So here's a thought.......
I've been fiddling around with an in-dash PC to replace my dash nav unit. The part that I've kinda let trail off is handling most of the car's funcitons... The think that made me kinda lose steam on doing it is all the interconnects. I absolutely don't want to chop up a bunch of car wires, and I can't find any source for the other end of the connectors.....
But looking at this, it occured to me that maybe there's another way.
I know programming an ENTIRE system with OS, UI, and handlers for all the different interfaces is ... daunting doesn't even scratch the surface.
But what about a raw data interpreter? Could the stock unit be programmed to simply be a "dumb" data handler, interpreting info from all the car interfaces, then with its USB working as a device (instead of host), transmitting relevant info probably via virtual serial mode to a USB host in-dash PC?
There would still be the difficulty of relocating the unit (probably have to take up some glovebox space maybe?), but does the Renesas devkit include everything that would be needed for that? (and is the devkit publicly available, for that matter?)
Hm... probably wouldn't be enough bandwidth in serial mode to handle vid signal, so we'd still have to interface with the backup camera wires... But other high-bandwith things like bluetooth, nav, and audio would simply be replaced altogether by the new unit, so no need there... Most of what would need transfer would be can signals (selectively), button signals, cc settings/temps, maybe steering signal if you wanted to be hardcore...
This could probably all be answered on the site, I just haven't looked yet - will do when I get home - just saw this and got excited