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-   -   Wireless Android Auto Dongle for your car using Raspberry Pi Zero W (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-do-yourself/284315-wireless-android-auto-dongle-your-car-using-raspberry-pi-zero-w-9.html)

Mine is a Thar and I face the same issue as well but the problem is not the board. It's probably the cable. Thar is infamous for frequent disconnections for Android Auto as well.

Couldn't find any short length micro USB cable for this purpose. Need a wire for around 0.25m in length.

Have been using the same in Type C variation and it worked quite well.

I've gone through a lot of cables . Plus the fact that wired connection to the phone works flawlessly with any of those cables makes me think that this is a dongle problem - either hw or sw

Yes I agree with you on this! Because I have changed, SD cards, changed the PI 2W BOARD also. Changed cable. Will try Duracell cable and last resort. Let's see

Today I got my Pi Zero 2 W board, flashed the firmware image and tried the wireless Android Auto first time in my car during a short airport run where I only used the navigation. It was a short drive of 30 odd minutes total.

When I restarted the car after short waiting time at airport, the re-connection took long time, one or two minutes compared to the instant wired connectivity which I am used to. That time I got a doubt of having not so smooth experience with this DIY dongle but when it connected on its own, I got bit of relief.

Currently my cable connection is kind of jugaad with few convertors and cables in between since I don't have dedicated USB C to Micro USB cable or adapter. The Pi board is also placed naked. Still I haven't faced any issue of disconnections or so in this short initial run.

I have ordered the official Pi case along with an USB flush mount for my car which will ease out the things.

This connection was using my Pixel 6 on Sony XAV 5500 headunit. I haven't yet tried the music playback. I also have another old phone with secondary sim which is slow compared to my Pixel, I will do some experiments with that as well and will play with music and other features also.

Will keep updating here.

Is there any project that can add HDMI port too? I saw some adapters that can convert carplay to HDMI, but there was no wireless Android auto. Since this one has wireless Android auto, wondering whether there exists a further mod that enables connecting hdmi to this box too. This will enable to connect fire tv stick to car.

Bought A Duracell Cable Also. But even there the issue persists.

- Connected Device Not Responding
- Frequent Disconnecting
- Lag in music play
- Stuttering while playing music.

My specifications are:
Car - Nexon XZA plus O
Pi2w
Duracell micro usb cable
Oneplus 12
Amazon 32 gb SD card

Frequent means how frequent? Home many times the connection drops in a particular time frame and what you do to restore the connection? Is there a pattern like after a certain time of say 5 minutes, 10 minutes or so? Or its just random?

One troubleshoot you can perform is to connect you Pi Zero board with computer/laptop and let your phone connect with it. Offcourse there won't be any Android Auto available but the connection will establish with a message saying "Waiting for Android Auto".

Let it be connected while you are working on your computer and observe if it still disconnects in same manner it does in your car.

There is no fixed Interval as such.

Quite Often, it starts with Device No Response
Then the Music Play has lags, skips almost every 20-30 seconds.
Then I get a message connected Device Not Responding. And the Board connects back in 20-30 seconds and this goes on.....

Will certainly try connecting with my laptop and observe for Disconnecting pattern..

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W - Experience Update

Today I had a typical urban driving session of around 5 hours with 5-6 stops where I drove around 30 odd kms. This also includes a high speed ring road section.

Equipment setup:
This time my test phone was old Motorola One Power with 4 GB RAM and Snapdragon 635 processor. Headunit is Sony XAV 5500. Pi boards is currently naked, waiting for the case to be delivered. Connecting wire has USB C end where I had to use an USB C to USB female adapter where a short cable is connecting it to Pi board.

Wireless Connectivity:
Connections were seamless every-time during this session. Experience was equally good like the wired connection I am used to since last 2-3 years, except the initial connectivity period which is longer than the wired, obviously.

Operations:
My usual operation is navigation using the voice commands when I drive, that worked seamlessly fine like the wired connection. Usually I listen Flac music files loaded on thumb drive which is connected on second USB port of the HU. But for the test purpose, I used Wynk streaming music to simulate typical usage. The online music worked perfectly fine through out the drive along with navigation despite my doubts on the slow 2.4Ghz wireless band, it surprisingly exceeded my expectations. I also used voice commands to play the music, that also worked fine, no lags, no skips whatsoever. Though I had bad voice during a call I received, but it was the only call during the whole drive so can't make any comment on that. Will check the calling experience later.

Mobile Battery and heat
Yes, I found mobile warm every time I was picking it up after my halts. But it was acceptable. I am surprised about the battery life. Battery was at 71% when I started and it was at 35% when I ended the session after 5 hours where I was in the car for around 2 hours. But then this is Motorola One power which lasts 2 days during my usual desk working days. Still I am happy that wireless Android Auto is usable during my urban runs, atleast on a phone like this.

But I am worried about my primary phone Pixel, which heats up a lot during mild usage and battery life is terrible on that compared to this 5 years old Motorola workhorse. I will update about that as well when I will do extensive testings on that.

As you may have read above, your experience does not seem usual, there is some issue somewhere which needs to identified and fixed.

One thing came in my mind is maybe the battery conservation mode kicks in your mobile, its been seen in many mobiles in the past in case of other background services, especially One Plus and Xiaomi. Looks like the mobile is going into deep sleep after screen locks which is causing the broken connection. Make sure all the permissions are granted to Android Auto. Also check the Advanced Settings of Android Auto in Setting>Apps.

Just wondering if there is any similar way to convert Apple CarPlay to wireless by using any similar single board computer.

There are lot of ready-made dongles available for Carplay, slightly expensive. But then you are having Apple naa saar, must be a rich person able to afford rich hobbies, why bothering about DIY hassles. :D

Jokes apart, if dongles are available then DIY route should also be possible but looks like no one yet bothered to take the pain to make a firmware for the Apple system, more so when their APIs are closed unlike the open source Android environment where taking up such developments are easy.

Can you activate developer mode and change the file transfer option to MIDI/MTP and see?

Used the DIY dongle for a 8 hours each side long drive recently on Honda City 5th Gen.

Mixed opinion
Good: convenience over wired, no lag on music, calls etc.
Bad - randomly disconnected at least 5-7 times each way (it reconnects automatically sometimes within seconds, sometimes after few minutes); couple of times, the sound of the music app stopped while the song was still playing and google maps still had voice

Overall it is still pretty useful compared to the wired option but the frequent disconnections spoil the party a bit.

cheers.

Hi Can you please elaborate on the Process?

Will this effect any option in our phone??

Disconnection bug during phone calls:

So I had a highway drive where I used this wireless Android Auto Pi device and my primary phone Google Pixel 6 in wireless Android Auto mode extensively and encountered first bug of frequent disconnections whenever receiving or making calls.

Android Auto disconnects after few seconds while start talking on phone call on headunit. The call starts in the Android Auto's usual calling connectivity mode but then Android Auto mode disconnects after few seconds and the phone connection goes into the HU's native Bluetooth calling connectivity mode. Though it reconnects back in Android Auto mode after ending the call.

No other issues except this disconnection bug, everything else works fine. But since Android Auto reconnection is very slow in wireless mode compared to the wired mode, this bug turns out very irritating and sometimes leads into missing important key points of navigation.

This disconnection issue occurs every time during the calls, its not random or one off incident so kind of a bug.

Has anyone else faced this issue? Any pointers to fix it?

Good side is I was skeptical about the battery drain during the wireless connectivity but found it acceptable.