Comment by panosv
7 days ago
Can someone recommend a dongle that actually works? I’ve tried a few and they are highly unreliable or stop working after a few months.
7 days ago
Can someone recommend a dongle that actually works? I’ve tried a few and they are highly unreliable or stop working after a few months.
I've used a Sunweyer dongle from Amazon. If you can't get the "new shopper" discount on Aliexpress, it's cheaper. Seems to work fine. Doesn't like pairing to multiple phones, and the phone doesn't like being plugged into one of the car's USB outlets (it drops the audio because AFAICT the phone thinks it's plugged into the car for audio, but the car is still expecting audio over the Bluetooth "CarPlay" connection), even if it's one of the outlets that's not supposed to do anything but power.
I'd use it a little differently, but it's my wife's car, not mine. Who would have thought a 2022 Mercedes would have wired-only CarPlay?
Anyway, I find it excellent for podcast control. If maps are off (in my case, because location services are turned off) it doesn't really use more power than plain Bluetooth audio, and when I approach my destination on a trip I'll turn on location and plug it in to juice up the last bit.
I have been using CarlinKit 5.0 from AliExpress for last 1 year. No issues so far.