Almost all higher-end cars come with very beefy in-car entertainment hardware. In this talk, I'll describe how to take advantage of an existing hands-free kit to connect your car to the internet and script your dashboard in python.
The German company "novero" builds a range of hands-free kits that are used in most modern Volkswagen-Group cars. They handle the Bluetooth "Hands Free Profile" and A2DP (Audio Streaming), but also support RSAP (Remote Sim Access Profile) - which means that they have their own 3G modem, separate from the mobile phone. Some of these kits use this to provide an integrated WiFi access point to share an internet connection into the car.
It was found that some of these devices are Linux-based, with pretty decent hardware specs, running on modern ARM processors. A very flexible software architecture, based on GLib and D-Bus, allows to easily replace or extend the existing functionality with simple user-space programs - which means that you can interact with the in-dashboard screens and buttons, get access to various data sources like GPS, and have an internet connection.
This talk will show how to get root access on this hardware, run your own software, present a python-based framework for scripting your car, with full dashboard integration. With a CAN adapter, the module can be run stand-alone with a PC simulating the car, to simplify development.