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Wireless CarPlay + Wireless Charging

1964 Views 24 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  KyleW, 
KyleW
I just ordered a CarLinkit 4.0 and a Sighill Wireless Car Charger for my 2022 GLC300 4Matic SUV. I have my fingers crossed. It looks like the charger will fit into the ‘astray‘ compartment and allow me to charge my phone with the lid closed. The CarPlay connection is in the center console so I should be able to hide the adapter in it. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻

I’ll keep you posted.
Kyle
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KyleW
Guess what? They work! 🎉 It took me, who doesn’t know anything about cars, less than 5 minutes to have both up and running.

The charger fits snuggly in the console and leaves room for the cup holders. And with the phone charging the cover closes cleanly.

The CarLinkit took less than 30 seconds to popup on my screen. It took less than 30 seconds to pair it with my phone and BINGO! wireless Carplay. Turned the car and phone off, started the phone and then the car and it connected automatically. My only question is why the Carlinkit showed up on my phone as Volkswagen 1234, rather than the Mercedes name that was displayed on the main display.

So for about $200 I have wireless charging and wireless Carplay, no phone or wires in sight 🎉 Pretty happy 😄
Kyle
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KyleW
MahiNar said:
Wireless charging will make the phone hot, which I think is a dangerous thing. And I don't think it necessary to buy a wireless charger. If it is a short drive, power consumption is not big, basically no need to charge. If it's a long drive, Wired CarPlay will be more convenient. About the Carlplay adapter, I haven't used it yet, but I saw my friend use it and it's good, so I ordered one too. $88 got this small box, (U2W Plus) Carlinkit 4.0 Wireless CarPlay & Android Auto 2 in 1 Adapte
There are some discount coupons on their website home page.



从我的 iPhone 发送，使用 Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I have not had any issue with the phone getting hot. Per Sighill there is a built in 2 level cooling system.

”SIGHILL car wireless charger is equipped with the independently developed TWIN AIRWAY COOLING system, a silent vortex fan generates airflow, and simultaneously providing 2 air channels to cool the internal wireless charging transmitter components and phone wireless charging receiving coil,reducing the temperature of QI Wireless car charger and phones,offering effective charging environment for phones with cases.”
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KyleW
timm9 said:
Are you experiencing any dropped calls? I have the same setup and while the Sighill wireless charger is awesome, not so much with the Carlinkit. It will not connect on its own about 40 percent of the time and requires me to make the connection via the settings in the cell phone. I have not had any issues with the Sighill making the phone hot.
Click to expand...
I don’t make/get a lot of calls, so I haven’t experienced any drops. This morning I had a new issue crop up with CarlinKit. I updated my iPhone to iOS 16 the other day. This morning was the first time I was in my car and sitting in a parking lot I noticed my WiFi didn’t show up. When I tried to connect it I got a message saying that to connect to the WiFi CarPlay had to be disconnected. I don’t remember that being an issue before the iOS 16 upgrade.

To isolate the problem I unplugged the CarlinKit and connected my phone directly. No problem, both WiFi and CarPlay worked fine. The issue seems to be related to the BLUETOOTH connection which is required for CarlinKit to work. I reconnected the CarlinKit and reestablished wireless connectivity. On my way home the connection dropped for the firt time. I was unable to reestablish the Bluetooth connection.

Lots of troubleshooting ahead, and with so many moving parts (iPhone, iOS 16, CarlinKit, Benz) it’s not going to be easy 🤬
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KyleW
I found this on CarlinKit’s FB page.

Font Circle Rectangle Number Document
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KyleW
That’s the screen mine froze on this morning. I could not reestablish the Bluetooth connection. No Bluetooth, no CarlinKit. I’m going to try the phone network reset fix CarlinKit suggested on their FB page. I have not done any OS updates to CarlinKit.

I worked in systems for 25 years. Sometimes the best solution is the easiest. You also need to eliminate possible causes one by one. So if I try their fix and it works, awesome. If it doesn’t, the next time I contact them we can skip ahead 🤣
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KyleW
I was able to reconnect CarlinKit 4.0 this morning and it seems stable. I’m not sure what you mean about switching screens, but I seem to be able to switch between CarPlay screen and Benz screen. I can access my iPhone and all of the ‘built in’ screns like Navigation, Settings etc.

The more I read about all of these things the more it looks like they hijack the car’s WiFi. After the initial Bluetooth based connection, the dongle uses the cars WiFi to send and receive data from the car. this prevents anything else from using the WiFi. Perplexing.
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KyleW
I saw the Crutchfield dongle. Before I look to replace the CarlinKit I want to learn more about the WiFi hijacking. At home i can connect any number of things to my WiFi at the same time. Why does the CarlinKit take exclusiv control of the WiFi in my car?
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KyleW
Neither my Apple Watch nor my iPhone lose connection. However when I connect my phone directly to my car the WiFi icon appears on my phone. When I connect via the dongle the WiFi indicator is replaced by the cell strength indicator. The reason I got WiFi in the car is for those occasions when I’m driving through areas with weak cell service. If the dongle is sucking the life out of the WiFi, and I’m relying on cell service for phone calls etc., then the dongle defeats the purpose of having WiFi in the car.
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KyleW
It looks like they all operate this way. I just sent CarlinKit a Support question. Given that they are in China, and English is not necessarily a strong suit, I’m not holding out much hope 🤪 See attached. The 2 attachments are the appearing and disappearing WiFi icon.

Rectangle Font Parallel Screenshot Number
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KyleW
So I did hear back from CarlinKit. Here’s what they said:

Hello, wireless Carplay, need to use the phone's WiFi to transfer data, the consumption is the phone's traffic, so the phone's WiFi, can only connect to Carplay / CarlinKit 4.0.
The car's WiFi is not interfered.

I’m not exactly sure what it means but this morning I conducted an experiment. I took my iPad down to my car. I stared the car and it automatically connected my phone to CarPlay. I navigated the Command screen to “Connect Device to Hotspot” and used the Connect via QR code to connect my ipad to the car WiFi. It worked! My phone still showed the cell strength indicator but the iPad showed the WiFi signal strength indicator, meaning it was connected to the WiFi.

I’m still not exactly sure if the phone’s data traffic, including calls and texts, are being transmitted to the phone via cell data and then transmitted to the dongle via WiFi. This would mean that calls and texts are limited to cell strength. At least I know that the dongle does not take exclusive control of the WiFi. For now I know that the dongle connects y phone to CarPlay seamlessly and I can connect other devices to the car’s WiFi. Pretty happy with that.

I’m going to continue to research the ‘phone uses cell service’ thing.

Kyle
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KyleW
I just upgraded my phone to iPhone 14 Pro Max. My car and CarlinKit were connected to my iPhone 12.

I took the new phone to the car and before I turned the car on I unplugged the CarlinKit dongle. I turned the car on and connected the new phones Bluetooth and WiFi without problem.

So the new phone was connected and the car was running and I plugged the dongel in. It took a second and then the light came on red. After a couple minutes the light started flashing green. It appeared in my phone’s Bluetooth list and I connected to it. Then the connection appeard on the car’s display and it worked through the connection process.

Once it finished CarPlay appeared on the car’s display. It worked seamlessly. I was in and out of the car twice and each time CarPlay started automatically! Two 40 minute drives and no problems.

Also, it looks like the max size iPhone fits in the console with the cover closed and continues charging. I was afraid it might not.
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KyleW
I deleted both the original BT and WiFi before i reattached the dongle. Third trip this morning, even left the phone in a bag I threw in the back seat. No issues.
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KyleW
Latest connection experience: I parked my car in an underground, attended garage. When I went to pick up my car as the attendant drove up I noticed the music from my iPhone was playing in my car. The phone was in my pocket and I was 3 yards away in my car! 🤣
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KyleW
ianrandom said:
It's good then. Lol.
Click to expand...
It appears to be 🤣 My only gripe is that CarlinKit gloms the car’s WiFi, so the phone is reduced to cellular. I wonder if the WiFi calling feature of the phone might be a work around. 🤔
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