My RS4 Avant journey

[Quinten]

Wanted to subtly show that the car started it's life in Japan, so armed with a (poor) photoshop got in contact with an Ebay seller in Latvia who creates custom number plate surrounds.



Now just need to find the perfect personal plate to finish it off

[Quinten]

Sneaky little picture of my cars at Stowe garden

[stuartbarriskell]

Hub caps, remember them

Sent from my SM-S918B using Tapatalk

[IanH755]

Thats a nice combo of cars - a fast "everyday" family car and a plaything for the weekends!

[Quinten]

Got an early birthday present when I found the Road Top Wireless Carplay on offer at AliExpress (UK shipping, so no fees!) and after watching a few YouTube videos regarding installation, started with removing the glove box.



Then the climate control unit followed by the MMI and the vents. Discovered the reason why I was getting a VCDS error on my GSM as there is no cable going to the pink connector



Installation itself was easy enough, although getting all the cables back in was somewhat a challenge. Glad to report that the unit works perfectly, with Siri control using the speech button on the steering wheel.

[Quinten]

Now I installed the CarPlay unit, I no longer needed my phone within reach, but I still wanted it to be charged on trips. The ash tray location looked ideal, but with the cover open, it wouldn't fit my iPhone.

So I went onto Ebay and bought the cheapest ash tray (less than £7) and removed the innards with a dremel.



Trial fitting the frame.



After experimenting with the 3D printer, I settled on a separate frame and a surface to fit a MagSafe charger on. I initially also tried to use a 3D printed flat surface too, but after one day of heat, it started to deform, so used some 0.8mm aluminium sheet and cut that in the right shape.



After fitting the MagSafe and cutting out a camera aperture so the phone lies flat.



I wrapped it with some 3M carbon vinyl and installed it into the car.



And please to say that it all works!

[jamiej]

That's an impressive mod. Well done


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[Quinten]

Installed a couple of cheap Aliexpress velcro storage nets



and a replacement fuel cap tether

[Quinten]

Last week on a long journey navigating with Waze, the Carplay unit stopped responding, although the Spotify app continued playing audio. Contacted the manufacturer and they pointed me towards a firmware update. So armed with a 8GB USB disk formatted in Fat32 and the ISPBOOT.BIN from the .ZIP file I followed the instructions they provided



Not sure what has changed as they do not provide any release notes, but I've got a trip upcoming to Scotland next week, so I'll guess we'll find out then if it is more stable.

The unit went from version AR505R2 to AR508R1

[Quinten]

Just come back from a 4 day, 1287 miles, roundtrip to Scotland with my son in his Boxster. What an amazing country.







and my new desktop background

[JamesBaby]

Amazing work on the Car Play and the charger base. Things like that really update these cars.

[Quinten]

Now just need to find the perfect personal plate to finish it off

Finally had a chance to clean it after the trip to Scotland. And put my new plates on it. Never had a personal plate before, but this car is worthy of one

[AndyBrad]

How are you getting on with the carplay, just ordered one

[Quinten]

It's been flawless since the firmware update. The only thing I don't like is that it takes a good 30-60s to boot into it, but I guess that also means that it isn't draining the battery. All my other annoyances are with Apple CarPlay itself, for instance not being able to get Siri to plan a route in anything other than Apple Maps.

[JamesBaby]

Hi Mate. In my iPhone I can tell Siri to "Create a route to X location, using Google Maps" and it will open Google Maps with that location. So it should work with your Car Play unit.