Wireless CarPlay Adapter...Anyone try CarPlay2Air?

Someone tried it on the CX-9. It seemed to have connectivity issues at the time.

 
Someone on Miata.net that tried it had to repair with Bluetooth every time the car was started and still had connectivity issues as stated above. I wouldn't waste my money.
 
I just bought this for my 2020 CX-5 and am on the fence about returning it. It seems to connect just fine and works beautifully... until it doesn't. If I started skipping songs, it'll freeze up the display and reboot. I'm going to try it out for a couple more days and see if I can figure out how to avoid it freezing (such as waiting for songs to fully load before skipping or some other such work-around).

EDIT: Never mind... it's going back. It's VERY close to being amazing, but as noted above, it's not quite ready for prime time. It has two problems:

1) It will fail to consistently connect automatically when returning to the car. Maybe 1 out of 5 times it will do so correctly. This isn't that big of a deal to me, though, as I just unplug the adapter and plug it back in to reconnect.

2) But the MUCH bigger problem is that it will continuously freeze and then crash the infotainment system. This only seems to happen when playing music (whether Pandora or Apple Music). I can't get through two or three songs without the system crashing. Sometimes it crashes on the first song about 10 seconds in.

Both of these issues seem like things that could be quashed in debugging, as otherwise the adapter works fantastic. I found it to connect quickly and be fairly fast when operating it wirelessly with very little lag. As soon as they fix these issues, I'll buy it again. Until then, I would avoid it if I were you.
 
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Has anyone tested this CARPLAY2AIR adapter on their compatible Mazda for wireless CarPlay?


I bought this late last year, and it did not work at all. I was in touch with their team's tech support folks on an almost daily basis as they sent suggestions and firmware upgrades. It never even got close to connecting, so I was ready to return it. I even had the label printed out.

I cleaned up my home office in preparation for working at home in March, and must've squirreled it away somewhere. So I never did return it.

Last week, I found it. I upgraded to the latest firmware (v2.0, I think), which completely changed the experience. It still took a bit of back and forth with their tech team – but this unit does actually work. Sort of.

As other have said, it can be finicky Sometimes it connects, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes Mazda Connect reboots. But when it works, it's great. That's still a big "when" though, so I've left my wire in place for those times I just can't get it to work.

I suspect future firmware updates may continue to improve it... at least until Apple finds a way to block them, change the CarPlay protocol... or, who knows – buy them?
 
It works with the right firmware for the dongle. I have been using 2.0 version for over a year. But some people are having issues with the latest Mazda firmware.

 
I bought the Carlinkit 3.0 from Aliexpress. I've been using it in my CX-5 since I picked it up. The car has the latest firmware installed.
It didn't work at first and told me "Apple device authentication failed." After some googling, I realized that you can directly connect to the adapter's Wi-Fi. Mine showed up as VolkswagenXXXX, and the password is always 12345678. Once I connected, I updated its firmware and turned on compatibility mode.
On top of that, through Mazda Connect I needed to go to Smartphone Connectivity and change CarPlay permissions to "Always Enable". If you already connected an iPhone through a wire it'll show up there, and the adapter just shows up as "Phone."
Anyways, once I went through those steps, I got to the connection screen of the adapter. Connect your phone to the adapter via Bluetooth and you're good to go. CarPlay connection is done through 5Ghz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is only used for the initial handshake.
When I first start the car, it takes around 30 seconds for the adapter to connect to the phone, but it's still faster than me finding the Lightning cable and plugging the phone. And the wireless charger doesn't feel like a useless accessory to me then.
There is no difference in functionality between wired CarPlay and wireless through this adapter. I haven't experienced any lags/freezes on the screen, Siri works just fine and there is no delay in phone calls. There is a 1-second delay when you're listening to music, but I have also experienced this on a Hyundai that had built-in Wireless CarPlay.
If you're considering buying one of these, I can assure you that it is not a half-baked solution that works when it feels like working. I ordered mine from AliExpress because I had to wait for my car to arrive anyways, but you can get one from Amazon for pretty much the same price. (At least in Canada)

PS: I mentioned that the Wi-Fi name was VolkswagenXXXX at first. Once it connected to the infotainment for the first time, it changed its name to MazdaXX.
 
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