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CarPlay CarPlay adapter to convert to wireless CarPlay?
- Thread starter MrMister111
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I thought the same thing.I wonder if he has a General Motors car? If so, the USB ports are powered by the opening of the door and that messes up the connection of the dongle to the phone. In those cars you have to plug the dongle in AFTER the radio interface is fully up and running. I have one of those cars! The USB switch from Amazon makes all the difference.
I wonder if he has a General Motors car? If so, the USB ports are powered by the opening of the door and that messes up the connection of the dongle to the phone. In those cars you have to plug the dongle in AFTER the radio interface is fully up and running. I have one of those cars
One car is a GM car, so that makes sense. Do you have a link for the USB switch from Amazon? Also acts the same on my wife's Mercedes though, not sure why.
I tried to download it the very morning it got linked here but the transfer rate steadily declined to nothing. Then came the reports that it was bricking adapters (posted here and I think at a Facebook group?). I think it was reported that Carlinkit pulled it, which is probably why you can't find it on the site anymore.
Thanks. I like to save them too. Not having any issues at the moment that would merit swapping but nice to have options. BCRE you running that firmware version? If so what car model if you do not mind? Now that we have both USB hardwired and USB-C versions there is some lack of clarity as whether they react the same to the firmware versions.
I am not running it. After reading about the issues I decided to hold off on it.
This does not work on my 2019 Silverado....every once in a while I could manually get it to work. Not anymore on the CP2a. When I did get it to work, it worked pretty well. I've given up on it for now.
Found an interesting trick related to when one gets a rare blank/black screen. I have always felt it was Apple fault (sort for not sending data). Any way I decided instead of unplugging, I invoked Siri. I said hey Siri call X and presto the screen was no longer blank. I suppose the mic button on steering wheel might have worked too. I stumbled across this because I actually wanted to make a call.
My Q5 is in the shop and they gave me a new Q3 with wireless CarPlay to use in the mean time. This is great, I get to try Audi's implementation of wireless CarPlay and see what I miss compared to using the dongle.
Quick observations:
I probably still have the car with me for another day so if you want me to do any comparison, let me know.
Quick observations:
- Obviously – super easy to set up (about 10 seconds for me), no lag when going to prev/next track, music starts about 3 seconds after the car is switched on, larger screen means I can comfortably stay on the CP home screen even when navigating (nothing to do with dongle, I know).
- Less obvious (for me anyway) – Car seems to retain full cellular and wifi functionality even when CP is connected to the phone. This is probably because the car has that fancy app + car connection via cellular. I haven't tried to actually connect the phone to the car wifi and see what the trade offs there. Maybe later; When CarPlay is active the navigation screen in the virtual cockpit is also limited to a compass (you know what I mean).
- Unexpected – Audi app launches when CP is connected. Haven't check if there's any setting to disable this other than uninstalling the app; Sometimes CarPlay fails to connect and it doesn't even show up under list of connected (ie. paired, not actively connected) devices. But after 2 minutes it connected fine. I noticed this with the dongle too and I've been under the impression that it's the dongle, but maybe it's my phone.
- Unknown – The Q3 only has basic audio system so can't really comment on sound quality.
I probably still have the car with me for another day so if you want me to do any comparison, let me know.
Thank you for this, it is very helpful. I always wondered how official Apple Wireless CarPlay compared. It appears pretty seamless and on par with wired carplay. I definitely assumed that song change lag was also evident in the official CarPlay. It appears to boot just as quick as wired too. I guess my only wish list item for the dongle would be that it changed songs quicker. This is really my only issue and I have gotten used to it.
You should do some homework by scanning this thread for cars or head unit systems similar to your. Short answer: yes for some, no for others, it is car dependent and not fixed with any current firmware. Also, skip the CarPlay2Air and get the USB-C Carlinkit.
Agreed on Carlinkit. Please note Carlinkit is the actual manufacturer. Car2playair and Copilot are companies reselling or private labeling Carlinkit. Only Carlinkit provides the firmware updates and actual tech support etc.
*** I love my Carlinkit. It was a necessity since my soon to be no traded in Iphone has a loose lightening port.
Buy from somewhere like Amazon or Ebay that offers protection to its customers if your not happy. Consider paying a little exrta for expedited shipping if your purchase is coming from China (you can tell by length of shipping time) it can cut shipping from many weeks to a week or days
The US price range is from $105 to 160 though there are often discounts. The lower end is usually shipping straight from China if no US stock since people like immediate gratifcation. A quick peek on Amazon seems to indicate there are some now USA shipped ones available that would come in less then a week with free shipping.
Carlinkit makes a lot of products your looking for Wired to Wireless car play adapter.
** The most recent model is USB-C and is not hard wired and comes with a USB-C male to USB A male male cable. The older model is hardwired and only has USB-A. Car2play air does not have the current model. For some reason there continues to be stock and perhaps even make the older hard wired model.
If you Car does no have wireless charging you might want to add oder that from Amazon to complete the wireless effect when you need to charge and use Carplay. Anker make a nice one for $13.
*** I love my Carlinkit. It was a necessity since my soon to be no traded in Iphone has a loose lightening port.
Buy from somewhere like Amazon or Ebay that offers protection to its customers if your not happy. Consider paying a little exrta for expedited shipping if your purchase is coming from China (you can tell by length of shipping time) it can cut shipping from many weeks to a week or days
The US price range is from $105 to 160 though there are often discounts. The lower end is usually shipping straight from China if no US stock since people like immediate gratifcation. A quick peek on Amazon seems to indicate there are some now USA shipped ones available that would come in less then a week with free shipping.
Carlinkit makes a lot of products your looking for Wired to Wireless car play adapter.
** The most recent model is USB-C and is not hard wired and comes with a USB-C male to USB A male male cable. The older model is hardwired and only has USB-A. Car2play air does not have the current model. For some reason there continues to be stock and perhaps even make the older hard wired model.
If you Car does no have wireless charging you might want to add oder that from Amazon to complete the wireless effect when you need to charge and use Carplay. Anker make a nice one for $13.
The new MMI system supports 5GHz wifi so that probably helps. Just another observation: although Carlinkit / CP2Air dongle takes longer to boot up, my Q5 has this quirks of powering on USB ports as soon as I open the door so by the time I switch on the ignition the dongle is already connected to my phone and Carplay is ready.
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Nice. My Maserati does the same but it still needs the head unit to be on to receive it. One observation, a cold start in the morning in my garage results in a super quick boot to CarPlay. I stop and restart say when getting gas take longer.
Quick update. I purchased the Carlinkit 2.0c dongle that came with 3-18-20 firmware on it for my work 2017 GMC Truck. On 3-18-20 firmware the sound would start glitching in around 5 minutes of music streaming. A quick pause and un pause would fix it for another 5 minutes or so. I also have the CarPlay2air on my personal truck 2018 GMC truck on 3-6-20 and that firmware works great on both trucks. So I manually downgraded the firmware on the Carlinkit 2.0c to 3-6-20 and causes problems it would not activate anymore even going back to 3-18-20 or the official 1-22-20 firmware. Carlinkit offered to replace it for me if I sent it back as it wouldn’t activate anymore, but I felt I caused the issue by doing the unofficial manual update so I figured I’d bite the bullet and just keep it as is. But today I got the idea to manually update it to 6-6-20 firmware and was easy but this time it activated by itself. 👍👍 so I’m happy to say my bricked Carlinkit 2.0c dongle Is back to life but still has the audio glitching every 5 minutes or so.
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Nice find. I would have thought you would have known flashing the USB-C was resulting in bricks before trying it. However, you discovered something, although I heard that 6-6-20 was garbage. But yeah, it's technically not a brick anymore.
I wonder if you now tried to downgrade it to the FW of your choice if it would brick it? You know you could always go back to 6-20 if you wanted to try?
I have just installed it on my Mercedes SLC. I tried it with Deezer and spotify, when any track reaches about 1.25 minutes, it disconnects. I thought Deezer o spotify was the problem, but after some tests I noticed that it disconnects even if I use maps or other apps. I did the update but nothing to do. I tried to reset the settings of the car or mobile phone (iphone 11 pro max) but nothing, it doesn't work fine.
Out of curiosity on the official wireless CarPlay does car play nav still work when you disable location services on the phone?
I tried with my cplay2air and lose navigation but when I plug in to wired car play it works as I guess is using cars GPS instead.
So I just tried to Downgrade the firmware on the Carlinkit 2.0c to 3-6-20 but it wouldn’t allow it to downgrade anymore. It’s like they blocked downgrades somehow with 6-6-20 firmware.
The one thing I like from 6-6-20 firmware is if you loose connection while driving due to high Radio frequency interference in the area. The dongle does an auto search for Bluetooth iPhone again and reconnects by itself.
I wonder if that's what's going on with my adapter. I had mentioned a few days ago that I was seeing random disconnects that kicked me out of CarPlay back to my car's interface. Well, after some more driving I realized it isn't random at all. It always happens when I drive by the same intersection. What is odd though is that I drive through that intersection almost every day (it's on my route to work) and the adapter only started disconnecting there within the last couple of weeks. Now it happens every single time in the same spot.
A big construction project is about to begin in that area, so part of me wonders if that could be related somehow. Or maybe some kid is messing around with a WiFi jammer or something.
Definitely a weird situation.
Just tested this. Navigation doesn't work when location services is disabled. The overall CarPlay experience still works but for any location related tasks it keeps asking me to turn on location services. I tested Maps, Google Map, Waze. Same goes with wired CarPlay so maybe Audi's implementation of CarPlay doesn't fall back to the car's GPS.
Another thing I noticed: pinch-to-zoom gesture doesn't work on CarPlay (both wired and wireless) even though it's supported in Audi's built-in nav. But the alternative tap-tap-hold-drag gesture works. Seems like it can only 'see' one finger at the moment. Hopefully it's software update-able.
And can I say, using touch screen on a non-dominant hand gets tiring pretty fast. I suggest you factor this in before committing to a car with touch screen only input. I always prefer the streamline look of a car with touch screen but now that I've tried, I'm actually glad that my car still use the old knobs and buttons.
So this is what I'm after? I have a 2020 VW Tiguan.
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