Absolutely - very impressed with Musicolet already, and I never stream music either - so it’s perfect for me.
Have just installed FRE:AC tonight, so will start trying it out in the morning!
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Meanwhile back on the subject of Android Auto - Had a strange experience today in my Mazda - if I disable Bluetooth in the car unit, it won’t allow Android Auto to run/connect even if I’m using USB (which I always do). i.e. to run AA over USB you have to have Bluetooth on in the car head unit… Now why would that be???
I hadn’t fully twigged to that previously with using my iPhone for CP - and given how vulnerable BT is in cars and the fact they’ll accept connections from anything and anyone without batting an eyelid, it’s pretty annoying you can’t permanently disable it in the head unit. Another reason it’s good I try and not allow any contacts or other info sync’d directly with a standard car infotainment system ever.
I tried working on this with my phone and my newer Mazda (2025 model year) for several hours. I cannot find a way to get the phone to connect through Bluetooth )USB wired connection required) and I cannot get past the voice command unavailable right now.
I have been doing some creative research to see if this has been reported anywhere else. I found the discussion on a Graphene support thread extremely interesting as it has a similar issue with the voice commands and it has some very specific details relating to hour Android Auto interacts with the vehicle’s Head Unit.
The interface between the phone software and the Head Unit is beyond my knowledge/skills level. Is there someone around who has access to this or has worked with this?
Yeah - I only had a little time to work on it today - but I’m becoming reasonably convinced it’s hard coded somewhere (inside the AA app on the phone) so it will only work with Google Speech Recognition & Synthesis for the digital assistant TTS and STT stuff (for the interactive things like messaging, searching by voice and similar); and if that’s not installed you can never get the peripherals like the microphone to work anyway, because AA will only look for hardware if G SR&S is present. So even if you got some other voice digital assistant recognised it’s likely still not be 100% functional.
I think the maps (like OsmAnd and CoMaps) working with SherpaTTS or similar is an anomaly, because they have integral support for a TTS engine - so one way voice works because it’s essentially the map app just ‘playing audio’ through the AA head unit (same as a music or podcast app)…
I have Futo TTS installed which works as expected (via the microphone icon in the system Keyboard) with all the apps I use (Quik, NextCloud Notes), This also works if I bring up the keyboard in Google Maps, by tapping on the Search text input box. Pressing the microphone all brings up the Futo UI and allows me to speak a search term which is passed back to Google Maps.
In Google maps, there is also microphone icon in the text input box (visible before tapping the input box to make the system keyboard appear). Pressing that icon brings up a screen - with the title 'Say where you want to go and another, larger microphone icon - that is clearly part of the app and nothing to do with the keyboard, and which doesn’t work.
When you say that you are using this “via the microphone icon in the system Keyboard”, are you referring to the screen on the phone or on the AA head unit in the vehicle?
