Newbie question on starting from scratch

General Discussion Getting Started
#1

Hi All. Wanted to do something cool on my car and came across your product which seems to be super interesting. I am thinking about creating a simple app that gets some ODBII statistics from the car and then try implementing one of the ideas mentioned here. Have several questions:

  1. What is the device that I should purchase for development and actual usage?
  2. Questions on development:
    • Can I develop on RPi or Nvidia Jetson Nano, for instance and then deploy to AutoPi?
    • Is there any documentation for how I can set up a dev environment and build/run/debug and deploy a simple/sample app?
    • Are there any development “best practices” in general?
  3. Is AutoPi cloud free or I need to pay for a subscription?
#2

I know the answer to a few of these.

  1. Probably the DIY edition unless you plan to use the 4G module in the main device. The Pi is the only officially supported device at the moment. Either 3A/B or 4 as a suggestion.

  2. Development seems to be a bit close to the chest at the moment. They work from a GitLab (I think based on some references) and then post certain releases to GitHub GitHub - autopi-io/autopi-core: The software that runs on the AutoPi Dongle.

  3. It is free but does require registration. There are some “premium” features but that is mostly for fleet management/subscribers.

But development of the AutoPi core/software has been limited. There are ways to add scripts/code to the base core that some people use but nothing as far as a standalone server or alternative software for the dongle (other OS/management system).