Get metadata and/or internet from carplay

ms12 · 14 August 2023 00:48

Hello
Was wondering if there is anyway to get either the internet passed on to the RPI from the carplay dongle and/or some metadata from the carplay instance (like what song is currently playing) so that another script running on the RPI use it for interesting applications/UI built around carplay?

Thanks!

rhys_m · 14 August 2023 10:56

Hi,

This is implemented, although I believe it may only work with the wireless dongles for some reason! The socket that sends carplay messages from node-carplay sends out a “media” event, this contains current track details, even the album art also gets sent

ms12 · 15 August 2023 06:09

Hey, thanks for the info! I do have the wireless version!
I have basically 0 knowledge of node and/or react, so before I dive into it I wanted to ask you what the difference is between react-carplay and node-carplay?
It seems like node-carplay is more of a library rather than an actual implementation, but I could be wrong. Is there a way to “run” node-carplay i.e launch a carplay window similar to react-carplay? If so, can you guide me as to how it can be done?

ms12 · 15 August 2023 06:46

To add to that, it looks like there is a socket connection being created. I wonder if this means another script, say a python script, could also sniff some messages being sent?

rhys_m · 15 August 2023 15:30

Hi, yes correct, it creates a socket.io instance that anything should be able to connect to. I’ll put some more info on here later.

But yes node-carplay does all the leg work of communicating with the dongle, parsing the messages, and then sending out video, audio and also status data.

ms12 · 16 August 2023 05:28

Oh that seems like something I might be able to use then! Would appreciate more info!
It shoud work when running react-carplay too then, right? While react-carplay is running I am trying to get the python script to connect to the socket

import websocket

ws = websocket.WebSocket()
ws.connect('ws://localhost:3001')

But I am getting a connection refused error

rhys_m · 16 August 2023 08:33

Yeah it needs to be a socket.io instance, the connection details are here

github.com

rhysmorgan134/node-CarPlay/blob/master/modules/Carplay.js

const fs = require('fs');
const EventEmitter = require('events');
const {execSync} = require('child_process');
const DongleHandler = require('./DongleHandler')
const {Server} = require("socket.io")

const io = new Server(5005, {
    cors: {
        origin: '*',
        methods: ["GET", "POST"],
        credentials: true
    }
})

class Carplay extends EventEmitter {

    constructor(config) {
        super()
        this._width = config.width;
        this._height = config.height;

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Socket.io has a library for python, python-socketio — python-socketio documentation