Android Auto

[Mick Evans]

Sick of mine playing up so bought one of these from Aliexpress absolute game changer for £17.00

 

[Fernandez134]

Hi there,
I literally have the same device but it keeps disconnecting from my phone and then the car keeps trying to connect via Bluetooth.
When you connect, is your phone connected to both the smart box and car?

 

[Mick Evans]

I connected to the USB not to the car. Plays audio and makes calls .

 

[SimonMG5]

I had problems with mine connected via cable, think quality of usb cable is ok important. I got a android wireless AAWireless | Wireless Android Auto™ adapter device which works much better to connect wirelessly

 

[SUPERAL]

I have just checked mine, it is connected to MG via bluetooth and the smart box via wifi. My own belief is that the problem is with the phone and not the car. The car has one job and that is to connect to your phone - whereas your phone is multi tasking. I suffered for 3 years with intermittent connection until I discovered it was google wallet interfering with the connection. (not by opening it but by using it!). Try restarting your phone (to clear all apps) and then try the connection. If you can get a connection this way consistently, then when you cannot connect you can then work back and identify an app which has disrupted it. I always close all apps now after using google wallet and I have never, in 4 months, had a drop out.

 

[smokie]

I investigated this a couple years ago and there definitely appeared to be a problem with Xiaomi phone, which I had at the time.

However the main problem before having the device was if the phone signal dropped even for a split second it'd lose the Android Auto connection and take quite a while (minutes) to come back. There were patches of road where I could reproduce this at will.

The other thing connecting by cable was that on one phone when you plugged it in you got a prompt on the phone with what do you want to do now. If you didn't choose data transfer it didn't work. I couldn't make that the default.

btw I bought a fairly expensive black box which was recommended here at the time (c £60 or £70 IIRC). I recently bought my daughter a USB stick version for about £15 o AliExpress which works fine.

 

[siteguru]

Sick of mine playing up so bought one of these from Aliexpress absolute game changer for £17.00View attachment 31194

I ordered one of these and it's just arrived. I plugged it into my laptop (for power) then followed the instructions to connect to its WiFi via my phone, then followed the upgrade instructions.

Once done I then reconnected via WiFi and changed some settings - the main one being the Start-up Delay which I've set to 40s. I also went on my phone to forget the MG Bluetooth connection* and to add the adapter as a Bluetooth connection. I also enabled Wireless AA on my phone.

* I'll need to also forget it in the car - still to do.

I then went out to my car, plugged in the adapter, waited and saw a prompt (which disappeared) and found nothing happening. I unplugged the adapter, replugged it, waited for it to boot up and then it all started working OK.

Edit: this was for the MG4 - I found this thread via search and didn't realise it was in the MG5 board.

 

[Hoddy73]

Sick of mine playing up so bought one of these from Aliexpress absolute game changer for £17.00View attachment 31194

Have you managed to hide it behind any trim? I have one but it gets in the way laying on the phone charging pad.

 

[dragon2611]

This is my latest one, (I’ve had a few) some generic thing from aliexpress.

Compared to my old Carlinkit mini and even the full android AI boxes I’ve had this one has been the most reliable

I do wonder if it’s power related as the the specs on this one claimed 300mA where as the others (esp the android ai boxes) was a lot higher.

I usually use CarPlay not AA but I did briefly test the AA and that did also work fine

Unlike some of the others that put the car in CarPlay mode regardless this does actually show up to the car as android auto if it’s connected to an android phone.

Edit: Checked what I paid for it, was about £15