PiCar – A DIY Car Radio Head Unit made from a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR

Thank you to Vinnie Moscaritolo for writing in and sharing with us PiCar, a project to develop a homebrew car radio head unit out of a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR. The advantage of PiCar over a standard vehicle head unit is that PiCar is not just a broadcast AM/FM tuner, but is also capable of tuning to and scanning for other signals, such as public safety. In addition, Vinnie has also added various other features to PiCar, such as a GPS nav system, and CAN bus snooper.

Vinnie writes:

What happens when a radio nerd with a Jeep and a Raspberry Pi decides factory dashboards are too boring? You get PiCar — a DIY car radio replacement with a VFD display, a couple of knobs, and a whole lot of hacker soul.

Built around RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi, PiCar does AM/FM, GPS nav, CAN bus snooping, 1-wire sensors, and even streams tunes from your iPhone — all without draining your Jeep’s battery. It's not just a head unit, it's a rolling testbed for software-defined radio, CAN hacking, and embedded Linux audio.

Vinnie has posted a full 9-part series on PiCar over on his blog. The series covers the why and the how, with several demonstration pictures and videos.