You nearly hit the nail on the head. I was already a man when I got the bright idea to install an android tablet into my dash as the head unit. Connected to the hot spot on my phone and basically had Android Auto before that was even a thing. Even had a custom OS build that was specifically for vehicle use, including matching the logo and color scheme to my car.
Honestly, it worked pretty well for the hack job that it was. But there were a few things that grant it my “worst mod” award:
– Since this was obviously not a common use case, there weren’t exactly any dash kits out there for integrating tablets. I had to mod a regular Double-DIN kit, which I scarred up rather nicely in the process. I then tried to use Bondo to smooth everything out and make it look stock, but I had neither the skill nor the patience to pull it off. Looked absolutely terrible.
– I put few whole system on a switch so that I could listen with the car off. Unfortunately, the amplifiers and signal processor I used did not have a soft turn on feature. So every time I turned the system on, there was a small surge that created a loud pop from the speakers. Speakers were fine, but I think it may have contributed to breaking one of my amps.
– That switch had another drawback, which was that I regularly forgot to turn it off. More often than I would like to admit, I came out to a car whose battery was so drained, the power locks didn’t even work. I learned quickly to keep a jump starter on hand, but those were pretty bulky and didn’t hold a charge very long back then.
Now you can buy a plug-and-play head unit for $500 that has a 10+ inch screen and is already set up with AA/CarPlay. Hazards of being ahead of your time, I guess.
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