AAGateway gives birth to AAWireless, a new device to make most Android Auto units wireless

Remember AAGateway that we reported on over two years ago? Just the other day I received an email from its developer letting us know that:

AAGateway is getting re-branded to AAWireless and it’s going mainstream

To say that AAGateway was a series of hacks that worked occasionally and was fiddly at other times is an understatement but now Emil and his partners have decided to make the experience consistent and reliable for all. How you say? By creating the hardware itself that is required to make a head unit wireless capable. Most of the issues people had with the old AAGateway was with all the different hardware that was used.

Now they have introduced a small piece of hardware themselves, a plug-and-play device that “allows your Android Auto compatible unit to use a Wi-Fi connection instead of connecting the phone with a USB cable”.

By porting their code over to Linux they were able to design their own custom hardware which is currently in prototype stage. the prototype itself has been modified even further Emil tells us with the final device to lack the ethernet and USB-A ports and be much smaller than that of the prototype. The final device will be approximately 5cm x 5cm x 3cm and will jsut need to be plugged into the USB port of the head unit and forgotten about.

Of course, without a large company behind them they are needing funds to complete the manufacturing process and have thus taken to Indiegogo to get that funding. With a minimum of 3000 units needing to be manufactered their goal seems lofty — but has already been exceeded even their own expectations.

Emil tells us that because of the large number of orders now he has had to push back the shipping date from December to February next year. So far they have raised over AU$500,000, when their goal was ~AU$300.

At this stage it has not been tested on every car available but Emil has listed those already tested on here. We are expecting one to arrive in our hands in the early stages of production so will do our best to test it out on as many Australian cars as possible.

Numbers are limited at this stage and it is selling fast so if this sounds like something you may like, and especially with Android 11 bringing wireless Android Auto to all phones, you’d better jum,p onto it quickly. Head on over to the AAWireless Indiegogo webpage and back it now.