Waze (CarPlay / Android Auto) on Tesla is now possible, thanks to the amazing work from tesla-android.gapinski.eu. I (and many others) have been using Waze on our Tesla’s for a while now, works flawlessly, CarPlay (and hence Waze) is on the main screen and responds to touch control through the main screen.
In (maybe not totally accurate) short: it’s done through 2 raspberry pi’s, one is running Android and has a Carlink dongle hooked up and outputs it’s screen through HDMI, through the Carlink AutoLink dongle CarPlay / Android Auto is initiated over wifi/bluetooth with the mobile and the interface is shown on the screen and goes out via HDMI.
The other raspberry pi uses a LTE dongle for internet access and uses the raspberry pi onboard wifi to serve up a local wifi network that the Tesla car uses, the pi also uses an HDMI capture card to capture the video output coming the android raspberry pi running AutoLink CarPlay/Android Auto. The Carplay/Android Auto network RJ45 is connected so it has full internet. Next up a flutter app reads the CarPlay/Android Auto video stream and serves it up as a webpage (!!) and detects any Tesla browser touchscreen events and pushes them back to CarPlay/Android. Audio from CarPlay/Android Auto goes from the phone to Tesla Bluetooth.
There you have it, full circle, CarPlay/Android on the main screen in a Tesla (Future release will be running on a single Raspberry pi, btw).
It works smoother & faster than CarPlay in my previous car (Alfo Romeo Stelvio 2021) and it responds instantly to any touch screen event, screen refresh is excellent.
Basically I use the Tesla app to wake up the car which powers up the pi’s, after 1-2 minutes both Raspberry Pi’s are fully booted, Tesla detects the local wifi and connects to it (because it has internet connection through the LTE dongle). When I get into the car AutoLink detects my iPhone & initiates CarPlay, I open the Tesla browser and refresh the local webpage, and badabing, CarPlay on the main screen, use the touchscreen & open Waze and set destination on the ultimate #1 navigation app that is Waze and drive!
There is one issue with Waze:
When it detects CarPlay is being used it does not allow to select the bluetooth Audio output. If Waze would allow selecting audio output the integration would be pretty much complete!
I’m wondering, is this a limitation of the iPhone when it’s in CarPlay mode that navigation apps audio output are defaulted to CarPlay audio out and can no longer choose audio output or is this done by Waze?
Thanks!