You seem to know a lot about hackers. Do you vacation in Romania?

 

Romania is hacked, indeed.
Can you articulate from whom you understand that I know a lot about hackers?
Do you consider ninja a hacker?

 

You keep talking about hackers / stealers.
Unless you can provide better information to justify your allegations about your competition, you lose credibility.
Plus you don't answer questions.

 

But all that is happening only into your imagination.
There are a lot here that add contribution for free, like me and those couldn't be my competition.

 

So i went ahead and purchased and installed the EleBest solution (MBUX 549 headunit) over the weekend. As others have already stated, product was shipped out on time and received within a week or so. Max from EleBest was on hand to help the technician who did the install for me. Product works as seen in the videos, its fast and pretty quick to connect. A couple of things that are not that obvious, there is a small wireless dongle that still needs to be plugged into your USB C carplay slot to make it work. The biggest draw back for me at this time however, is the fact that you will lose access to your 4G LTE that allows the car to connect to the internet, as such Live Traffic and some features on Hey Mercedes that can get you the weather, or jokes (my kids love this feature) etc. have stopped working. The install was done at my local MB Dealer and we tried unsuccessfully several times, while connected to Xentry, to get the 4G LTE to connect, and this is a bit of a let down for me because, the car also gets driven by non Apple folks and it would have been great to have the car still be able to connect to the internet for the features i previously mentioned. If anyone has a work around to get Live Traffic or get the car to connect to the internet do let me know.

 

If you lose the LTE connection how will the car receive OTA updates? What is the dongle for? Is that to make the CarPlay connection wireless? One would think that should be built in as it is on the new 2024 versions.

 

I'm going in later this week, potentially to have the dealer do some "reprogramming," based on a printout from my Creader. They're interested in comparing that with the shop's downloads.

I've had a couple of strange symptoms that may be associated with car washing. My Creader showed some stored but remaining faults.

I hope my RJ Automotive coding survives. I expect that it will, since they've already replaced a rear sound module that required several hours of programming, and I lost nothing.
I'll report back.

Actually, I don't think it'll be an issue. They save my settings even if they have to wipe everything.

 

For sure your coder have saved the extra codings and he can ( even you can) to upload it in 5 minutes.

The long programming it will not need to be repeated.

Anyway, if the dealer reprogramming is not about multimedia no need to worry.

In my workshop when something like that happens, the client is advised to talk with me before going to the dealership.

 

Dongle is to connect to the MBUX (wirelessly). I might be missing out on future updates without LTE. I will give this a try for a few weeks and make a final call on this if i cant resolve the connectivity issue.

 

OP back here… Sorry I’ve been absent for a few weeks (spent the entire month of Nov shopping for me new Alpina and finally found it, so not much free-time left for forums or Mbenz forums honestly lol). December now, and am on a vacation with family for 3 weeks.

Yes, from my experience / understanding, the dongle serves two functions: maintain the full screen carplay to always survive any dealer changes or forced-updates so that full screen function is never lost no matter what; 2nd, it facilitates wireless connectivity and quick auto-startup for carplay.

For LTE connectivity, to clarify: I didn’t lose any connectivity (remote function still work, and all other features work just fine). The only thing that won’t work is (Hey Mercedes). If you are a CarPlay user, obviously no android auto for you which was well communicated in advance. Also, for LTE in case I needed it, Elebest sent me info to share with my dealer if I ever decide to get LTE back but I never bothered cause I never cares about (Her Mercedes) feature. He got me in touch with someone from NYC who managed to get his LTE connectivity work by passing instruction to the dealer to update their system (data card?) to see the new OEM headunit. That person was kind enough to share his experience and said it worked. I still have no plans to get LTE as I don’t use (Her Mercedes). Also, my headunit came already with most recent OTA MBUX update installed on it.

 

For those who were asking me to post more info about installation : this is what you see after you remove the passenger seat, and remove the plastic and carpet underneath the seat. The headunit is right there. I drew 4 light-yellow circles where you’ll find 4 screws. You just need to remove these screws, move all the cables from the old to the new headunit, and you are done.

By the way, thanks to some of the users above who noted that there was a puppet account hijacking this thread. I also reported the puppet and the easy to know “parent” account are both gone. Thanks to the responsive mods.

 

So the Mercedes Me app would also stop working or does this system only cause issues with LTE connectivity with certain features like Hey Mercedes?

 

No, this works just fine no issues at all… All app functions continue to work without any problem at all (lock, unlock, engine start, map live location, notifications, etc). The MBUX screen also responds and swipes faster.. It is just the Mercedes chat feature for me and I never bothered asking my dealer to activate it again

 

Update: Almost 3 months now already with the full screen and wireless CarPlay module coding by @EleBest ... wanted to report no glitches and no issues at all. I think I lived long enough with it now to 100% endorse it now.

CarPlay hasn't crashed even once never needed a single reset) and started within seconds every single time.

 

I would like to do the Apple car play full screen. However, I’d like to know the pricing. Also, if there is any coding to make the audio sound better, I’d do that for sure!

 

Thats great that its that stable...

 

Thanks to OP, this has became my favourite thread. I am also NTG 6 user, interested very much in full screen carplay, although with E class coupe (W213/C238 FL generation).
I was aware about kremersino box and was on edge to order it. After reading this thread, I know I will not do that, and I will instead consider Elebest solution.


I have to admit, that I am scared to do headunit replacing on expensive car from 2022, which is still in warranty.

Its true that NTG 6 is slow, so making it faster would be another nice benefit.
I am still scared with/(have questions about)
1) Dealer canceling my warranty after this HU upgrade/swap (plus the car/MBUX is already super buggy, so warranty will be usefull in the future)
2) I have not purchased standard carplay in the Mercedes app, since its not fullscreen. Wondering what it would show in the app if I would replace headunit (purchased/not purchased?)
3) As these cars are constantly connected to internet by default, I think there will be some log of me changing the headunit and dealer will know about it (and HU number missmatching to VIN of my car after - at least from dealer perspective)
4) If the speed of MBUX is much improved, why is the video on Elebest channel showing wireless carplay (and even pausing music) being so slow?

Thanks everybody for responses

 

1) Since your car was purchased in 2022, why not simply wait until your original warranty runs out (which should be in about a year)?
2) Why does anyone need to purchase Carplay? It's standard on every Mercedes!

 

1) Sure, thats the solution, its one year. But by then i will already be probably tempted to upgrade to new model anyway.
2) Its not standard, at least in EU. (Thats why OP screens with the MBUX menu show carplay licence validation status. You can buy the car from factory without carplay and purchase it later trough mercedes Me app or MBUX store inside car. It costs about 300-400 usd (for this half baked implementation).

 

Good to know. We get a lot of stuff standard in the States but we also lose out on some stuff!

 

I learned this factoid when renting a Mercedes in Europe just a couple years ago expecting to use Android Auto for my trip. I was very surprised! I ended up swapping it with a Hyundai that has AA and CP standard.

 

Been on this exact same journey with my 2021 gls450.

Kremersino install was a pain; operationally, it was flaky; support was non existent. Got in touch with @EleBest and will be having a modified HU6 shipped in short order.

@S_W222 I'll ask elebest about the LTE re-connectivity. The dealer I've traditionally worked with in Dallas has awesome techs who are very knowledgeable, but management there is super strict about toying with modifications and data cards etc. Anything that they don't sell or refer, they're generally not interested. Glad it's just a unit swap.

Goes without saying - huge thank you to S_W222 for posting all of this deatiled info!

 

Car is in the shop now and hoping to have the LTE issue resolved.

 

Do you have any updates? Will they be shipping the entire screen or just a box? I’d buy it instantly if the “Hey Mercedes” feature still works. Does the standard Mercedes navigation system remain functional? For example, can I still say, “Hey Mercedes, take me to _____”?. Can I get OTA updates? Thank you for your writeup.

 

The answers to all your questions are in the posts above if you can spend the time reading through that. However, I'll provide quick answers..
Updates? yes it works, flawless, no glitches after few months already with it now. Again read the last few posts; it's the MBUX solution from Elebest not the unit I first mentioned in post #1. Does the "Hey Mercedes" work? You can make it work, by asking your dealer to activate the new OEM MBUX unit, otherwise everything will work except this feature.
Does standard Navigation remain functional? Yes, Elebest provided me a code to activate the maps for the first time, and then I also downloaded the most recent version of maps from the mbenz website he shared. In fact, navigation now works better than before because with the new MBUX high-end unit, now I can do full screen map view on the driver screen. Additionally, I can activate MBUX navigation on the driver screen with apple map navigation on the other one, both activated/routing.

Additional benefits I noticed?
1. MBUX high-end is faster than my previous med-spec MBUX.
2. I can now use the keyboard "type location" inside of Apple Carplay while driving when searching while driving (was not possible before that). Make sure to ask Elebest to activate that just in case.
3. CarPlay is also Wireless now. You can still use the regular wire-connection too.
4. You will keep your other MBUX unit (good for redundancy). If anything happens (sell the car?) you can swap out the older unit and get it installed again and keep your high-end MBUX unit. They are selling on ebay for almost a thousand dollar so you can sell it later in the future.
5. Car should be have Augmented-Reality (AR) and dashcam capability now. If needed, you'll need to buy the OEM dashcam and wire it in. Seems like an easy job, but I decided to skip (I have my own dashcam, though AR would have been nice)

Good luck....