Just took delivery of my AA Wireless unit after having the MA1 with the Android Auto logo over the left third of the screen of my 2019 E450 for the past 18 months. I synced it up and followed the instructions to set it up as Android Auto over CarPlay. Ten minutes later, here's a photo of my screen...no more Android Auto logo on the left:



So happy I took the plunge...and for just $50 (vs. $75 for the MA1).

 

If we're driving we have music playing. One of the things I really like about AA is that the music starts playing automatically. For whatever reason with CarPlay it is hit or miss. And in the W213 with its analog inputs getting the music going can feel like a needless hassle. So automatic music is a welcome addition.

I've had no jumping. And no freezing unless I go outside of a cell zone area for say 20 mins or more.

To be honest I thought I was the only person who felt that Android Auto sounded better than CarPlay when it came to music. Now I see that it is an actual phenomenon. I have 4 wireless devices. Only one allows CarPlay -- the Ottocast. The rest are dedicated to Android Auto.

In our BMW (which has wireless CarPlay built in), CarPlay sounds flatter and less robust. In fact SiriusXM from the satellite sounds better in the BMW than CarPlay. Hands down Android Auto sounds the best. On the other vehicles including our W213, Android Auto sounds much better than CarPlay and SiriusXM regardless of wireless device used.

 

Thank you! I appreciate all the information.

I ordered the AAWireless device last night. Since it's currently discounted, it was only $52.49 with free shipping. So I guess I'll find out directly. At that price, even if I'm not entirely happy with it, no biggie.

I'm looking forward to using AA again without the stupid AA logo and cramped screen.

 

My first impression of the AAWireless company is excellent. My order shipped 9 hours after I placed my order. That is awesome. And my order is coming from Texas.

 

Yes. I ordered mine last Saturday and received it Wednesday...a week before Christmas to boot.

I only found one minor irritant, for which I quickly found a solution, BTW. Specifically, the bottom buttons on the vertical menu at left are hidden by the steering wheel. Open "Settings" within the main Android Auto menu and scroll down to "display." Indicate your car is right hand drive (apologies to our British, Japanese and Aussie friends ;-) ) and the vertical menu will move to the right side where it's no longer hidden.

 

I made the same observation and made the same app config adjustments to fix it. So I did not see it as an issue, since it was just a simple app config change.

 

Excellent.

Great tip, thanks!

 

Cool. Thanks again for kicking this off. Look what you started, making us all spend more money, lol.

 

How were you able to get it for $52.49? It says $69.99 on the website. Did you use a coupon code?

 

😂 😂

 

Yesterday it showed the $52.49 price and had a red banner that I think was 25% off or something like that, that price was automatic, I didn't use any codes or anything. I guess that sale ended? It's now showing me $69.99 also.

Looks like I got lucky!

 

For the first time, I got full widescreen use of my C63S's entertainment system display running Android Auto, thanks to the $52.49 AAWireless dongle. I configured the app to enable Beta firmware updates and AA-over-CP, accepted the Carplay connection on the car, and the rest just worked.

The only real issue I ran into was with the audio getting cut out especially when Waze or Google maps was going over the navigation instructions in the middle of playing audio over my car's USB (I play my audio in the car using a USB stick), and the transition wasn't as smooth as native Android Auto. There were even a few pauses and breaks in those messages. But I can live with this any day and I am hoping AA-Wireless fixes this in a future update.

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences on a thread I had posted like 4+ years ago. This helped fix a long standing issue in a car where everything else is the way I wanted to be.

 

I received my AAWireless dongle today. It was very easy to set up and it works exactly as described, it provides full screen Android Auto using the CarPlay protocol.

As a AA display interface, it's perfect, however, my primary concern was of audio quality and this device suffers from the same audio quality issue that plagues other USB audio interfaces. USB is not as clean of an audio transport as Bluetooth or direct audio-in to headunit is. I had this same issue with an aftermarket Android screen in my W205, which by default used USB audio-in.

Using Pandora as I have been, connected from my phone through Bluetooth audio, the lows punch and hit. Through the AAWireless USB, the lows are rumbly and droney and the spectrum is somewhat flat. The highs are also not as crisp as they are with the stock Bluetooth connection.

I tend to listen to my music quite loud, so if you don't and are not big on audio quality, this should not be a big deal to you but it is to me. For that reason, this dongle only lived in my car for about 30 minutes and is now in my big bin of forgotten and otherwise expired devices and OBD modules. I should've learned my lesson about USB audio from the past, but I gave it another shot… still not great.

Again, if audio is not a big deal to you, this is a great dongle that provides full screen AA and I can recommend it for that.

A couple of things that were a bit frustrating was that you cannot adjust the equalizer settings while listening to the audio since you have to exit CarPlay to get to the equalizer, so you have to make a change, go back into CarPlay to restart the audio then go back to the equalizer to make another change. Also switching to any OEM screen, going back to CarPlay is cumbersome and requires multiple actions.

Oh well, not for me…

 

Thinking about this more, the USB audio difference I'm hearing could be caused by the way the OEM USB input is processed. I know I had a 2015 w/Burmester and now a 2018 w/Burmester and I'm experiencing the same thing: The same track played through Bluetooth or the unit hard drive sound the same. Through the USB input it sounds different.

I can't explain it, maybe it's a MB thing?

 

Thanks very much for this report, @Keith66 . I'm making a road trip to pick up my 2019 E450 this morning from the dealership so I plan to try out Android Auto both via Bluetooth and then via USB C to USB A on the trip back per the videos from MBZ. I'm hoping, perhaps in vain, that my unit has recieved updated codes and software recently to make either BT or USB work. Hopefully both options work and this will just test sound quality. I too am an audiophile and I play my music loud enough to really hear the notes clearly in every frequency range. Nothing makes me grind my teeth more than a muddy, muffled, confused bass line. Knowing that this dongle works, though maybe imperfectly, is a help. Thanks.

 

Cool, you're very welcome and I hope all works out well for you!

To be clear, I'm not knocking this dongle at all, as it worked perfectly and I would have otherwise been very happy with it if it were not for making my music sound different… and I'm learning towards it being some form of issue with using our OEM USB input for sound, not necessarily the AAWireless dongle, as this is the second device I've connected to our USB input that has changed the sound.

If anyone else can confirm they are experiencing the same, that would be great. If nothing else, for affirmation that I'm not insane, lol.

Using the same song played at a loud volume using the OEM Bluetooth audio connection while paying attention to the lows and highs then play that same song using any device connected through our USB input and do you hear a difference?

 

Not sure if you know already, but audio input over protocols like AA or Carplay is not the same as the head unit directly playing the audio from a USB stick.

In the former case, it's the phone which does all the audio decoding and passes along the decoded audio samples to the car's head unit over AA/CP protocol. In the latter case, the head unit directly does the decoding and passes the audio samples to the DAC. The latter is always superior than the former just because it's local and there are no latency issues. With AA/CP passing audio to the head unit, it's usually the latency and timing which introduces all the choppiness and poor quality.

On my C63S, I play audio exclusively through my USB stick on the head unit and I have zero issues with quality. Of course, it does limit the audio sources you can play from and you can't use this for streaming services.

Bluetooth on the other hand built audio streaming protocols specifically for this use case. Hence it works better, but still quality would be slightly lower than the USB stick local decoding's quality any day.

 

I did not know this, thanks man! This definitely explains what I'm experiencing and makes sense.

Thank you!!! This is great information.

I guess I'm not insane afterall! (maybe)

 

With this, I can assume audio quality should be like this, best to worst:

1. Headunit hard drive or USB stick
2. Phone to headunit direct Bluetooth
3. AA/Carplay or Aftermarket Android devices using USB audio connection.

 

Don't forget #4 Sirius XM.

 

You dont have to set anything separately, but function depends on your app version (google maps, waze app version) and may be also dependant on phone Android OS version.

 

Can I ask where did you source this, directly from the AA Wireles site or Amazon, etc? Thanks.

 

Just a follow up, where did you source AA Wireless? I see very different prices on Amazon vice the AA website and Amazon seems to also have a couple of versions of AA Wireless, a few of which maybe Chinese licensed/knock offs?

 

I purchased mine directly from their website:

https://www.aawireless.io/

 

I got mine directly from Ottocast on their website.

https://www.ottocast.com/products/u2...SABEgIdT_D_BwE