the detail, here's the shortlist of features I've crammed in;
Android Auto features (what I've come up with is way better)
Bit perfect playback of FLAC and DSD files (DFF and DSF) from my own library (and any audio format you can think of)
Spotify integration
Play back from microsd, harddrive, DLNA and remote servers
Wifi Hotspot
Airplay support
Chromecast support
Full factory bluetooth AVRCP and A2DP integration. (id3 text and streaming BT audio/Nav/voice control)
Large Car friendly APP launcher thats fully customisable
Easy to install - no modification to factory RNS 510.

How is this possible?? Well I'm glad you asked.....


Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 10 Plus LTE with 128GB microsd running a custom Lineage ROM based on Android 7.1.2 (you could use any Android tablet or ROM but some features may look different or not work.)

Car Launcher AG android launcher App (replaces home screen and launcher - customisable for apps and colours and car logo - full transport control integration for media players including album art and id3 text)

2TB Western Digital Wireless Pro plus running twonky server as a DLNA server

FiiO E17 DAC for USB audio from the tablet to the RNS 510 line-in

Neutron Audio App for Android (the most complex and complete audio app you'll ever see, play anything from anywhere, and tweak the crap out of it, or play pure bit perfect sound.
Its also EXTREMELY well laid out for use in the car. It has heaps of audio tweaking with compressors, normalizers, 4 band to 32 band parametric equalizers (configurable) Fully customisable color schemes, font and icon sizes and way way more  features than you could poke a stick at. Way too complex for what most users would need, but if you've got the patience, this is the BEST android audio player to have, and it is actually pretty simple to use once you get used to its idiosyncrasies with navigation of the options. In actual use once it's setup, its really easy to use and perfect for use in the car.

Spotify integration - use google voice to request a specific track, album or artist

Full Google Voice and Navigation integration (run WAZE or whatever NAV you want)

Custom battery powered Raspberry Pi 2 with 1TB SSD running JRiver Media Centre as a media server

JRemote for JRiver Media Server for streaming audio from the home server and from Raspberry Pi
My favourite Audio player and server setup. (easier to use and more reliable setup than the Neutron/WD DLNA 2TB setup but JRemote is not quite as car use friendly. (It's not far off though)

I can Launch ANY app - not just Android Auto Apps.

I have also installed a modified Apple Airport Express to stream bit perfect audio via airplay into the Aux line-in (from iPhone X)

Tomorrow I'll also play around with a google chromecast audio for streaming bit perfect sound from the android tablet that will probably become my default choice going forward.  (chromecast supports upto 24bit/96khz bit perfect streaming which is even better than the Airplay devices can do)

Here's a pic and 10min Youtube demo.  Hope it give you guys that have been thinking about upgrades an option to consider!    :cool:

Here's a bench-test pic with my custom raspberry Pi server sitting underneath.
JRemote on tablet for the car by Hilton, on Flickr

Youtube Demo!!!!!!!!!
YouTube

[Hilton]

I made a few more modifications to the setup to simplify it now.

I now have a chromecast audio setup along with a creative labs E5 DAC.

Amazing little DAC that I've had for a while now, I dont know why I didn't think of using it before instead of the FiiO DAC.   

I'm now running optical out from the chromecast to the optical input on the E5 and then line out to the Aux input on the car.   Everything auto powers up and connects without any fiddling because when the DAC senses power on the usb input it powers up and just passes through the optical input to the line out.

By using optical im bypassing the pretty average DAC in the chromecast and getting 24bit 96Khz straight through to the E5 DAC without messy USB DAC connections.

I've found that USB DACS on Android are pretty fiddly and the global android DAC driver isn't very good compared to android players like USB Audio Pro and Neutron Player that can go USB direct to the DAC bypassing the Android drivers and really clean up the signal. Not to mention it's really fiddly to switch audio players to the DAC without unplugging it and clicking on which device you want the DAC to connect to when you reconnect.   Now all those hassles are behind! 

I also found when connecting a DAC to the USB with anything else attached on a USB Hub introduced a lot of noise.  So going via chromecast I avoid all that, and get a great clean digital signal and it leaves the tablet USB port to run whatever I need. (SSD storage)

The other benefit is I can now avoid the hassles of portable DLNA servers and just play from local storage attached to the tablet or stream bit perfect via JRemote from my home server.  Simpler and faster!

Video to follow shortly.

[Hilton]

Video explaining and a demo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpqZ1yGJznI
 

[Hilton]

This works way better than I had expected, and it doesn't look too out of place in the age of displays popping out of dashes.

I had my first decent trip and it worked flawlessly without any dropouts. It was much easier to use than fumbling with the iPhone. The extra sound clarity was clearly obvious and it streamed FLAC from my home server with JRemote. (Im on a 30GB shared data plan with the phone)
 

Sitting in the office

Car Launcher in the office by Hilton, on Flickr


The App Launcher that I forgot to show in the video. You press the Apps button bottom right.  You can also set it to hide Apps you dont want to see in the car and it has an unhide button. (the eye in top left on the Apps screen)

Car Launcher in the office by Hilton, on Flickr

[Hilton]

Some of you audio aficionado's probably already knew this... the chromecast audio can handle 24bit 192khz streaming and optical output.  The internal chromecast DAC also handles it without resampling and actually sounds quite good even without the Creative Labs E5 DAC connected.

chromecast 192 by Hilton, on Flickr

[drmimosa]

Fantastic post Hilton, thank you!

Quick technical question, how do you manage the internet connection in the car? Are you running a wifi hotspot off your phone? If so, is it automatic? Or do you have to turn it on and off each time you use the system? Also, do you stow the tablet each time to prevent theft? A huge tablet visible inside a vehicle would probably not last long here in New Orleans.

As an aside, it's amazing how many small technical challenges there are to installing a system like this in the car. I tried to run an IdPi in the car for a while, but found it had too many quirks for safe operation in a vehicle, plus every time I turned off the vehicle I risked corrupting the SD card. I went back to JRemote streaming from my phone, not ideal but I can hit play and then drive.

I'm also confounded how many commercial systems miss on basic features you have included in the Android Launcher, like FLAC playback and voice control.

A friend of mine hacked a Mazda 6 car computer and installed a new hard drive and uploaded FLAC codecs to the system, but it took him weeks of time. During this period he had a 100' Ethernet cable going out to his car from his apartment and his neighborhood thought he was totally nuts.

Thanks again, for posting, this gives me some new ideas for tackling this again.

[Hilton]

Fantastic post Hilton, thank you!

Quick technical question, how do you manage the internet connection in the car? Are you running a wifi hotspot off your phone? If so, is it automatic? Or do you have to turn it on and off each time you use the system? Also, do you stow the tablet each time to prevent theft? A huge tablet visible inside a vehicle would probably not last long here in New Orleans.

As an aside, it's amazing how many small technical challenges there are to installing a system like this in the car. I tried to run an IdPi in the car for a while, but found it had too many quirks for safe operation in a vehicle, plus every time I turned off the vehicle I risked corrupting the SD card. I went back to JRemote streaming from my phone, not ideal but I can hit play and then drive.

I'm also confounded how many commercial systems miss on basic features you have included in the Android Launcher, like FLAC playback and voice control.

A friend of mine hacked a Mazda 6 car computer and installed a new hard drive and uploaded FLAC codecs to the system, but it took him weeks of time. During this period he had a 100' Ethernet cable going out to his car from his apartment and his neighborhood thought he was totally nuts.

Thanks again, for posting, this gives me some new ideas for tackling this again.

Hi drmimosa
I did use a separate lithium powered 4g Netgear M1 Nighthawk as a hot spot router at first. The tablet and chrome cast would automatically connect to it when I powered it up. One button press to power on the router then a shortcut to casting on the tablet to start casting.  I played with llama and tasker automation to try get the tablet to cast automatically but haven't got it working yet.  Ideally you just want to get in and have it work like Bluetooth does.

 I've removed the 4g router for now because in IOS 11 on the iPhone you can swipe down and then press hard on the networking group in the widgets to open a shortcut to personal hotspot and then turn it on and wait for both devices to connect.  That only takes a few seconds and you can get on with driving.  I also have Automate running as well now on the tablet to get a clearer less cluttered view of what's playing. It supports JRemote so you can swipe left/right to skip tracks and click on the album info to switch back to JRemote. When you pick something in JRemote and press play, Automate switches back to the foreground automatically.  I'm still in two minds about Automate and Car Launcher AG so I still use both at the moment.

I bought a Bluetooth OBD2 dongle today and got some other interesting stuff out of the car into a program called torque .  It displays 100 or so car sensors over the OBD2 port via Bluetooth to the tablet. Speed, temps, Gforces, acceleration, RPM and all sorts of things.

 The next step is to hack into the canbus of the car and get steering wheel commands via OBD2 Bluetooth to control media operation on the tablet.  It's already been done before so I'm just researching now. I've already got a terminal session into the canbus working to monitor the bus. There's thousands of commands and data being sent over the bus every second, so it's a matter of finding the right canbus IDs of my steering wheel media controls and then programming another app called carbusinterface with the correct media codes from the canbus. It might take a while but there is an established process of elimination using logging to csv and using excel pivot tables to isolate the data you want. Then again, I might get bored of that pretty quickly as it's a bit tedious, and navigation to next track is only a swipe away!

As the tablet is magnetically mounted I just slip it into a sleeve and carry it with me. It's my daily tablet anyway.

If I have time on the weekend I might post a couple more pics and a video of my progress.

PS. The creative labs sound blaster E5 DAC is also connected to cigarette lighter 5v USB so it automatically turns on when the car is started. It's also lithium powered and it turns off after 2 hours of idle time, ready to start again the next time automatically, no buttons to press.

[Hilton]

Here's an update on the final solution.

Wireless Hi-res Audio! by Hilton, on Flickr

I've put the ultimate portable wireless 2TB Hi-res solution together.

It consists of:
Hardware
Creative Labs Sound Blaster E5 DAC/Headphone AMP
Chromecast Audio
Sony MDR1ADAC Headphones + HD600 Headphones (depending on the mood)
Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Plus LTE 10" Android tablet
iPhone X
2TB Western Digital My Passport Pro
Shutter Bluetooth Remote

Software
Android 6.0.1 (after trying a custom Lineage 7.1.2 ROM I went back to stock rooted with Magisk/TWRP)
Neutron Music Player / JRemote / Spotify / Tidal (all on Android and IOS)
Automate as my Android front end launcher (using this in the car and as a general front end instead of native interface)

JRiver Media Centre 23 to curate my library on my main server and export music and playlists to the 2TB drive (via USB3)

JRiver MC23 transcodes my SACD rips to Hi-res FLAC as well as exporting my MP3s, FLAC and other file formats

It also works in the car. (via line out from DAC)  < This was the main motivation for this solution if your wondering why I bothered with a Chromecast audio.
After playing around with custom battery powered Raspberry Pi's and all other sorts of solutions I've finally come up with something that works reliably and sounds amazing.
The chrome cast is powered by the E5 DAC and connected via optical out into the optical input on the DAC @ upto 192k/24bit

chromecast 192 by Hilton, on Flickr

Wireless Hi-res Audio! by Hilton, on Flickr

Wireless Hi-res Audio! by Hilton, on Flickr

The tablet is setup as a wifi hotspot and the chromecast audio and WD 2TB Wireless Pro both tether to the tablet.

Wireless Hi-res Audio! by Hilton, on Flickr

Neutron player is connecting via SMB share to the 2TB wireless hard disk and scans the music in once (it does take a while the first time but it only rescans when I tell it to, and then it only updates, it doesn't rescan the whole library in)

Other solutions I've tried for carrying around a large collection are always slow and clunky and portable DLNA type servers want to often rescan after being powered off. By using SMB and having Neutron keep it's own database library of whats on the wireless disk, I don't have to fiddle with Twonky DLNA on the wireless disk. I just turn on and go. (especially important in the car)

I also use JRiver JRemote on the tablet and stream directly from my home server.

I can also use my Sony MDR1ADAC headphones directly plugged into my iPhone X when I want something a little more portable.  I just wireless tether the 2TB WD disk to the iPhone instead of using the tablet and E5 DAC, and instead use the DAC built into the headphones and use Neutron/JRemote for iPhone for DSD over PCM DoPE if I really want!

I'm so happy with the solution and flexibility of it.
I got sick of bluetooth quality in the car and when pottering around the house, so the tablet replaces my headunit when Im in the car and I carry the E5DAC/Chromecast in my pocket around the house using wifi and use the Bluetooth remote to skip tracks/volume/pause when im chillin out without having to fiddle with a phone or tablet. (great for that late night session in bed!)

This is a video of how it works in the car (was using Car Launcher AG front end and have now switched to Automate instead)
https://youtu.be/kpqZ1yGJznI

[Hilton]

Well....

After fiddling with chromecast and wireless hotspots with all the different media player and server solutions...   I've come back to MC23 for Pi running on my battery Powered Pi and given up on Chromecast.

There were a number of different reliability problems across all the moving parts, mostly related to Hotspot reliability/bandwidth with Chromecast and player idiosyncrasies. It had complexity and reliability that's just not right for use in the car.    I can see Jim rolling his eyes now..

When I've finished testing my newly upgraded Pi MC23 I'll take a video of the new simpler setup.

For the car
MC23 for Pi with 1TB SSD as a server, tethered by wifi to 10" Tablet as a hotspot running JRemote with Automate Car Dashboard front end > USB Creative Labs E5 DAC  > Line in on the car.
(still using Spotify etc on the tablet as well)

Headphone listening around the house
MC23 Home Server wifi > JRemote on the tablet or iphone > Sony MDR-1ADAC headphones

Portable speaker around the house
MC23 Home Server wifi > JRemote on the tablet or iphone > Sony SRS-X7 speaker (DLNA end point)

I'm the best of the tweakers and fiddlers, but even I have my limited patience when it doesnt work reliably and easily.
 
PS. I've asked the Devs of Automate Car dashboard to add (full) JRemote support.

[JimH]

... rolling eyes ...

Let the devs know we'll provide them a license.  They can contact me.  jimh at blah blah blah.

[Hilton]

Updated Video demo

https://youtu.be/j8I1JORY-5o

[Hilton]

I got an edimax EW-7811UTC AC wireless adapter working on the Pi using the wifi driver installer that MrEngman put together.
Worked first go and JRemote is so much more responsive now accessing the Pi!

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=102323

[Hilton]

Hi again. 

Success with the new edimax wifi dongle on the Pi in the car. 

I was able to go back to using the chromecast audio with no dropouts or buffering while driving around for a few errands today! 
It looks like the weak point of the old setup was the wifi capability of the WD wireless Hard Drive and the old Pi Dlink wifi dongle.

Skipping tracks is so fast now it's instantaneous, even with large 5000kbps 24bit/192k FLAC files.

So now the Car setup is:
JRiver Media Centre 23 on the Pi w/ 1TB SSD - tethered via wifi to > 10" Tablet in hotspot mode casting JRemote to > Chromecast with optical output to > E5 DAC optical in and line out > Line in on the car.

I'll be ordering a Pi car power supply and wiring it into the ignition system so it will automatically switch off with a delayed controlled shutdown and auto power-on restart.
After I've put the Pi car power supply in, the whole system will be automated and just power on and tether automatically. The only manual step will be to turn casting on which I have a shortcut App for.

Updated video of it in the car > https://youtu.be/SySw-K34gYs


Oh and yes I can watch Netflix and Foxtel too. (via bluetooth audio to the E5 DAC that also has BT to avoid the casting delay) ;p

[Hilton]

Hi
I got a note from the Devs. JRemote is fully supported in the next release which they are pushing out shortly. (AutoMate - Car Dashboard for Android)

[JimH]

Thanks for the nudge.

[Hilton]

No problem. It's possibly the greatest integration of a JRiver product I've seen. It's very nice to have full swipe support for JRemote! 

I've got a skype phone number setup now with 300 skype minutes a month. So the phone dialer in Automate Car Dashboard is setup to make and receive calls on the tablet via BT.

It's now a fully functional Android Auto replacement.

I'm just trying to automatically divert my mobile to the my skype number when i leave home so all calls will go in and out via the skype number on the tablet. (playing with Workflow for IOS)

[Blu99Zoomer]

Hilton,

Fascinating read.  You have too much free time!;)  But seriously, nice work!  I briefly looked at the Workflow app as I have an iPhone and am not familiar with that app.  I look forward to reading more as your testing progresses.

Best Regards,

Blu99Zoomer

[maxxsid]

Nice!
Time to rebuild my setup, which is:
Nexus 2012 7 with Timur's custom ROM (OTG+charging enabled), USB hub with a DAC and 256Gb flash drive.
Works pretty well but I am on my 4th Nexus right now... First one was killed by a faulty power supply, USB data stopped working on the second one and the third one just died without a reason. Nexuses are getting harder and harder to find...
Might try some of your ideas... Car Launcher looks pretty good!
Thanks!
-max