TL;DR Man uses HDMI port to drive HDMI monitor. [HDMI monitor is in car and HDMI port is on Raspberry Pi, but this doesn't really matter as no other features of car nor pi where used.]
What does "natively" mean in this context? It's a bit like saying my RPi is running "natively" in my "livingroom" when I plug it in to my "TeeVee".<p>What would it matter, either? I thought the CANBUS in the latest Hondas is encrypted now, and the OBDII was using proprietary codes. So you could make a goofy media player out of it. You're not going to actually do anything with real vehicle telemetry unless you use a app like Torque that has a database of reverse engineered codes.<p>Honestly, it'd be better if I plugged my Samsung Note 3 into that very same HDMI port. You're better off buying a used Android for the same price as the RPi, because at least that Android would have usable sensors in it and an UI subsystem built around touch and voice input. You might even be able to get network access on it. I mean, he's already planning on having an Android device around to use for network access on the RPi. The RPi is literally doing nothing here.<p>Buy a $5 MSP430. Hell, if you're spending $50+ on an RPi, buy 10 MSP430s. Install Energia. Use SPI to communicate between your laptop and your MSP430. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get it to work with Android, too. You'll be able to do significantly more than you can with the RPi.
A very strange piece, as other have observed.<p>My favorite part was:<p><i>Getting a homebrew Raspberry Pi interface to be usable while driving would take some finagling, as Gold said the Honda Civic would not show HDMI input unless the car was in Park. But give gearheads and Linux geeks enough time, and they’d figure out a way around that constraint. Once that obstacle is overcome, the sky’s the limit. (Insert obligatory safety warnings about not streaming movies while driving here.)</i><p>So, they realize the car is designed by, one assumes, people who know something about designing cars, but still just take it for granted that it's desirable to use a full-blown computer on a home-grown interface <i>while driving a car</i>. Why? In many countries you're not even allowed, by law, to use a cellphone while driving. Doesn't that make some kind of sense? Why would you make it sound like some kind of silly restriction, best defeated? Aargh. I don't want to die because some random "gearhead" is fiddling with his home-built GUI, trying to show a movie, while driving.<p>I'm as much of a Linux geek as the next guy, but I <i>still</i> don't think it sounds like a good idea to use a computer while driving.
<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=raspberry+pi+site%3Amp3car.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=raspberry+pi+site%3Amp3car.c...</a> has all kinds of similar builds
Why is this a story? Did they do anything other than plugging a device with hdmi output into a device with hdmi input? I expected to see some sort of special UI configuration to make the pi more ideal for being operated in a car at the very least.
A much more interesting talk from this year's QCon London by Simon Ritter:
<a href="http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2014/slides/SimonRitter_IsItACarIsItAComputerNoItsARaspberryPiJavaCarputer.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2014/slides/SimonRitter...</a>