Ownership Verified: "Diesel" is the closest thing to a "Texas Edition" that Porsche offer

[Nugget]

Hard to believe we've had this Cayenne for over 8 years now. Still totally in love with how it drives and tows, but the factory radio is too old for modern connectivity and I have to admit I've been having wandering eyes lately for something with more modern electronics inside. There's never really been a good aftermarket solution that works with the fiber optic MOST bus.

Over the holidays I I finally discovered an aftermarket solution that seemed good, so last week I pulled out the factory radio and installed a mr12volt daughterboard that gives the factory unit Carplay and Android Auto support via an unused, vestigial "TV" input capability that the factory radio has.



Operation was a success and I think this has saved us $100,000. I still love everything else about the Cayenne and now that we have frustration-free music, navigation, and podcasts I can easily see us driving this thing for another decade.

 

[ninjacoco]

Drat! You're not looking to trade it for a Lancer.

 

[WDWBen]

All these ways of adding CarPlay to "older" cars, IMO, extends their life significantly. My mom wanted a newer car for all the bibs and bobs that come with new head units, so we put CarPlay in her Outback and she's thrilled with it again. Great upgrade; I've never seen it as a physical daughterboard before! I've seen replacement head units and piggy-back boxes, so this is new.

 

[93Flareside]

there's a Mr12Volt adapter for my Mercedes radio, but I don't have the optical jacks mounted in the console where a CD changer would be. I want to try Mr12Volt very much.

 

[Nugget]

there's a Mr12Volt adapter for my Mercedes radio, but I don't have the optical jacks mounted in the console where a CD changer would be. I want to try Mr12Volt very much.

I'm not sure why that would be necessary, as long as the optical is connecting to the head unit currently. This one, at least, came with a the extra fiber and connectors needed to loop in the device alongside the head unit.

 

[MXM]

Hard to believe we've had this Cayenne for over 8 years now. Still totally in love with how it drives and tows, but the factory radio is too old for modern connectivity and I have to admit I've been having wandering eyes lately for something with more modern electronics inside. There's never really been a good aftermarket solution that works with the fiber optic MOST bus.

Over the holidays I I finally discovered an aftermarket solution that seemed good, so last week I pulled out the factory radio and installed a mr12volt daughterboard that gives the factory unit Carplay and Android Auto support via an unused, vestigial "TV" input capability that the factory radio has.

View attachment 3568174 View attachment 3568173

Operation was a success and I think this has saved us $100,000. I still love everything else about the Cayenne and now that we have frustration-free music, navigation, and podcasts I can easily see us driving this thing for another decade.

Oh, that looks neat! I'm guessing the daughterboard is meant to take over the LCD screen to take over touch-input while in TV mode, and the carplay unit is a separate module? Any idea who manufactures the Carplay/Android auto module itself for them?

I'm deep into investigating for a similar solution for the Range Rover, of which I found at least two, but not good enough user feedback to convince me yet to spend up to 1k for one of those. They switch the input by holding down the navigation button for 2 seconds, so not directly using any of the existing video inputs. Although I do have a TV tuner which I could gladly sacrifice for this purpose (except the car doesn't allow TV when driving ). As far as I understood, the audio feed is also analog, and I would, of course, prefer to use MOST for audio.

Mr12Volt sadly only has a bluetooth audio adapter for LR system, and that one takes over a cd-changer. However, it does use the MOST audio.

 

[Nugget]

Can you daisy chain optical signals? I wouldn’t think so but I’m again, dumb to this communication tech.

The optical bus is a ring, so it's simple to add new devices by just adding a new segment of optical cable. The optical cable should have both an in fiber an and out fiber. You just redirect the "out" from the radio with a new piece of fiber and it goes to the "in" of the adapter. Then the out from the adapter connects to the fiber that used to be the "out" from the radio.

Similarly, if you remove a device it's necessary to put a little loopback/bypass on the bare connector so that the "in" gets routed back into the "out" to keep the ring unbroken.

It's sped up, but you can see the process of adding the new cable segment and integrating it into the connectors here (at 5m15s):

View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oYrmk5pRL-k&t=317