To be clear I had two main issues with the Carlinkit/Gapinski solution. I’ll try to post an honest review:
Granted it is a marvel of dev / tech deployment that Gapinski came up with this working workaround through the Tesla browser, and there is almost no latency when it works.
Carlinkit packaged it into a nice little box that’s almost plug and play. Just power it through the centre console usb, pair your phone via bluetooth, activate Personal Hotspot, then add the car to the ssid broadcasted by the device, and there you go, it works in minutes. If you’re anything like me you feel some joy to recover the long lost CarPlay screen I was familiar with before switching for a Tesla.
But unfortunately the experimental part of the solution will eventually resurface, when for some reason the box will either not pair via Bluetooth, or fail to broadcast a wifi signal, and you’ll have to unplug it and plug it back again.
Also, often the car’s Wifi will default to off and you’ll have to re enable it by searching through the menu while driving, which necessarily causes distraction.
And of course, often too, you’ll abruptly lose signal and the browser will default to the Carlinkit settings that is indefinitely searching for your phone…
Again, this is a great proof of concept, but it is absolutely not usable on a day to day basis.
On the plus side, I moved to be able to use Hey Siri commands in a much more intuitive way and while keeping both hands on the wheel. Of course I missed waze on a decent screen size, oh, and whatsapp notifications as well!
But even if the system had worked flawlessly, I’ve found my problem was with the UI.
You need to do so many things with Tesla menus, such as Supercharger navigation, Radio, Spotify menus that you constantly find yourself switching between the two I interfaces on the main screen. That’s when I realised I actually wanted to be able to look at the two at the same time. Have Tesla navigation side by side with Waze or Whatsapp. Retain the superior Spotify/Tesla interface rather that being forced to stream everything through Bluetooth Audio. All the little things.
That’s why I’m convinced a hansshow second screen will be better down the road.
Will probably order one from aliexpress in the upcoming weeks. But confused at the wide range of price ranges (from 150 to 500 roughly) and the different advertised characteristics (Android OS/Linux OS) versions 5 to 12, etc….
Of course
@Zilla91 happy to hear your thoughts about your own experience in a few weeks time!