I love CarPlay and use it every day, but plugging in every time gets a bit tiresome. I've seen a bunch of cheap wireless CarPlay dongles and thought, why not give it a go? I first tried the CarLinkit 5. It worked well enough, but I had two major issues. First, my wife and I share the car, and trying to switch between the two phones was hit-and-miss when we were alone. But if we were both in the car, then it was a nightmare. The second issue was that, for some reason, it was disrupting the charging of the car at some public charging stations, I don't know how or why, but unplugging it prevented the charging problems. When the CarLinkit died during a firmware update after a few months, I decided not to bother replacing it again.
I searched around to see if there were any wireless adaptors that could manage dual phones, but I wasn't able to find any that seemed to do the job well enough. I then noticed this small little USB dongle that was only ~$25 AUD on sale at eBay (usually around $30-35).
The solution to multiple/dual phone aftermarket wireless CarPlay was found!
Simply buy two of those and stick em' together with some double-sided tape, pair one to my phone and the other to my wife's and voila....simple dual phone CarPlay is just a simple rotation away! I added some blue and pink paint on the ends to make it easy to know which one is which, and so far, it's been working great. It works with voice (Siri), the car steering wheel controls, and all functions of CarPlay. There is a bit of a lag occasionally (and the odd crash), but it works fine >90% of the time. It takes about 20 seconds to switch from one phone to the other or when doing a cold boot. Also, I haven't had any issues interfering with charging. So far, it's the best $50 I've spent on dodgy gadgets in a while.
Video of Booting into CarPlay
Spec's of what was purchased
Chip: Allwinner V851S, Cortex-A7 900Mhz
System: for Linux
Functional specifications: wired to wireless Andriod AUTO+ wired to wireless Carplay
WIFI: 5.0G+2.4G
Main Bluetooth-compatible: Bluetooth-compatible 5.0
Power supply mode: USB 5V
Working current: 30mA
Material: ABS + PC
Colour: Black
Resolution: Adaptive (maintain original protocol resolution)
Language: Automatically switches according to the vehicle language environment
Interface: USB
Power output: DC 5V±0.2V 1A
Product size: 37*22mm
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