This Double-DIN Raspberry Pi Head Unit Is a Major Upgrade for One Maker's 2006 Infiniti G35
Built around a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, touchscreen display, and high-resolution DAC, this head unit blows the factory ICE away.
Pseudonymous maker "stezenast" has built a major upgrade for the entertainment system in their 2006 Infiniti G35 sedan: a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with a high-resolution audio add-on, touchscreen display, and 3D-printed bracket to fit it into a double-DIN slot as a head unit.
"All this started as a journey to get a Hi-Fi aux input for my car without having to swap literally everything," stezenast explains. "Once I realized the amp was in the trunk and I could pull the stereo and wire directly, I was off to the races with the idea for this. It took months of occasional work to plan and execute. Honestly the best part is just loading and playing my favorite music videos onto it via a hidden USB stick."
The build uses a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, which isn't the very latest model but which still offers a good balance of price, power draw, and performance, to which stezenast has added a HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Pro offering 24-bit 392kHz audio playback — the output of which is spliced into the Bose amp included in the vehicle from new. On the software side, it's running an unmodified Raspberry Pi OS — relying on the standard desktop interface, rather than a custom UI.
For control, there's an official Raspberry Pi 7" touchscreen display that has been mounted on a 3D-printed bracket to allow it to attach into the dashboard in a double-DIN head unit slot. "12V [power] supply originally from the cigarette lighter, feeding a 5V 3A supply, through a marine-grade switch panel I also control interior lights and GPS with," stezenast adds. "It also provides two USB charging ports and displays system voltage."
Stezenast already has some ideas for upgrading the system still further, too: "I have plans to add a CAN bus module to it so it can be a high-speed data logger that can generate reports for Excel (using Python) about my drives," the maker explains. "I'd love to use it as a dataset for analysis. I want to use this knowledge to get a career in motorsports."
More details on the build are available on stezenast's Reddit post.