Ottocast - Wireless Carplay Adaptor Review

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eracode

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#3194178 12-Feb-2024 07:51

alasta:

I wanted to provide an update on my experience with the Ottocast for the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread in the future.

I was originally using it with my CX-5, and it continued to work fine when I bought a new CX-30 in early November. Unfortunately this weekend it has suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason - the car entertainment system briefly recognises that it is connected but refuses to allow me to select it. The blue LED on the device is blinking, as if to indicate some sort of fault but documentation is hard to come by. A reset and firmware update did not make any difference.

I have emailed the distributor and will report back in the outcome, but needless to say this is very disappointing.

Have been using mine for six months and it's working fine - but interested to see the outcome of your issue.

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alasta

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#3198721 22-Feb-2024 12:20

alasta:

I wanted to provide an update on my experience with the Ottocast for the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread in the future.

I was originally using it with my CX-5, and it continued to work fine when I bought a new CX-30 in early November. Unfortunately this weekend it has suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason - the car entertainment system briefly recognises that it is connected but refuses to allow me to select it. The blue LED on the device is blinking, as if to indicate some sort of fault but documentation is hard to come by. A reset and firmware update did not make any difference.

I have emailed the distributor and will report back in the outcome, but needless to say this is very disappointing.

So, I have an update to share.

I sent the device back to AudioCity who did some 'diagnostics and updates' and sent it back to me. On plugging it in to the car I found that the problem still persisted. I then started playing around with settings on the Mazda entertainment system and discovered a screen which shows a list of all historically connected Carplay devices with the Ottocast flagged as 'disabled'. The Ottocast resumed normal service when I set it back to 'enabled' via this setting.

The setting is buried away in the menus of the Mazda entertainment system so there is no way it could be changed by accident. I assume there is a bug in the system which has caused it to randomly flip into a disabled state. Mazda owners with the latest Mazda Connect system should take heed of this.

Thanks to AudioCity for the excellent service. They communicated well, checked out the device immediately upon receiving it, and returned it to me promptly at no charge.

allio

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#3198731 22-Feb-2024 12:54

Good to hear the Ottocast remains reliable.

In the last year or so a tonne of much cheaper Chinese units have shown up on Aliexpress. These are in the $30-50 range and have good reviews, for whatever that's worth.

Anybody have any experience with a cheaper one? I'm not interested in paying $150 to not have to plug my phone in, but $30 is tempting.

Stu1

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#3198795 22-Feb-2024 15:31

alasta:

alasta:

I wanted to provide an update on my experience with the Ottocast for the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread in the future.

I was originally using it with my CX-5, and it continued to work fine when I bought a new CX-30 in early November. Unfortunately this weekend it has suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason - the car entertainment system briefly recognises that it is connected but refuses to allow me to select it. The blue LED on the device is blinking, as if to indicate some sort of fault but documentation is hard to come by. A reset and firmware update did not make any difference.

I have emailed the distributor and will report back in the outcome, but needless to say this is very disappointing.

So, I have an update to share.

I sent the device back to AudioCity who did some 'diagnostics and updates' and sent it back to me. On plugging it in to the car I found that the problem still persisted. I then started playing around with settings on the Mazda entertainment system and discovered a screen which shows a list of all historically connected Carplay devices with the Ottocast flagged as 'disabled'. The Ottocast resumed normal service when I set it back to 'enabled' via this setting.

The setting is buried away in the menus of the Mazda entertainment system so there is no way it could be changed by accident. I assume there is a bug in the system which has caused it to randomly flip into a disabled state. Mazda owners with the latest Mazda Connect system should take heed of this.

Thanks to AudioCity for the excellent service. They communicated well, checked out the device immediately upon receiving it, and returned it to me promptly at no charge.

Thats great news good result

wlgspotter

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#3203582 6-Mar-2024 07:53

allio:

Good to hear the Ottocast remains reliable.

In the last year or so a tonne of much cheaper Chinese units have shown up on Aliexpress. These are in the $30-50 range and have good reviews, for whatever that's worth.

Anybody have any experience with a cheaper one? I'm not interested in paying $150 to not have to plug my phone in, but $30 is tempting.

Apologies for being late to the party but just stumbled upon this thread.

I have 3 (yes three) Wireless Carplay adapter units, uncluding the Ottocast U2-Air unit that the OP posted, along with a cheap $50 unit from AliExpress, and also the Quadlock Wireless Carplay Adapter (cost about NZD$160 at the time I purchased it). Have owned all three for about a year, and used it exclusively on my BYD ATTO 3.

Overall, I liked the Ottocast unit the best - it is by far the fastest in terms of starting up and connecting (when I starts up the car), and have been pretty flawless over the past year or so. Never really had a problem with it, just that on the odd, random, occassion, when the unit launches, my car radio would stop playing. But if I switch back to radio and ress the play button, then back to carplay, it will work normally. I put it down more to the glitchy BYD's D-Link infotainment system than the Ottocast. The other thing I've noticed is in the past when I do a firmware update, after updating I have to "forget" the carplay adapter on my iPhone and pair it again - I think this is mentioned in its brief user manual. Also the Ottocast unit only remembers one phone paired with it at a time - not an issue as it is usually paired only to my phone. Other than that, it has been perfect and I'm still using it till this day.

The AliExpress unit, it looks almost exactly (from its' "GUI" wise) identical to the Ottocast unit, albeit it seemed to take 1-2 secs longer to start up. I've only tested it a couple of times and never really used it.

The Quadlock unit, I had trouble getting it to work with my BYD initially, then put it aside, only to try again a few months later and got it working by doing a firmware update. I've used it for a couple of months as it supports multiple paired phones (altho one can be active at a time), its GUI look most "refined", but it is quite a bit slower to startup/launch compared to the Ottocast and AliExpress unit. I've also noticed an occasional display refresh lag compared to the Ottocast. It does, however, have a USB-A passthroguh port that supports both power and data, so one can even plug a 2nd USB device via the passthrough port. When I got it working, I switched to using the Quadlock unit and put up with its slow start (it can take about 30 to 40 secs to startup compared to sub 20s on the Ottocast), but realised that when I had an incoming phone call there was no way I could answer the phone and it would drop the call. I then decided switch back to the Ottocast unit which worked well. I later discovered this "issue" with the dropping of incoming calls may be due to the BYD's system again rather than the unit as I also have my phone paired to the car natively via BT. But despite this I continue to use the Ottocast unit - happy with it so far.

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