My Kia Seltos gets wireless Android Auto for Rs. 8,000

Tested with Google Maps and Amazon Music, and both worked flawlessly for the limited time I used them. So far, no lag detected.

BHPian dipdawiz recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Going wireless is the norm; efficient or not, it is ergonomic, clutter-free and easy. Easy, is it? Well in most cases, it is not easy to find an option to go wireless when it comes to Android Auto (AA). Most car manufacturers, even in their top-end offerings, do not provide wireless AA. You have to use wire to connect or some sort of dongle is required. Though it is not a fully wireless option as the dongle would connect with a wire to your infotainment system, it removes the hassle of connecting/disconnecting the wire to your phone every time you get into the car.

As most users do not care if it is wired or wireless, not enough solutions to make a wired AA to wireless AA available in the market. Some Chinese dongles are present, but they are not even 1% reliable. The first reliable option came from crowdfunded Indiegogo project AAWireless back in 2020. The second option came sometime last year from Motorola, but soon the shortfall of it started coming in online forums. And it is not easy to get hold of, especially in India.

Now AAWireless is crowdfunded, manufacturing depends on bulk orders and this pandemic makes the delivery of the product not streamlined and only ships in batches. But the user base is strong, online support is available and they ship to India. However, once you get hold of one, it has many variables for it to work, I'll get to details of this.

Ordered it in January with a March expected delivery. Though product owners update the progress, there are delays not in their control and finally got it delivered 3rd week of April. Note that, the seller sends the device all duty paid shipping to India, but the Indian counterpart of the courier company would try to charge you customs duty. You just have to ignore that and send a mail or raise a ticket at cp & eb freshdesk, they take care of it.

The Device

The device comes in a small box, the back of it has the QR code to download the companion android application.

Download the app, if you are lucky, it has only 4 steps and one pre-requisite (the app will guide you). I will give the steps along with some points to make it work (possibly, it worked for my 2020 Seltos GTX+ and Samsung S21)

Prerequisite

Before you do anything, go to your phone setting, search for the advanced option of AA and enable the developer option if already not enabled. Now from the top-right menu developer settings, enable "Add wireless projection to settings".

Make sure "wireless android auto" is also enabled.

Steps to connect:

1. Start the car
2. Connect to the device using supplied USB cable to the car's AA USB port
3. It would search for AAWireless device - this time, if your car Bluetooth is already connected, disconnect from your phone Bluetooth menu. In the search screen on the AAWireless app, select AAWireless device from the list. It will connect to AAWireless device and it may ask you to give some permissions. Allow them.
4. It will launch the app in normal mode on mobile and the device would try to connect to the car's AA with all default settings.

If you are lucky, your infotainment system would show AA. But some of the troubleshooting might require from the first try only. For me two settings needed to be done for it to work.

Settings

The app interface is clean, but not many details on what options do what.

For my case, I had to set the following things for it to work. From AAWireless app, go to settings:

1. Set USB mode to MTP (from Default)
2. Set Pass through to Enabled

Voila, the infotainment system shows AA, as it used to.

After this first setup and troubleshooting, once connected, it is straightforward thereafter. If your WiFi and Bluetooth are always enabled on your phone, it would auto-connect as soon as you switch on the car. And it takes around 15 seconds for AA to be connected to car infotainment. Tested with Google Maps and Amazon Music, and both worked flawlessly for the limited time I used them. So far, no lag detected. Yet to fully use it for a longer time, will keep this thread updated.

And all AAWireless users can discuss the issues, troubleshooting and solutions in this thread.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.