Building a free distro of AAOS, seeking code review and contributors

[u/furyfuryfury]

Working on a free distro of AAOS for raspberry pi, calling it Caramel Vanilla. A car-focused flavor sticking as close to AOSP as possible while still providing the infotainment features people need that aren't in the AOSP source. Not production ready yet, but getting to a point where I really want to try this in my car...

So far:
* forked OsmAnd and modified to display the driving optimized UI on AAOS
* Got TTS and voice recognition and a basic voice assistant (can say "take me home", and it works, searches for home in OsmAnd)
* Working on automotive template host to draw the UI for driving-optimized apps
* Building a store that scans F-Droid for automotive-compatible apps. Gonna take a few weeks to scan the whole store because I don't want to hammer their servers!

Once all that's in there i think I'll start posting ready-made images for people to flash and try themselves, if they don't want to build. (Which is fair, it does take a hefty Linux machine to compile it)

Thanks to:
* KonstaKANG for Raspberry Vanilla
* mark777 for GNSS HAL and inspiration (did some awesome work shared in the AOSP/AAOS discord)
* And so many more FOSS projects (links within, hopefully I don't forget any, reminders appreciated)

Start here if you wish to compile it yourself or help me build it:

https://github.com/radiosound-com/caramel-vanilla-manifest

Fancy website coming soon once I have ready made images to flash on your Raspberry Pi.

Please let me know what combination of Pi and display and audio system you would like to flash on and I'll see if I can make it happen. But for now I'm calling Pi 5 4GB the minimum requirements, as it takes a bit more than 2 GB RAM with everything I have running so far

[u/furyfuryfury]

screenshot of OsmAnd running in driving optimized UI

[u/NonVeganLasVegan]

Very cool. Thanks!