[Android Head-Units] mikereidis:
The Android Auto Headunit app I'm working on (see sig) makes me very interested in seeing nice hardware HUs.

I'm mostly targeting tablets at this point, but a hardware HU designed to be an HU can offer many advantages.

I've personally committed myself to working in the "connected car" space for the next few years at least. I'll be happy to try and help/enable anyone working on open source code and hardware for this.

Big HU companies and auto OEMs want to hold back features, and provide new ones every year to keep us on the upgrade hamster wheel. Example: None of the current aftermarket or auto OEM HUs are known to have Wifi. They will NOT be able to do Android Auto or Carplay over Wifi, despite that both seem imminent. (Wifi works with my HU app right now on Android Auto.)

Even IF some of those HUs have hidden Wifi capability, chances are low that it will ever be enabled in future firmware updates. Same thing is happening with Android Auto. Older HU and cars mostly will NEVER be retroactively enabled (despite that actually breaking some promises for at least one auto OEM). (I say mostly because Hyundai seems to be making retroactive upgrades possible for some cars. Props to Hyundai.)

My point is that open hardware and software will help enable retroactively adding features, without wasting money and filling landfills/garbage dumps with last years products.

(1) I'd love to see something as thin and compact as a tablet, but with power, USB and audio connections that are better than tablets offer.

(2) I'd also like to see something more traditional that is much deeper than a tablet, to hold more "stuff", but I think the concepts of CD's and DVD's are old enought that I'd prefer not to see support for them, meaning it doesn't have to be as deep as HUs with such support.

XDA user doitright has made a few posts on my HU thread about an HU he is building, and I've become rather interested in his thoughts. One such post here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=61988233&postcount=490 .

He is basing his HU on the Qualcomm design of a "96boards" called DragonBoard: https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/dragonboard410c/ . It's $75, supports Android 5.1, Linux based on Ubuntu and Win 10 support to come.

I REALLY, REALLY like that this is supported by Qualcomm and I think it's likely that it will support the latest versions of Android, shortly after Google release, probably for a few years at least, and at least to Android 7.x (IMO). It's built by Arrow, not Qualcomm though. The design is a reference design from Qualcomm.

There is an open "96boards" spec so other companies can easily build boards that follow the specs. There is also a HiKey board right now, so already there is competition. Qualcomm apparently has committed to ensuring boards based on their design are available for the next TEN (!) years, which is important to embedded system companies.

The idea that an HU could be abandoned after 1-2 years really annoys me. Being stuck on Android 4.x, as the popular Chinese HUs are now, also really annoys me.

Give me something that can run the latest Android versions for the next 2-3 years at least. Give me something like a 96boards design where I can easily upgrade the main board after a few years.