Apple car play upgrade

[sim3454]

Hi I have a 2016 CT200h sport and would like to upgrade my info system to include apple play has anyone done this or know of anywhere that does this

[Las Palmas]

I have been looking for an Android same as you, but all I have found is some not recommended by anyone. Some here in the forum have built in and none have so far told that it does function more than partially.

That is not good enough for me. Expensive, lots of work to install and not function is not something that seems good for me.

[Pielight]

There is a company called beat sonic who sell an interface for seamless integration with your current multimedia system, ie. ability to quickly toggle between original interface/functionality and car play (or Android Auto).

I have a GSF and have watched several videos showing figment and functionality - youtube videos by beat sonic themselves and bullets garage (GSF owner).

it looks really good and off the top of my head £250 is as I remember. Don’t know what other cars are supported.

[Herbie]

There's an old saying "Buy cheap, buy twice" and it's true.

I couldn't afford, or justify, spending just over £500 on a Grom Vline 2 so I bought a 'Carlinkit Decoder' for £200 and never actually got it working properly; problem after problem until I just gave up with it.

I've since got a Grom Vline 2 which is what I should have done in the first place. I've not had it long but up to now, I think it's great.

You can run apple CarPlay or Android Auto on it but you don't have to do that if you don't want to. It's basically an Android tablet and you can run almost any app from the Play Store directly on it, without the need for ACP/AA.

Have a look at this post I did a few days ago:

 

 

[Las Palmas]

There is a link to a CT200h but an older model without ML audio.

https://motrade.nl/data/mediablocks/Lexus%20CT200h%20uibouw%20radio.pdf

[Bitnerd]

Hi I have done it on a f sport 2015 and works like a charm . I’ll be happy to any any questions and takes a few hours labour not the easier but not hard either 

[Las Palmas]

Some think that audio systems in cars are not needed.

The most beautiful music come from the engine.

Not all cars have beautiful sounding engines.

Engine in a F40 and a Porsche with hand-built exhaust system and tuned engine from Stig Johansson in Vara in Sweden sure sound beautiful, but these are for the few ultra-rich people. Not us poor Lexus owners.

Since modern cars are making less noise than cars normally did many years ago a good audio equipment makes sense. I think.

I do not know what android- or apple-car-play is and therefore do not know why it is interesting to pay much money for that as Lexus cars have good audio installed from factory and if pictures of what is playing in the car is shown on screen it would be distracting and not really good for the driver. Even the navigation system tells us when it is starting that we shall pay attention to driving.

If I am missing something, please enlighten me.

[Herbie]

24 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

I do not know what android- or apple-car-play is and therefore do not know why it is interesting to pay much money for that as Lexus cars have good audio installed from factory and if pictures of what is playing in the car is shown on screen it would be distracting and not really good for the driver. Even the navigation system tells us when it is starting that we shall pay attention to driving.

 

If I am missing something, please enlighten me.

It's not so much the audio aspect (because they still use the same amplifier and speakers) but the other stuff that's of interest.

The navigation and mapping systems have always been the Achilles Heel of Lexus. They are slow and clunky, counter-intuitive, have problems using postcodes and so on. Some people can put up with it but I think the vast majority would like something better, which is where Android Auto (AA) and apple CarPlay (ACP) come in.

Some people dislike the inbuilt navigation and mapping so much that they prefer to use something like Waze, Google Maps or Sygic on their phones instead. These things are a whole order of magnitude better than the OEM Lexus mapping and navi system, but one drawback is that (a) phone screens are small, (b) the phone has to be mounted to the windscreen or dash, and (c) it means a wire dangling around to power it.

Wouldn't it be great if you could project or mirror the phone screen onto the car's bigger and better multimedia screen? Of course it would. And wouldn't it be even better if all the Lexus OEM switches and buttons (like being able to adjust radio volume from the steering wheel) would also control this interface and retain all the functionality of the original usage? Of course it would.

Some devices are just 'interfaces' between the phone and the car screen. Others, like the Grom Vline I've got are a completely stand-alone Android computer and can work without AA/ACP.

Assuming you have a smartphone, Android tablet or iPad, think of all the apps that you have on there.

Being a bit over-simplistic, AA and ACP are basically apps, that allow other apps to run within them and also drive the phone image onto the OEM car screen. Once you have AA/ACP set up, you can then install the nav/maps I mentioned above, plus other apps such as amazon Music, Spotify or whatever. I don't use AA/ACP at all, but download and run all my apps directly from the Grom unit.

You can even run live TV apps like SkyGo, My5, ITVHub, even WorldTV and get TV from around the globe. You can have YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo and lots of others. In fact, you can download and run any app from the Google Play Store to the Grom.

Of course, you need to be sensible and not have any video playing onscreen while the car is in motion and AA/ACP even go so far as to block things like that when the car is moving, but it's great to have if you're parked up somewhere waiting for someone to finish shopping or whatever.

As mentioned above, a lot of people get this for the navigation alone. The maps are free and are updated very regularly, plus the facilities available within the maps, such as users being able to update maps with incidents in real-time and so on, make it very worthwhile.

[Las Palmas]

Absolutely correct, the navigation system in Lexus sucks.

But all I need is to have my phone laying somewhere and having navigation sound on the loudspeakers in the car via Bluetooth and the navigation on to see the map on screen and I listen to music until the navigation voice in the smartphone tell me to do something while having the picture of the roads on the monitor in the car and no loose wires or anything. No extra cost for additional machines or work building them into the car. Google (no matter how much I do not like Google) have excellent map- and navigation-system, much better than the one in Lexus, even though it is upgraded to latest year.

About looking at TV and other things on the tiny monitor in our cars: Not for me. I do not need to have picture of the musicians playing as that is just distracting and does not make the music sound any better. I have more than 250Gb music on the phone so need no streaming.

So maybe I am not missing anything in not having Apple- or Android-car-play system built-in.