yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Yes but Android sticks don't really exist anymore. Mostly it's TV boxes and those have several issues that make them less easy to use. I know because I am using one with my old AppRadio in one of my cars. Besides there's already devices from China that are kind of Android sticks that have an Android Auto interface. Kind of expensive for the hardware that they provide though.

ARUR doesn't have to capture anything. That's because there's extra hardware involved like a USB-C to HDMI adapter or a Miracast adapter. When supported, the manufacturer makes sure that audio and video is properly routed to that adapter.

In case of AAUnchained it's pure software so the app needs to be able to capture video and audio itself to be able to stream it via USB or Wifi. Unfortunately user installed apps have less permissions than system apps. That's the reason not all audio can be captured.

One possible solution is for instance to create a simple device that can act as a Bluetooth audio receiver which then can then transfer the audio back to the phone via Wifi. Possibly in collaboration with AAWireless because this already has the required hardware and can do it in software as a side job. But I prefer a software-only solution.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
Don't quick so far ahead. I will never use a non rooted phone and many are like that.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
I don't suppose there have been any changes? Hope all is going well otherwise!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
No unfortunately not, the conclusion is still the same. For system audio capture need either a rooted phone or an extra device for it to work without root. Going to experiment a bit with the last idea.

Other than that everything is fine.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] sideshowbob84:
Hi,

i am very interested in the new App version. But it is not available at the moment, correct? The App AppRadio Unchained Rootless available at the playstore is another App, correct?

Thanks a lot and kind regards
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
No it's not available and it's a completely different app. Unfortunately there's a huge snag . Not all audio can be captured and sent to the head unit. I described it a few posts back. The main issue is that voice prompts from navigation apps can't be captured and that's one of the main apps you want to use while driving.

I can only work around that on a rooted phone. But the average user doesn't have a rooted phone.

Other possible solutions would be some loopback audio device. Like Bluetooth audio to wifi. Or a USB audio loopback device. But these complicate operation enormously and may not always work so it's not ideal.

So that's what holding back the development currently.

By the way, the app could never be in the Play store as Google won't allow it. Obviously it's not the way they want you to use your Android Auto head unit. It's not a real problem as you can still sideload apps.

Using Android is like using Windows without an administrator account. Basically Google is the administrator who decides what is good for you. Supposedly for security reasons but often for commercial reasons. Example: ad blocking apps are not allowed in the Play store and Google does everything to make it difficult to implement such an app. They don't want anything blocking their own ads.

Another example: wireless casting to Miracast devices. Once there was support for that in Android. Then Google developed Chromecast. Since then no support for Miracast in Google phones.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] sideshowbob84:
Thanks for clarification! When i was using Android Auto with my old phone. It was always additonally connected via Bluetooth while it was connected via cable to my head unit. But i do not know how sound was transfered, so i think this is something you already checked.

Thanks a lot nevertheless. An App like yours would still be great.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
Make it for rooted devices only. We see many apps like that. For example skvalex call recorder. But many people still use it and even root for such apps.

After all if one wants to get more out of their phone, they'd root it.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Ok I am working a bit on it. Now have a proof of concept working that captures all audio on a rooted phone. It requires Android 10 or higher but doesn't require to install some Magisk module . I have only tested it on Android 11.

I think I found a new way to capture REMOTE_SUBMIX audio. It requires root but doesn't need to be a system app (=signed with the manufacturer key). Now have to see if that also works with Android 12 and 13.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
Which phone do you have rooted?
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
My old Nexus 6 running Lineage 18 = Android 11. It works, it's a bit slow but fine for development.

I guess you are looking into rooting. I did the same for my Samsung S8+. There's descriptions on how to do it but it's pretty complicated and not that clear. I think I found a write up that might work but still haven't rooted it. There's also features that won't work anymore when you root your phone. And if you have a new phone, warranty is void.

This is the reason why I think not that many people are going to root their phone just to use an app. I am not even considering to root my new S22+.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
I will not be rooting my primary phone for those stated reasons. But, I would consider using an older phone for that purpose. I would also consider this app useful even if I don't get to transfer navigation directions over car audio provided we can switch between stock Android Auto and your application prior to turning on the car. I think there are options to make this work!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
For me navigation and playing music would be the most important uses cases. Can you tell me what you would be yours?

Also other people reading this, what would be your main reason to use a phone mirror app? Just to give me some clue what is important to have working.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
Everything actually.

I would look at my calendar and see what are my next events and tasks. I would also move, delete events and etc.

I would have my email app read my emails (text to speech). I also write emails (dictate).

Same as the above for WhatsApp and other messaging apps.

I would use maps, music, even sometimes observe cameras from my app.

YouTube for sure.

On long trips I would play TV from my TV app. I would not watch it, but would listen to shows, news on TV.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
My understanding is that the only audio you cannot capture and send to the head unit is voice navigation at this point, correct? Did I misinterpret that?

I would use AAU like my phone for all purposes (texting, email, phone calls, TV, videos, movies, music, navigation), but I don't actually use the voice portion of navigation - I just watch the screen and read. (I know a lot of people like that, actually.) So not hearing the voice during navigation is not even close to an issue for me. But, it would be nice to be able to make sure regular AA can still be used in the off chance that I would need voice information, hence my comment about switching being possible before starting the car.

If my above-stated understanding of the audio that isn't transferred is incorrect, then I would need a rooted phone. I would still purchase the app; however, I would have a secondary phone that I would root - I don't have time to keep up with all the updates necessary for a primary phone to be rooted.

Having a version of this app that doesn't require rooting would be the strong preference for me, even if a few features are missing. I'm not sure what all it would take for you to have a rooted and unrooted version, so I'm not sure if that's an option. Just one version is a huge amount of work I'm sure.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] micfogas:
Hi. I know this is a really old post and my radio is outdated, but I've always used pioneer head units because, well, they are built well and last year's beyond their release periods. I've been using them since the first OLED displays nearly 20 years ago? Anyway..

I happen to have an AVH-X5800BHS which is AppRadio One via USB and, as you mentioned, not supported. I've tried finding some resources to use the AppRadio One feature (I never got it working even when it was brand new), but I haven't been able to find any.

If you don't mind a couple minutes of your time, would you mind giving me a rundown of the technical limitations that prevent something like your app from working on the USB models? It doesn't need to be ELI5 style, my technical knowledge is fairly advanced. I'm only asking you because of your specific expertise with the AppRadio software itself and I'm guessing you would have supported the USB version if it was doable without investing more time in it than it's worth. I haven't come across anyone else who has put time into it and shared what they learned, so I figured it's worth asking at least. I'm going to guess they used a proprietary protocol instead of standardized.

After I get my sound system finished (I only now decided to finally build it out), I plan to upgrade to a pioneer DMH series or something. Unless I decide to just build out the electronics and drop in a touch screen connected to an RPi.

Anyway thanks in advance either way.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
To explain takes a bit more than a few minutes but ok. The supported head units get the phone's video via HDMI input. Touch data and so on goes back via Bluetooth RFCOMM. This is an emulated RS-232 connection. This is relatively easy to reverse engineer. I say relatively because it was hard enough to reverse engineer a binary serial protocol without having any source code.

AppRadio One uses USB for everything. This means that video from the phone is streamed via USB. Audio as well. Touch data and so on goes back via USB. In the app some library from a company called Abaltatech is used for this. The protocol is completely proprietary. At the time I was looking into this I was not familiar with streaming video. Also it's quite hard to even spy on USB traffic. It requires expensive equipment to do so. So I would say it's a magnitude more complicated than the Bluetooth protocol. I tried for a while to modify the Pioneer app but gave up on that as well.

Recently I worked on implementing the Android Auto protocol for a new app. AA works via USB too. This was easier as the protocol was reverse engineered by other people already. However this is also not 100% clear as there are different version of the protocol. I have a working prototype but there's one catch. Because of limitations Google put in Android it's not possible to capture system audio and transfer it to the head unit. I can make it work but that requires a rooted phone. I wanted to make it work without root so I am stuck there.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] EvilDragon17:
Hm, how about a version that has optional root for system audio?

Some users don't need audio but just want to display some apps in their car which don't need audio?

And if you have root, you can use system audio.

Another idea: Most cars have an audio source selection so you can use navigation and listen to radio at the same time. Would it be possible to use Bluetooth to transfer the audio from the phone to the head unit?

Using that workaround it should be possible to transfer video via USB and audio via Bluetooth without the need of root.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
If you can't capture the audio, I don't think it matters what method you use to stream it.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] EvilDragon17:
Oh, you can't GRAB the internal audio at all... I thought you couldn't just route it to the AA USB protocol. All right, that will cause a problem.

My guess is that Google did that to prevent apps from recording anything that happens on your phone.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Yes, that's the issue.

Currently I think there's the following options:

1) It's possible to grab the audio when you have root.

2) Also you can always connect a Bluetooth audio device. So a device that can act as a Bluetooth device and then stream it back via wifi would be a possibility. That device could connect to the phone when it has it's hotspot enabled.

A possible implementation could be done with a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller. It has wifi and Bluetooth but the Bluetooth is not enabled yet. But they are working on that.

3) I found that you can also route audio to a cheap USB audio device. You can then record the audio from the input if you loop it back. However those cheap USB audio devices only have mono audio input.

I think it would be possible to use a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. You can implement all kind of USB devices with it. It took a brief look at it and a stereo audio loopback device could be done.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] EvilDragon17:
Hm, but thinking about it a bit more is audio grabbing really needed?

If I'm correct, grabbing audio is needed if you want to transfer all audio via the AA USB protocol.

So yes, for a proper and easy audio / video transfer to the car, audio grabbing would be needed.

However, if you ONLY transfer the video stream via AA USB and the user simply connects the smartphone via Bluetooth to the car, then why would audio grabbing be needed? Android would play ALL system audio via Bluetooth.

I once had the problem, that for some reason, Android Audio didn't send any audio via the USB connection.

And that's when I used that method as workaround. I simply connected the phone via Bluetooth and that worked fine.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
OK. If your entertainment system supports AA and Bluetooth audio at the same time then that's a valid workaround. However that doesn't mean that every head unit / entertainment system supports this. The only thing that is sure that every system supports audio via the AA USB protocol.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] EvilDragon17:
Yes, it actually does that. A lot of people listen to normal radio, for example, but still need to get listen to the navigation from Android Auto. So both audio sources are mixed together.

And - at least in my car - Bluetooth is just another audio source like CD or Radio, so it can always be played at the same time as Android Auto.

I can imagine that most systems do it similar, they just use Android Auto as an overlay for both audio and video but still have their normal audio sources available.

Otherwise the only way to listen to music would be if the smartphone would play audio as well.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Well, you can play audio via an app that is supported by AA. Indeed for listening to the radio it should be possible to mix navigation and radio audio.

Thanks a lot for your remarks. I realize now that the audio might be less of an issue than I thought.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] EvilDragon17:
Glad I could help a bit :) Can't wait to try out a first release (I'm on LineageOS 20 using MicroG) :)

Let me know if I can help with testing some things out (I don't know what Android versions you have ready for testing).
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] can_of_beans:
Can you say more about how you've managed to grab the audio when you have root? I've searched and searched and can't seem to figure it out! If you have any links to code samples or anything else that would be so helpful. Access to REMOTE_SUBMIX would be perfect if it doesn't need to be a system app. Thank you!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
Some systems don't work the best with multiple sources of audiovisual simultaneously, so if there's an order of operations needed to make AA work with audio on another channel from the phone I'd be happy to test it out.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] maximushugus:
Any update on the app ?

Do you think it would be possible to use the app with the phone locked / the screen turn off ?

Thanks
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Unfortunately the only update is that there's no update. My regular job is so busy that I don't have time to work on the app currently.

I think there's at least 3 months of fulltime work required to get a working test version. So like it's going now it will never be finished.

There's a huge dilemma either spend 3-6 months on the app and hope that there's enough people that would want to buy it or just give up. I know I can do it but there's a lot of restrictions in Android and it would be easy for Google to add some more so the app won't work anymore. One other option is to try crowdfunding. Then you would have an idea if there's enough people interested and have some money while you work on it.

On your question, I know there's a way to create virtual screens but I don't know if you can use it to show apps on there while the phone is locked. Obviously Google can do that but for us mortals it may be blocked for 'security' reasons.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
I found some time to do a bit of testing. Some good and bad news. The good news is that the app still works with Android 13 (updated my S22+) when connected via USB. More good news is that it also works on my Pioneer SPH-DA360DAB head unit with a minor bug. It was already working on my Pioneer SPH-DA250DAB.

The bad news is that the suggested workaround for not being able to capture all system audio, by using Bluetooth to transfer audio doesn't work on either of the head units.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
Thank you.

Look, all these apps and solutions are with root. Many of us do use root in order to be able to use such projects. And make our devices our own and custom enhanced with higher capabilities.

The ones who don't root, never use and look for projects like this anyway.

Go ahead and make it available with root. And only then keep trying to also make it work without it, if your can.

You have something good here. If you keep it delayed or never finish it, your are just becoming a part/victim of the stupid Android policy that limits this os more and more to eventually turn it into some fruit os.

Only windows is so far not killing this spirit. And we all forgot about thanking windows for that.

Or isn't a pc much more to be secured and have you concerned from security point of view than a phone?! It is.. But Android makers think that they are the essence. They must realize this must stop or ppl will find and always go for a more free/opened system. Openness is the success of windows. Nevermind...
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
I was thinking something similar. There's too much limitations without root to make this app possible. Even with root some things are difficult. So indeed I will focus on implementing this app on a rooted device.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Some more news. I upgraded my good old Nexus 6 to Android 13 by upgrading to LineageOS 20. Did some testing with it and incredibly everything still works. Even my implementation to capture REMOTE_SUBMIX (=system) sound. I was kind of evaluating my own work and think there's a lot already achieved. However still a lot needs to be done as well. Since the Nexus 6 works but is a bit slow I decided that I need a better device for development and just ordered a Google Pixel 6A.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stargate125645:
There are those of us who no longer have rooted phones specifically because there is a version of AppRadio Unchained that works without root, to be clear. With that said, I would figure out how to root again if needed to get AAU to work.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
I understand you.

Everyone decides if to root or not, based on what they stand to miss if not rooted and vice versa.

But when it's clear that an app isn't possible to make without root I recon that people who have strong feelings against rooting would accept that root must be used already and they have to live without this app unfortunately.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Got my Pixel 6A and updated to the latest Android 13, rooted it and did some tests. All works well. Video and audio is fast. No video artefacts and no audio lag. Can capture system audio. It's amazing.

It's a good base to continue development of the app.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Also with root access it's easy to set the phone's resolution so that it matches the aspect ratio of the head unit. Which means no black bars there. Did some experimenting with that and it works great.

I should have decided to make a root version, a long time ago. It really feels like a heavy burden has been lifted from my shoulder.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] tiho5:
Here we go. Something good is going to come soon.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Sorry but I am not going to disclose it. I did develop this method by myself so it's a new method that you won't find online anywhere. It took me a couple of weeks to develop.

The main reason I am not disclosing it, is because Google will deem it a security risk and then block it. I am not going to help them with that.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] bigcid10:
good luck with the Project

my US samsung s22 ultra can't be rooted so I quess I can't

be a part of the fun
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] mdelleman:
Sure would love to see AAUnchained available somehow. I can't find a Pioneer AppRadio to install in my new truck. That was that was the best system I ever had. Thx @area51
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] yousee:
This app doesn't work on my xperia10iiiandroid13. There are many problems. Can anyone help me? I love this app for 7 years including the root version. I am also looking forward to new apps. Does it work on Android 12? However, it seems that you can't downgrade unless you boot unlock. Please someone tell me the solution. Thanks for reading!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Please describe what your issue is. I am not very good at mind reading and my crystal ball is broken so providing more details can help a lot.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] yousee:
AppRadio Unchained Rootless　does not work well on Android 13. Is there a better way? i am using xperia 10iii.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] yousee:
I forgot the calibration setting in the initial setting after a long time. After setting everything works fine. I'm sorry for disturbing you. I'm looking forward to new works in the future. From one of your many fans in Japan.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] bbolton_98:
If possible will this app work on a pioneer AVH-X390BS? I have a locked S20 but also a rooted S3 that I can use as a "processer". If you think it will work, Thanks for your time and any help.Lord's.

edit sorry I may have found the answer No this unit doesn't have hdmi input. so I've been using av input thru hdmi converter but it's one way so probably a lost cause.. If anyone has any ideas please share if not a new head unit seems to be in the future. Thanks again
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
Good you solved it.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Area51©:
You are right. I never managed to reverse engineer AppRadio One as the AVH-X390BS supports.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Fj Cruiser:
Hey guys.... So I ordered a chinese Android tv box. I tried to install it onto my Pioneer NEX 8000 using ARUnchained reloaded. I get no video when connected through HDMI. Did I get the wrong android tv box? It works well on my tv. Am I doing something wrong? The settings on the NEX 8000 are set to Others via HDMI.