[prateekchanana]

Originally Posted by roby_dk

Great work

One question I took a test drive of Audi A4 few days back and the interiors look quite similar to your car. IIRC the sales person said it has both Android Auto and Car play. What is the manufacturing year of your car?

Hi, mine is a prev gen MY2017 car which I purchased in 2018. The new ones come standard with carplay even in the premium plus trim so the SA is correct. You can also check the option of Audi Smartphone interface in the central screen to confirm the same.

[rohan.xj]

Prateek, this thread is probably the best start to my New Year

I drive the same A4 (B9) and have been furiously searching for options to enable Car Play on my car. Short of replacing this with the new A4, I couldn't find anything reliable until I saw your thread.

With my car having completed 4.5 years (~4 months left in 5 year warranty), I am going to go ahead with the same install asap. I still don't have the confidence of a DIY, so going to search for a good installer (any installer reccos for Delhi/Ggn?)!

I had almost stopped driving my A4 after I started using Car Play in my Jaguar. Streaming music and google maps is a bare necessity now that simply cannot be overlooked. But I still don't regret spending the 4.5 lacs on Tech model, cos I hated those allows and the faux wood trim.

Thanks again, shall post pics of my upgrade shortly!

[prateekchanana]

Originally Posted by rohan.xj

Prateek, this thread is probably the best start to my New Year

I drive the same A4 (B9) and have been furiously searching for options to enable Car Play on my car. Short of replacing this with the new A4, I couldn't find anything reliable until I saw your thread.

With my car having completed 4.5 years (~4 months left in 5 year warranty), I am going to go ahead with the same install asap. I still don't have the confidence of a DIY, so going to search for a good installer (any installer reccos for Delhi/Ggn?)!

I had almost stopped driving my A4 after I started using Car Play in my Jaguar. Streaming music and google maps is a bare necessity now that simply cannot be overlooked. But I still don't regret spending the 4.5 lacs on Tech model, cos I hated those allows and the faux wood trim.

Thanks again, shall post pics of my upgrade shortly!

Happy I could help. Even I had originally planned to wait for the warranty to be over, but after seeing a fellow BHPian’s of adding it to his B8, i just couldn’t wait any more. Well said, even I prefer the silver/grey interior trim over the faux wood tech model offers. Carplay was the only miss in this model.

I tried to search but couldn’t find any reliable installer of this in Delhi, another BHPian used one in Bangalore but they also didn’t offer any support here. I guess you should be ok if you go to a high end audio / accessory installer but make sure to get it done in front of their eyes as sometime they have very inexperienced people who end up breaking screws and clips. The less numbers of A4 B9 on road and then even fewer people looking so such mods makes it difficult to find a reliable person to do something like this in India.

All the international guides and videos I saw before doing this have very different screws arrangement than our Indian model and it ended up taking much more time and was much more complex than I thought it to be. But the carplay screen coming up in the end was totally worth the effort.

Do update when you get it done next year

[rohan.xj]

Originally Posted by prateekchanana

I tried to search but couldn’t find any reliable installer of this in Delhi, another BHPian used one in Bangalore but they also didn’t offer any support here. I guess you should be ok if you go to a high end audio / accessory installer but make sure to get it done in front of their eyes as sometime they have very inexperienced people who end up breaking screws and clips. The less numbers of A4 B9 on road and then even fewer people looking so such mods makes it difficult to find a reliable person to do something like this in India.

Do update when you get it done next year

Thanks Prateek for the quick response will search for the right installer in Delhi and get this done asap (preferably within this month)

I shall definitely update here when done. Btw, I am planning to upgrade the speakers as well this time.

[dinu2506]

Originally Posted by prateekchanana

Since the beginning of my hunt for this CarPlay retrofit solution, I did not like the idea of a cable running through the A-pillar to behind the rear view mirror for the mic to work as it was done in dinu2506's car. Even though he suggested its barely noticeable I was not comfortable with this and I found out that the newer car play boxes use the cars original bluetooth mic and don't need any additional mics to be placed. This was a huge relief for me.

I also enabled the inbuilt bluetooth of the Audi to check whether I can use the inbuilt Bluetooth mic instead of the one that came with the Carplay unit. It works but the issue is that sometime it chooses the carplay mic and sometimes the bluetooth mic. I can toggle between these using the speaker icon on the phone. How do you make it by default use the bluetooth mic?

[prateekchanana]

Originally Posted by dinu2506

I also enabled the inbuilt bluetooth of the Audi to check whether I can use the inbuilt Bluetooth mic instead of the one that came with the Carplay unit. It works but the issue is that sometime it chooses the carplay mic and sometimes the bluetooth mic. I can toggle between these using the speaker icon on the phone. How do you make it by default use the bluetooth mic?

Their user guide suggested to simply un-pair and delete the Bluetooth of your car form your phone. By doing that every time a call comes it gets routed to apple carplay and never interferes with the car Bluetooth.

Also found an option while playing around in settings to move the fixed car play icon bar to right hand configuration. Though it is much more useful for touchscreen, but good to have the option.

[dinu2506]

Originally Posted by prateekchanana

Their user guide suggested to simply un-pair and delete the Bluetooth of your car form your phone. By doing that every time a call comes it gets routed to apple carplay and never interferes with the car Bluetooth.

Also found an option while playing around in settings to move the fixed car play icon bar to right hand configuration. Though it is much more useful for touchscreen, but good to have the option.

But to use the inbuilt mic, you have to pair to the Audi bluetooth, right?

Also, I too moved the icon bar to the right. I just updated my post yesterday. Also, is you screen not touch enabled? For me they had added a sheet that made it touch enabled. Found it pretty useful

[prateekchanana]

Originally Posted by dinu2506

But to use the inbuilt mic, you have to pair to the Audi bluetooth, right?

Also, I too moved the icon bar to the right. I just updated my post yesterday. Also, is you screen not touch enabled? For me they had added a sheet that made it touch enabled. Found it pretty useful

Don’t think it works that way. To use Siri as well you need to use the car’s inbuilt mic, but the command is routed through the car play box so guess it works that way for the phone calls as well. And I specifically remember reading to un-pair cars Bluetooth in order to use phone calls properly.

Have done it with my phone and it works flawlessly. My father on the other hand has issues half the times in answering calls as his phone is paired via Bluetooth as well as connected to car play.

Yes I saw the touch screen enable option for Audi B8 models but there was no option to get it B9. Guess the B9 came with inbuilt touchscreen in most countries so that was the reason. I have to rely on using Siri / scroll wheel to control everything. Having a touchscreen would have made it much more better.

[Forza5]

Amazing!

I want to do the same for my BMW but don't have the courage to shake things up that much. Well done!

[Dracoon]

Originally Posted by agambhandari

Great to see a DIY install done well. And all wires tucked neatly.

Originally Posted by prateekchanana

The software installation / programming first requires having 2 USB ports inside the handrest.

Hi Agam, Pradeep

My Audi A3 2013-2017 version has 2 USB ports in the handrest. Can Android Auto be configured in it through software installation/programming? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[prateekchanana]

Originally Posted by Dracoon

Hi Agam, Pradeep

My Audi A3 2013-2017 version has 2 USB ports in the handrest. Can Android Auto be configured in it through software installation/programming? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

I had the 2017 A4 and researched everything according to that. Not so sure about the A3. The software configuration however was not a a very easy DIY for the A4. You will have to find out on the international Audi forums for more details for your specific model. All the instructions I could for A4 were not in English and had to be translated first.

[Forza5]

Well done sir. Straight up genius. I wish I had the skills and the courage to install carplay in my BMW X3