yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Some updated on the Orange Pi Zero:

Device arrived today, very happy to start testing, just to realise that device does not have video output by default (no HDMI). Ups, should have checked better before purchasing...

Anyway, what's a display to a geek? We do have shell :D

After a whole afternoon of playing around with it, I finally got a connection up and running but it wasn't an easy path at all.

What I learned:

1) We will need 2 power source for this device simply powering it from the Headunit won't work because entering/exiting USBAccessorry will trigger a reboot (power drop for a fraction of second). Secondary power can be provided by Y cable or by using pins on the board.

2) Probably it will be easier for me to create a pre-configured image of a system then trying to write a tutorial on how and what to do

3) The 256Mb version of the board will do just fine (yeap I ordered the 256Mb ram board)

Conclusion, I'm pretty positive about the board, but please DO NOT START BUYING IT YET, till I don't do more testing and give the green light on it.

EDIT:

- Test cycle 10 out of 10 connection made without any problem as long as the Orange Pi has a secondary (continuous) power source. Currently I was using a USB power bank and a USB Y cable.

- On one occasion the connection did dropped and I had to manually restart AAGateWay on the master.

- I noticed that device can get quite hot, so cooling might be needed for it

Above still stands don't jump the gun and start buying the board till I don't do more in-depth testing.

I will park this now for a few days and try to work out why some of you are having problems with the connection. I think one reason is VAG but I need to investigate that deeper.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] LLStarks:
What are you looking for in a board in terms of features, ports, and minimum specs (e.g. ARMv7 or better)?

Something like the Raspberry Pi Zero W (embedded antenna!) would've been great if it had a modern CPU.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Cheap, compact, world wide availability, decent support (decent os for it) and integrated Wifi. Yeah RPI Zero W will be nice, but it cannot run Android, not sure if/how UsbAccessory can be ported to Linux, I'm not that good with linux and that will mean I will need to re-write the whole Java thing in C or Python or something else to make it work on a RPI.

As it stands I think the Orange Pi Zero is quite a decent choice, for £13 you cannot complain.

I'm not looking so much for me I'm looking for something which can be widely used by anyone who does not want to brake the bank to get AA over Wifi, I for one still prefer the USB connection, somehow I got used to it.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Ok I think I found one of the problems on the VAG cars but the fix might not be that simple. I will keep you guys posted.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] NYZack:
I've found that the app somehow interferes with voice recognition on my Honda Clarity. If I activate the Google Assistant through Android Auto, AA can't hear anything that I say, and it hangs: have to unplug and start from scratch. If I try to use my car's native Bluetooth dialer, it can't understand what I'm saying.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] suku_patel_22:
That's positive news. You could just have the apk set to the required values for the slave. We could then ADB install it.

Regarding the power drops, is it because of the way Zero is or is it how the car behaves?

I guess another OrangePi with similar specs and DC Power input would work?
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] alexo95:
Saying ok google crashes everything and freezes aa on my headunit 50% of the time
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] NYZack:
I don't even have to say "OK Google". Just activating the Google Assistant from the buttons on my steering wheel crashes AA.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] odl:
this worries me most with this Pi Zero solution. I read comments about its wlan adapter and it seems it's completely unreliable. as this is key element for wireless configuration, I'd go with version that has better wlan, best with 5GHz.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] LLStarks:
The only other decent board in the price range is the Banana Pi M2 Zero. More RAM, mini HDMI, and that dedicated power port.

http://www.banana-pi.org/bpi-zero.html

Some vendors mention that the antenna is included but ymmv.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] rpgreentree:
For the first time both apps worked as intended today only for the USB plug to work loose at the car end. Of course it took me the best part of an hour to work out what the problem was. So far I'm very impressed with the development of this app. I really think you're on a winner there [MENTION=224120]Emil[/MENTION].
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] jimsey:
Had to install and uninstall beta 3 or 4 times on both my master and slave before it just started to work.

Slave is moto g5

Master s9plus

For the first few attempts, both devices said the were connected ok, but the car head unit complained that the flow was not working or that my device was not compatible, now it's working, it works every time without issue.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] -DDD-:
jimsey, what HeadUnit?
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] rpgreentree:
I had the same experience. Both phones said the were connected. The slave even said it was connected to the car but AA wouldn't come up on the screen. I uninstalled both and set the apps up from scratch and, hey presto, it worked.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Hi guys.

I'm not gone, just extremely busy. However during the last 2 days there are some developments behind the scene:

1) Thanks to [MENTION=2481649]fezster[/MENTION] and his patients and loads and loads of bug reports we are one step closed to getting this sorted for VAG cars. At least now we have a connection for a short period.

2) Been playing with MK808 and Orange Pi Zero, both seems decent(ish) devices. On the MK808 about 8 out of 10 power tried do result in a successful connection, and this is without a secondary power source for this device so device boots up together with the car. Total time between powering up the headunit and seeing Android Auto on it is: 44 seconds which is not too bad taking into account that my Sony needs about 20 seconds till it wakes up anyway...

Pi Zero on the other hand does need a secondary power source to keep it running. Without a secondary power source it's a bit of touch and go on some power ups I do get a connection on some don't, I will say around 50%-60% of a power up the Pi Zero did manage to established a connection even if it didn't had a secondary power source. However I find the Pi Zero way more sluggish compared to the MK808. You do have lag on the screen sometimes, and the operation is not as smooth as it should be. That being said let's not forget we are speaking of a device with 256MB of RAM and a really cheap entry level CPU, but non or less still usable. I haven't tested it on long run probably about 30-40 mins max in one session, but I'm pretty sure it will also require some active cooling (fan). After about 5-10 minutes you can notice the experience becoming more sluggish, simply blowing on the device a bit which cools it off a touch instantly increases responsiveness, so yeah the CPU is probably trolling due to heat. I'm not sure if a simple passive cooling will cut it either...

I think that it will also depend a lot on your car / headunit and how big is the timeout for the USB.

I hope that in a few days I will be able to push out another updated with more stability fixes.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] odl:
Today I had following issue: I lost mobile signal for a while and during that time (when phone was looking for cell tower) I had audio breaks for around minute (even if my Spotify playlist is downloaded to device) but that's fine - could live with that. The strange thing is that after situation got back to normal, all sounds from AA had around 1 minute delay to the info showing on the screen. next songs notifications showed in the middle of current song, navigation sound was delayed for a minute as well. I could control spotify but again the action I did and was displayed correctly on the screen didn't go with the audio until that minute passed. like there was some huge audio buffer which didn't reset properly.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] CappyT:
Hi [MENTION=842765]Emil Borconi[/MENTION] ,

I've bought your app (to show some deserved support!) but i know you are currently having problems with VAG cars.

I can help you testing out if you want, I have a Seat Ibiza (2018) (which is vw group car) and a Rooted Pixel 2 XL (stock).

Also, I have a question for the slave setup.

I've seen the odroid XU4 SBC, supports android 7.1 and also wifi AC (via dongle). Since i have a bit of skill with linux systems in general and electronics, i'm planning to hardwire this in with a circuit to switch it on and off after ignition. Do you think it can work on this board? Is it powerful enough? Or do you suggest something else?

Thank you for your time
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] SLAB_8002:
Emil, it's been working well for me since the last update. Because I have a Verizon phone, I had to manually start AA Gateway on the master, but after that I just left the gateway running and didn't need to manually restart it. One issue I'm having is that the master doesn't close the connection when I get out of the truck. The slave turns off when I open my door because the infotainment system shuts off power to the USB port, but the master changes to the green Android Auto screen that says "To start, select Android Auto on your car screen", meaning the master thinks it's connected to a head unit. It stays this way for at least 5-10 minutes after I exit the truck.

I had a few issues yesterday with AA Gateway telling me that the headunit server needed to be restarted. Inevitably, this meant 1-2 reboots of the slave after I stopped and restarted the headunit server. If it keeps happening I'll grab a bug report and send it over.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
The question is are you able to get the connection up between the 2 devices? If yes then you're VAG isn't affected, not all VAG's car are, I think only ones with HARMAN unit.

AS of Odroid yes there is no reason why it shouldn't work, but I do think there are cheaper alternative out there.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Give it time. It means the slave isn't actually disconnected from the car, it's still communicating with it and that keeps the connection open with the master as well. If you simply walk away, eventually on the master the connection to the slave will be dropped and at that stage the master will close everything gracefully on the phone making sure Headunit Server is in a state where you can reconnect to it. If not swipe down and from AAGateWay select exit which will again close everything nicely.

On the slave at some point the headunit will also cut the USB connection (might take 5-10 minutes on some cars even 30 as I heard) at that stage slave will also be ready for a new connection.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] billington.mark:
So what is actually the issue with VAG cars? I have a 2018 Seat Leon, and I get to the point the car screen will show the "check your phone when it's safe... Etc etc" message, but nothing ever progresses from that point.

If that's the issue, I'm happy to provide debugging info if needed.

Mark
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
The issue with the VAG cars is that they have some 0's in the car identification. Due to the fact that there is no official documentation, it's hard to say what it should or what it shouldn't be. Basically the car uses Googles protobuf to communicate with the car. The current standard of protobuf is 3 and it's been around for a while now, the older version is 2. I based all the code on protobuf3, but protobuf3 has a default behaviour of throwing fields where value is 0, whereas protobuf2 doesn't. This missing 0's causes AA to crash on the phone, so I think that Android Auto was actually build on Protobuf 2 version. Of course nothing is documented because this is not available to the larger public so it's all reverse engineering and a lot of patients.

On your master did the status of the notification changed from "Waiting for slave" to connected?

Shoot me an email if you want to borconie@gmail.com
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] donky kong 017:
Same here with a Skoda octavia 2018 everything is connected. But the car says check phone. Will have to try and reinstall everything before saying anything. Sry also no times for logs. I use my car very rarely.

Emil said when master/slave are connected it should even work on vag cars. Will try again on the weekend.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] jimsey:
its the built in touch nav system in a peugeot 5008
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] fezster:
Guys. I was getting the same on my 2018 Audi. Emil has done a lot of back and forth with me to resolve this, and we are almost there. The latest code allows AA to show on the car, but it then lost connection to master. This may have just been the WiFi dropping - this is something I will check again tonight.

Emil has been very quick to resolve these issues - some great debugging and coding skill from him. Hopefully if the testing goes well tonight, he will have a version which works well for VAG cars.

[MENTION=842765]Emil Borconi[/MENTION] - As I said in a previous post, if the connection attempt fails first time for some reason, it is often necessary to remove USB/reconnect USB (either physically or through enable/disable with Root privileges). It'd be nice to be able to do this automatically - a) If the slave software can determine the connection has failed, but WiFi hostpot is active, so it can retry, or b) perhaps easier, if it can disable USB if WiFi is disconnected, and then enable USB when it reconnects.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] billington.mark:
Quick back and forth over email and I'm in business.

The head unit in the Octavia and my Leon will be the same (albeit with a different skin)...

Slave plugged in via USB. Only option enabled on slave is to toggle WiFi.

Master, reboot phone, enable head unit server (before launching aagateway). Only option ticked is to enable tethering.

So at this point, I left my slave plugged in, in the car. Waited a few mins for the head unit to completely shut down.

Went to the car, ignition on, and that triggered tethering on my master. WiFi connected, then an android auto message on my master to accept.

Once accepted, I'm off to the races.

As I mentioned to Emil, I have a little stutter at some points when transitioning between maps and music... But I think that's down to the fact the slave device is an original motoG and limited to only be able to connect to 2.4GHz WiFi points...

So now I'm happy it works, I'm on the lookout for a decent powered slave device!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] *justintime*:
That's good to hear that VAG cars will be supported.... Also send a bug report to him...

We will wait patiently....
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] CappyT:
Well, i'm open for suggestions to cheaper alternatives (since i still haven't bought it). I'm currently evaluating anything that has 5Ghz network, since i believe, that's mandatory...
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] SLAB_8002:
No, it continues to do this for 5-10 minutes after I've walked away from the car. Also, my slave is a MK809V, so it shuts off as soon as I open the door (which cuts power to the USB port). So there's no way the master and slave are still communicating. Anyway, it's a minor issue, more of a gripe, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
I've just updated the beta channel. This version should work correctly with VAG cars as well, please do let me know if you do face more issues and I will do my best to get to the bottom of them all.

[MENTION=7297194]SLAB_8002[/MENTION] - When the power cuts off if you have a look on your master, does it display how many devices are connected to the HotSpot?

[MENTION=4101055]CappyT[/MENTION] - Ah the 5Ghz, yeap that will make a difference and it will reduce the candidates. Let me check if I can get one of my USB WiFi's to work with my Orange Pi (not the Pi Zero, I do have a Pi as well) another might be the old Pine64 board, but that is HUGE is size, sadly they are now only selling Pine64 with 2GB of RAM which cost $32 USD, or the new Rock64 for $24, but that needs separate power. However the Rock64 does have support for eMMC which means theoretically the boot time can be drastically reduced. I will run some tests on the Orange Pi board as well as on the Pine64 512MB Ram board.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] -DDD-:
Hi, my connection with RC1 was successful after i reinstalled both apps. Will try RC2 tomorrow. Thanks!

I also have mailed you the old RC1 Bug: sony xz1c and Wiko sunny2 plus on VW 2015.

Another bug i found was, if the Car was Off with USB Cable on Slave plugged in, the VW HeadUnit don't shot my Slave until i Reconnect the USB Cable.

Is there any Chance that AAGateway will work through WLAN and not with Hotspot? I already have an Huawei LTE Wingle with WLAN Hotspot in my Car that i would like to use to communicate to the Slave.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
I don't owe a VAG car so I cannot test, but as far as I know on your unit somewhere you should have an "Activate" button for Android Auto, that should have the same effect as unplug/replug also if the slave is rooted you can try to enable the "Toggle USB" option see if that helps with that problem.

For WLAN, I think yest that will be possible BUT you will need to make sure your phone always gets the same IP address.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] -DDD-:
Yes there is Activate AA, but it doesn't find any Device to Connect to, like there is no USB Device connected.

No, the Wiko Sunny 2 Plus Phone isn't rooted, don't know if i can root that and how.

Same IP would work with the Huawei i think. Can i test that with RC2 or do you have to write code for this?
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
I do need to write code for that :) some point down the line...

I think that phone can be rooted with KingoRoot
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] -DDD-:
Would be happy to test and use that in Future :)

I will try KingoRoot the next weeks i hope.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] LLStarks:
What is the license for the protobuf component?
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Sorry not following the question...
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Well sadly none of my Wifi dongles worked on Orange Pi or Pine64 I need to get some other Wifi dongles in and see which one works, therefore I wasn't able to test how this board works.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] odl:
That would be great. Maybe will solve the issue I have when master is messing up the hotspot connection when loses mobile network for a while.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] sibesaver:
Yes. I don't have hotspot with Verizon, they charge and throttle it as well. I would love to test P2P WiFi connection.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Actually I'm thinking that I can extend the app to work other way around as well (slave is creating the hotspot) and Android Auto connects to it, but that will only ever if the master is running Android 9.0 or higher, since Android 9.0 is able to keep the internet connection of the mobile network if it connects to a Wifi which does not provide internet access, whereas older versions of the phone do not have that possibility. For that scenario you won't even need to have the headunit server running on the master, but first let me see that this is stable enough so it can go to release state and push it to PlayStore.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] -DDD-:
That would be a Problem here, since the Phone of my wife is Sony X with Android8 and she have very little Mobile Traffic, this is why i have a second SIM-Card from my Contract in the Huawei LTE WLAN Wingle that she use in the Car.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] fma965:
I've just been testing this on my nexus 7 slave and my note 9 worked pretty well. Just looking and researching the best method to hard wire a slave device in to my car and what device to use. Battery consumption is my main issue as I have a front and rear always on dashcam already draining my car battery.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Well that's why I try to think of all possible solutions, because one size does not fit it all.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] fma965:
That would be awesome... since my note 9 will be getting android 9 soon :) (technically already able to be installed manually)
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] roirraW "edor" ehT:
Just got my first Android Auto capable car, a 2017 Impala in February - I hadn't even known it existed. I figured I'd have to wait until the end life of this car until I could use wireless Android Auto with my Pixel or other device - don't think it's worth getting a third-party head unit just for that, and potentially lose other built-in capabilities, or be an ugly solution.

Thanks for working on this. Excited to see what happens.
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Emil Borconi:
Hi guys.

I see that you are all waiting eagerly. I have finished now rewriting my HUR app, which is out for testing, so tomorrow I'm going to work on this and I will try to push out the first release by Friday.

I want to do quite a few things but, probably I will add the features as we go along with updates.

Stage 1:

- It will be a pure gateway and it will only connect to Android Auto, meaning those of you who are using obd2aa will need to wait for stage 2

Stage 2:

- The app will be able to connect to obd2aa instead of Android Auto, basically allowing you to run Android Auto with obd2aa over Wifi, but for this stage I need to change obd2aa as well, hence deciding to make it a separate app.

Stage 3:

- Connect to either of them, and also disable the 6 tap limit for cars which have GPS receiver and allow 720p instead of 800x480 but this might not work on all cars.

For the timeline:

- Stage 1, for sure before I go away on holiday so no later then 17th of July.

- Stage 2 and 3 not sure yet.

The app will be a paid app, hence being in this section of the forum and due to the fact that it doesn't have any special requirements, I'm pretty positive I will be able to publish it on Google Play as well. However for stage 1 and 2 I'm going to push the code on github so those of you who want to DIY-it you are more then welcome.

Now I'm going to have some sleep because it's 1:10 AM here...
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] Scutley:
Goodnight and sleep tight
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] stefhelm:
I've got the same Sony head unit, so this caught my eye. I'll be sure to watch your progress. Seems like a great idea!
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] bkkzak:
I know we won't see an app super soon or anything, but I want to preemptively buy a stick and keep it on hand for whenever an app is released.

Can you recommend a bare bones stick (read: cheapest) that will work with your app? That way when it is released, more of us can be ready to hop on board and not wait for shipping
[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] FormelLMS:
I'm on it. Emil, good idea.