Finding an MFI chip

[tr1fled]

Hello,

I would like to deploy my own version of this project on an RPI, but we can't have CarPlay without an MFI chip, so the question now is, which MFI chip? Which MFI chip would i get that is compatible with CarPlay and I can use with my RPI 4? I believe these chips use i2c to talk to the host, but I might be wrong, so if anyone could provide me a chip number or some link of a seller, that would be great, even if it's a breakout board I might buy it.

Also, if you also provide a way to talk to the chip, that would be great! I will keep everyone posted on the progress.

Thank you.
tr1fled.

[AntogamerYT]

You can pretty much search for "mfi 3959" on aliexpress and the chips will come up in the first results. I couldn't get this program to compile/work properly on a raspberry pi and i genuinely don't recommend pursuing this unless you're planning to create your own program from scratch, from what i've seen the documentation pdfs in the repo explain the mfi communication decently.
If you have soldering experience and actually plan to do this, there's some useful information that i found about these chips in #24, good luck!

[tr1fled]

Thank you, I am currently designing a PCB to maybe have it printed and delivered, did you ever get to connect this to you pi? Maybe I can help you get it going. I have some docs that might help getting this going via USB

[AntogamerYT]

I never continued this project because i don't have the required experience to neither make PCBs nor solder the chip itself on anything (+ i never bought the chip by itself so i didn't test anything), it would be cool if i could actually manage to do it/obtain a board with the chip on it someday though

[tr1fled]

You never had a board with it? I thought you did because of previous issues... Maybe I can help you solder it, idk.

[AntogamerYT]

No, there was a guy who offered to solder one for me but since i didn't care that much about carplay i just stopped there. I recently became interested in it again because of a new android auto repo/project, which made me think about carplay again (after all, it's way less limited than AA if you have an mfi chip, as you basically have entire control over the video stream unlike AA)

[tr1fled]

Oh well, I can't help you there, if you have a board containing a chip you can try and solder tiny wires to it or find i2c testpoints, but since you don't have any, then I guess i'll just have to keep you posted, if you ever have an MFI chip with testpoints, let me know, i'd be happy to help you get this up and running

[f-io]

@tr1fled How hard would it be to implement this on a CM5 or Pi5 (software wise)? I'm currently in the process of designing a custom CM5 board with some additional hardware (CAN, MELBUS, DAC, HDMI transceiver).

At the moment, I'm using the CPC200-CCPA to get it working on the Raspberry Pi. Performance is decent, cold start to Stream in ~25sec, but I'd really like to ditch the dongle and just source the MFi chip directly.

Especially since Apple has supported HEVC (H.265) for CarPlay for a while now, and the Pi 5 lacks hardware acceleration for H.264. That makes it even more appealing to go native, as the Pi 5 does support hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding, which could improve performance and efficiency significantly.

[liuwentai]

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[hbouhadji]

@tr1fled How hard would it be to implement this on a CM5 or Pi5 (software wise)? I'm currently in the process of designing a custom CM5 board with some additional hardware (CAN, MELBUS, DAC, HDMI transceiver).

At the moment, I'm using the CPC200-CCPA to get it working on the Raspberry Pi. Performance is decent, cold start to Stream in ~25sec, but I'd really like to ditch the dongle and just source the MFi chip directly.

Especially since Apple has supported HEVC (H.265) for CarPlay for a while now, and the Pi 5 lacks hardware acceleration for H.264. That makes it even more appealing to go native, as the Pi 5 does support hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding, which could improve performance and efficiency significantly.

It's doable, already done it (cf: #1 (comment))
I still need the hardware part to make it work without jailbreak but I didn't pursue

[f-io]

@hbouhadji Just to make sure I understand correctly, you managed to emulate a CarPlay-compatible head unit entirely in software on Linux, and with the available hardware (BT + Wi-Fi), it can establish a CarPlay session with an unmodified iPhone? Would you be willing to share details about the IAP2 authentication process and CarPlay stream initialization?

This is what I'm currently using on my pi.

[tr1fled]

I can definitely help you out as i have some documents (apart from the ones on this github) that can really make the difference. There is just one issue, when you send a USB Custom Vendor Request to make the phone switch to CarPlay modr, it expects the raspberry to be a USB Device! Not a host. While you can turn the pi into a device, that was only with the pi 4 i believe. So we can only quite do this wirelessly. Do you have a discord or a telegram? Id be more than happy to help you out on this project.

[hbouhadji]

@hbouhadji Just to make sure I understand correctly, you managed to emulate a CarPlay-compatible head unit entirely in software on Linux, and with the available hardware (BT + Wi-Fi), it can establish a CarPlay session with an unmodified iPhone? Would you be willing to share details about the IAP2 authentication process and CarPlay stream initialization?

This is what I'm currently using on my pi.

Correct, the screenshot was from my rasp 4 (wireless, so BT + Wifi)

the mfi authentication is done here -> https://github.com/45clouds/WirelessCarPlay/blob/master/source/AccessorySDK/Support/MFiServerPlatformLinux.c

• like @tr1fled said, you can find on chinese forums some useful documents.

With the right hardware, mfi breakboard, it should be possible to have it working without jailbroken iPhone.
Maybe something like that -> https://github.com/BertoldVdb/WACResearch

[tr1fled]

How did you piece this together? Did you just use the plugin all together to make a working receiver or was there more to it?

[tr1fled]

I still need the hardware part to make it work without jailbreak but I didn't pursue

also, what tweak did you use? is it a commonly known one or did you make something yourself?