After putting some LED strips in my car, my girlfriend suggested I make them controllable with my car's infotainment system. Because my 2019 Honda Civic's head unit runs on Android 4.1 (which does not support Bluetooth Low Energy), I couldn't directly control the lights from there. Additionally, I wanted the lights to dim when it was dark outside.

The lights are controlled by a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W running custom MicroPython firmware, which hosts a WiFi access point the head unit can connect to. From there, I built an Android app which communicates with the webserver to transmit BLE packets to the LED controller modules.

To make the lights dim with the car's interior lights, I teed into a wire which was connected to the LED for the VSA system, which adjusts brightness when using the car's "scroll wheel". The Pi reads this signal on an ADC line, and adjusts the LED strip brightness accordingly.

This was one of my first projects where I made a custom PCB, and it also made me better at soldering, and integrating hardware.