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71 lines
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71 lines
4.2 KiB
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---
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title: "Hacking a Chinese Car Stereo to fulfill my Knight Rider dreams"
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date: 2026-01-21
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draft: false
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---
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"Vibe coding" has become my latest obsession. It's that flow state where the tools disappear, and you're just manipulating logic at the speed of thought. Usually, this happens in a high-end IDE like Antigravity. But lately, I've been trying to answer a childhood dream.
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Growing up in China before the internet age, my window to the outside world was CCTV-6. Along with *Baywatch*, one of the first American TV shows I ever watched was *Knight Rider*. I don't remember the exact plot lines, but the core concept stuck with me forever: KITT. A car that could talk, think, and do things for you.
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Decades later, I'm sitting in my Jeep, wondering: Can I build my own KITT? Can I take the vibe on the road?
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I already updated the head unit in my Jeep to an aftermarket unit. It features a **K706 (UIS7862S)** chipset with an **8-core CPU and 8GB of RAM**, essentially making it a reasonably powerful Android tablet hardwired into the dashboard.
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## The Objective
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Turn this car accessory into a legitimate dev environment. I wanted a physical keyboard, a real terminal, and access to my AI coding assistants. I wanted to push code while parked on a trail.
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## The Hardware Blocker: Getting Input
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The first hurdle was mundane but blocking: My Bluetooth keyboard wouldn't pair. The head unit could see other devices, but refused to connect to my keyboard.
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### Attempt 1: The USB Dongle Bypass
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My first instinct was to blame the cheap Chinese head unit hardware. I grabbed a spare TP-Link USB Bluetooth dongle and plugged it in, hoping to bypass the internal stack entirely.
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The device showed up in `lsusb`, but it remained inert. A quick check of the kernel config via `zcat /proc/config.gz` revealed the bad news:
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```bash
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# CONFIG_BT is not set
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```
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The kernel was compiled without generic Bluetooth driver support (`btusb`). Even with root access, I couldn't load the drivers because they simply didn't exist in the firmware. I was stuck with the internal hardware.
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### Attempt 2: The "Dual Bluetooth" Fix
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Forced back to the built-in Bluetooth, I tried to diagnose why it was ignoring my keyboard. Standard debugging tools painted a grim picture:
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```bash
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❯ hciconfig -a
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# (Empty output - no standard HCI interface found)
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❯ ps -A | grep -iE "goc|ivt|syu"
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u0_a50 3456 ... com.goc.sdk # Accessing the proprietary BT chip
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```
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The diagnosis was clear: The internal Bluetooth chip is acting in **Slave Mode** (Client), managed by a proprietary `com.goc.sdk` service instead of the standard Android Bluetooth stack. It's designed to *be* a speaker for your phone, not to *host* a keyboard.
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**The Fix**: Hidden deep in the Factory Settings (password `8888`), there's a toggle called **"Dual Bluetooth"**. Enabling this flips the proprietary stack to expose a standard Host interface. Enable that, and suddenly my mechanical keyboard connected instantly.
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## The Software: Termux + Claude
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With input sorted, the software setup was surprisingly straightforward. **Termux** was the obvious choice for a terminal.
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I discovered that **Claude Code** works on Termux with zero hassle.
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The setup was shockingly simple:
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```bash
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pkg install nodejs git ripgrep
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npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
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```
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Authentication via `claude login` worked out of the box. Now, I have a fully capable coding agent running directly on my dashboard. I can pull a repo, ask Claude to refactor a module, and push the changes—all without opening a laptop.
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## Key Insights
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* **Head Units are just Weird Tablets**: They have quirks (like Slave-only Bluetooth), but they are standard Android under the hood. `adb root` is your best friend for diagnosing them.
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* **Check the Kernel Config**: Before buying hardware peripherals for embedded Android devices, always check `/proc/config.gz`. If the support isn't compiled in, you're dead in the water.
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* **The Vibe is Portable**: With tools like Termux and Claude Code, the "dev environment" is no longer a heavy laptop. It's anywhere you have a terminal.
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## References
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1. [Reddit: Claude Code on Termux](https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/1jd4y4y/claude_code_is_easy_to_install_on_termux/)
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