Use car's existing WiFi

[aadnehovda]

Just started looking at adding a rpi to my motorhome's (elderly) Pioneer AVIC-F88DAB, but I already have a wifi router installed. Does this project require AP mode or could the PI be connected to the normal wifi instead?

[manio]

This project is using RaspberryPi wireless chip to make an AP, then your phone is connecting to this after Bluetooth handshake complete. Don't know exactly what you meant so ask if you want to know more...

[aadnehovda]

After bt handshake the phone connects to the AP, gets an IP address and then connects to a tcp server running on the pi, right? But if the pi was already connected to the same wifi as the phone, then maybe it could simply instruct the phone to connect to the tcp server immediately, without the AP part?

[aadnehovda]

The point would be that the phone could still use wifi, since it can't be connected to both the WiFi router and the pi's AP. Or maybe that's possible, please let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

[manio]

After bt handshake the phone connects to the AP, gets an IP address and then connects to a tcp server running on the pi, right?

Yes

But if the pi was already connected to the same wifi as the phone, then maybe it could simply instruct the phone to connect to the tcp server immediately, without the AP part?

Pi act as an AP it cannot be connected to the phone, the phone is connecting to the Pi. And no, it cannot omit this step. This is all AndroidAuto protocol dependent.

The point would be that the phone could still use wifi, since it can't be connected to both the WiFi router and the pi's AP. Or maybe that's possible, please let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

This is not possible without switching to WiFi-Direct which is somehow problematic due to several technical reasons... Maybe we will add it in the future... Currently when phone is utilizing WiFi for the AA, you cannot use it for other purposes.

[Ioniq3]

As @manio said now this is the behaviour.

You can hack to connect via car's wifi , but you get nothing, because the wifi connection between the mobile and the AP is all encapsulate to the tcp server and you cannot get any other IP or port. This is the reason for example, you cannot get the web server of aa-proxy-rs os the ssh server when the Android Auto Wifi Connection is established.