Hotwiring the future of in-car tech with a smartphone and Raspberry Pi

The Weblink in-car infotainment system prototype, ready for installation: Raspberry Pi, touchscreen, and iOS “server” app,
Sean Gallagher

Most current in-car infotainment and “telematics” systems follow a common theme in their design: for the sake of safety, branding, and a sustained source of revenue, they shackle vehicle owners to an integrated system that does poorly the things that smartphones already do well. The “connected car” dream has arrived in small doses, on selected vehicles, and has idiosyncrasies that drive vehicle owners who’ve become used to the power and simplicity of smartphone apps a little bit crazy.

Okay, a lot crazy. A few months back, I ranted about my personal experience with MyFord Touch and the shortcomings of in-car technology. It seemed like the car makers were missing the point with systems that tried to copy smartphone features into their own telematics systems and tried to get developers to code for their own proprietary platforms. And while an upgrade to MyFord Touch that I recently had installed at a dealership has solved many of the problems that drove me to distraction, it’s still a locked-down environment that gets in my way more often than it does what I want.

When Michael O’Shea, the CEO of Abalta Technologies, told me his company was working on a system called Weblink that draws on the capabilities of the cell phone to drive in-car systems, I wanted to see it immediately. So he gave me access to a prerelease iOS application and sent me prototype hardware to test it with: a fairly standard 7-inch VGA touchscreen, tethered to a Raspberry Pi computer.

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