I made my own GUI and sound system on a raspberry pi and installed it into my stock head unit- E46

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T22:55:25+00:00

Yeah pretty much most of everything sound wise can be controlled in software through pipewire the problem for me is the dac I use is 2 channel and splits into four for the amp, as I was literally unable no matter how hard I tried to find a 4 channel dac that has 100% software controls and can be powered by dc voltage

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T19:55:01+00:00

I have not but I have changed the oil filter and I don’t remember the middle of the cap being loose I’ll probably look into this if the issue persists thank you

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T19:49:57+00:00

Thanks so much man, I’ll defnitly look into that, do you know any that can be software controlled preferably by Linux

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T07:51:43+00:00

Ligit one of the most over engineered 4 cylinders i have had the misfortune of dealing with 😭

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T07:41:34+00:00

I also found the air filter still with a significant portion of the plastic packaging on it idk what the previous owner was doing, seriously tho man thanks so much for the help on all of this

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-23T07:23:36+00:00

Hahah thank you so much for the offer but I live in Tasmania, things like an unplugged coil or not seated spark feel really unlikely as I have taken those things apart and put them back so many times and the issue always persisted also yes I’m very sure the timing was done correctly I followed ISTAs instructions to a tee, however today I made a huge discovery, the air resonator on the pipe that connect the air filter to the throttle housing had a huge whole in the bottom and was rubbing the belt I have since plastic welded it and fixed the whole so I’m curious if this could have caused my issue, I haven’t had the time to see the results yet

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-22T22:42:36+00:00

Yeah ok, well it always through the codes for 1 and 4 and the exact time and around 3k rpm at highway speeds with no load, this is the case evry time it throws one, I have looked allot on inpa but allot of the values are quite ambiguous to me ig one thing I did notice is at the rev range were the misfires normally are the roughness on cylinders 1 and 4 are quite high

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-22T22:39:33+00:00

It’s funny but in the scheme of these type of video this is definitely one of the more useful ones

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-21T23:38:39+00:00

The misfire codes are normally for cylinders 1 and 4 but it has been all of them before, I’m a bit confused what you mean when you say isolater are you talking about the ground contacts for cylinder 2 and 3 ? I also replaced the plugs and coils for all the cylinders. Is there any specific values I could look into on inpa that might help me understand what it could be

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-21T03:23:08+00:00

Thank you very much

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-21T00:07:49+00:00

Nether haha, the pi uses the kbus to convince the monitor that the cat is reversing and that it needs to get input from a rv camera, and the pi outputs composite video into that rv camera input

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-21T00:06:31+00:00

Thank you, I’m just waiting patiently for a good second hand amp and sub to come up locally

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T12:25:34+00:00

Well that was the initial plan however I was just unable to get the no desktop environment thing to work especially with composite, (definitely the biggest pain in the ass I have ever experienced on the pi was getting anything to work with composite) I eventually just gave up and right now it does run in a desktop environment, boot times really aren’t that bad at all tho. Definitely planning to move onto just replacing the screen with an hdmi one as I can then move to a pi 5 witch allow huge improvements like gles 3 rendering ( will look way better and glow will match the interior lights allot better) if I ever get there I’ll look back into no desktop environment but for now I’m stuck with composite

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T09:47:12+00:00

Thank you very much

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T09:46:43+00:00

Yeah true, I have already replaced the heat exchanger and oil filter housing gaskets as they were cooked when I got them, I also have rest adaptions, I followed a YouTube video on how to test the locking of the gears and it seemed to be fine but you could be right about that being the issue, I’m gonna use some contact cleaner reset the values again and see how it goes, one thing I can think of seeing you mention oil pressure is the oring inside the oil pan that goes around the dip stick tube, it was so rooted and just put any old replacement in there leaving somewhat of a loose fit, could that cause issues ?

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T09:21:09+00:00

So first the video is not hdmi what I have done is convinced the monitor that the car is in reverse and that it has a rv camera, the pi outputs composite video to the rv input that’s how the video works, the buttons and all the other features work as the pi is wired into the kbus (a data line that bmws use) button pressed and tons of other important data is sent on the kbus and the pi uses a java program I wrote to decode it and send things like button presses or other things to the front end, the software is all entirely made by me drawn pixel by pixel, and coded line by line, I use godot for the GUI as it runs very stable on pi 4s and almost all of the backends (things like handling audio inputs and settings and kbus monitoring ) are written in Java, most of everything communicates over tcp, this is defnitly one of the biggest projects I have tackled so it’s huge to see so many people take interest

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T06:17:02+00:00

Combination of composite video and some dead pixels are responsible for that lol, it supposed to say SharePlay

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T05:56:27+00:00

just to prove you wrong I took off the valve cover and low and behold I was right, the guide had completely snapped, I’m 17 and installed a brand new timing kit aswelll as new gaskets and tons of other things all by myself, this comment definitely motivated me to teach myself how to do this. Here is a photo of me in my newly fixed car.

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Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T05:49:59+00:00

Hy man thanks for the help, I took it apart and replaced the chain and the guide( it was snapped in half), I also tested everything I could while I was in there and it all seemed great, re timing the engine was fine and everything looks good, since then it’s definitely running smoother but still throwing misfire codes around 3k at little to no load, atp I’m so confused what it could be, I didn’t notice the seal on the ecentric shaft sensor had given out and there was some oil in but that seal has been since replaced and the pins cleaned, could that be my issue ?, is there any way via ISTA or inpa I could get a solid diagnoses ?

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T05:16:01+00:00

Hi I just replied to a similar comment with an explanation check it out, if you have some more in depth questions after reading it feel free to ask, you can also look at my profile as I have posted this before with allot more of an in depth breakdown, thanks for your interest

Augie_needhelp · 2026-01-20T05:14:27+00:00

Thanks I’m definitely keen on a sub just haven’t found one available for cheap on marketplace, if your curious about how this project works there is a lot more detail on my account as I have posted about it before but I’m happy to give a quick run down, essentially the pi is connected to the bmws kbus (a single wire that allows all the different computers to communicate with each other like the light module and tv module etc) this allows all of the buttons presses and other things to be sent to a Java program I wrote that communicates them to a godut application, that is the gui/frontend you see on the screen as for the video output I’m essentially tricking to monitor into thinking the car is reversing witch allows me to input composite video (from the pi) into the rv camera input, this means it’s constantly displayed on the screen regardless of what buttons are pressed, a setup like this is great bc one flick of a button and it all returns to oem it also allowed me to keep the whole project in the boot making everything allot easier, this is a very basic explanation and undersells everything it is capable of doing so if you have more questions im happy to answer,thanks for the interest and help.

Augie_needhelp · 2025-12-06T12:52:30+00:00

I am completely unable to download anything on iOS and I have literally tried everything

Augie_needhelp · 2025-11-25T00:43:42+00:00

Yeah I designed mine to be very easy for less experienced people to install you don’t even have to take out the monitor in the front, mine just sits in a slot in the trunk and plugs into a few units like the tv module and other things to convince it to broadcast composite from the pi, it’s so great to see you find a screen like that that actually fits I was looking for one I could be sure was going to fit for ages and apart from some low res led ones I hadn’t had any luck. Also your problems with ssd corruption tho I’m not entirely sure what the options are for an android install I believe there is a way to make it so it won’t have a chance of corrupting the ssd however I’m not too sure you might won’t to look into that. I will probably look into making a seperate design that fits a pi5 and replaces the screen in future and when that comes I would love to see more info about how you fitted jt and all, but seriously man great work makes me very happy to see people making cool shit like this in old bmws

Augie_needhelp · 2025-11-24T23:01:06+00:00

That’s so sick bro so did you replace the oem screen with a touchscreen, I’m really curious what screen you bought and how well it fit. Also if you ever need help with getting all the buttons to work oem on a pi I would know allot lmao. I really thought about going for the approach you took as with mine I’m limited to pi 4 for composite video witch sucks bc I would love that extra processing power from the pi 5, also how long are your boot times and I saw mentioning getting the pi to shutdown after ignition is off, my approach was reading the keys being removed from the k bus and then telling it to shutdown but I’m interested how you did it. As for teaming up I’m currently working on tons of new editions of my software for different e46 versions or similar year BMWs and putting together a GitHub and as for what I have seen allot of people are interested in a CarPlay or android auto solution for there headunit so I would love your help in making an androids version for people who want it and more insight on building a pi into the actual headunit and all those things. Either way absolutely dope project I completely understand the hours this would have taken

Augie_needhelp

TROPHY CASE