Developer Emil Borconi-Szdressy recently launched an Indiegogo campaign for an AAWireless USB dongle that adds wireless Android Auto to your existing car.
You’ll need a car infotainment system with wired Android Auto support. While that’s increasingly commonplace, it does rule out upgrading an older ride. Patience will also be important, as it can take up to 40 seconds for the dongle to connect.
Compatibility might also be an issue. Although the team is testing “as many cars and head units as possible” and believes it should work with any Android Auto-equipped car, the developers can’t guarantee that support at this stage.
This also depends on the project completing as planned. Borconi-Szdressy is close to hitting his funding target and expects the first dongles to ship in December for $55 each, but there’s always the possibility of delays or other setbacks. You’re backing the project in hopes of getting something in return, not making a pre-order.
This project was started in 2018 by Emil Borconi-Szedressy with a simple app containing a few lines of code. Due to the huge amount of interest, it continued to evolve. Initially the idea was to use a secondary phone or a TV Stick, but problems were endless due to the large number of phones and car combinations.
In the beginning of 2019, the second member joined the team and started porting all the code to Linux and designing the custom hardware. With this in place, the product reached a prototype stage.
The final product will be much smaller than the prototype shown. It will not include an Ethernet port, USB-A port, pins, etc and the expected size will be somewhere around 5x5x3 cm (roughly 2 x 2 x 1 inch).
You can fnd out more details and back the project on Indiegogo here.
