It’s been a few weeks now and I think I understand the problem better. It’s not solved.

First, it appears to really be that they mean it when they say to disconnect all connections when connecting the phone to the adapter. In my case, this is impractical: I have a smart watch, a smart ring, and smart glasses, and I have them for reasons. And I am frequently stopping and restarting the engine, which of course restarts the adapter (and I wondered if the power cycling was inducing premature failure).

What I’m seeing now is that the problem is occasional and unpredictable. This misled me as to the source of the problem. I thought it was the adapter. But it turns out that if I just wait five minutes, the longest five minutes ever, after getting the message, the adapter will try again to connect to the phone and probably succeed.

It happens I wound up renting a 2022 Jeep Compass for a couple of weeks. The head unit in this car, though clearly not top of the line, was capable of CarPlay over bluetooth. This seemed more robust, more reliable, but not entirely so. I don’t have any idea how to account for this difference. Glitches still happened.

What I notice is that whether it’s the head unit or an adapter, wifi is unavailable while connected. I infer that this connection uses both bluetooth and wifi and that part of what the initialization process involves is handshaking to establish both connections. I suspect that it’s the wifi that’s problematic, but I often start my car at home, where there are multiple wifi signals, including more than one that my phone knows about, without incident. So it’s not just that my phone is already connected to wifi. There’s more to it but I don’t know what.

In the long term, I’ll probably give in and upgrade the head unit. The display on the Jeep Compass was much improved over the one in my (one year older) RAV4. I noticed it was much easier to navigate with this display and that’s important. But the mounting bracket that should (and probably does) work with my car has not been confirmed to fit. So it seems I have to wait.

I’m not proud of it by any stretch but I do shop Amazon. There’s a lot to say about that but the bottom line for me is that I simply don’t have time to do anything else.

I’ve tried units from Amazon, Best Buy, and now, a fourth, CPLAY2Air.

Ottocast is one of the ones that died. It’s actually the first one I bought because it is highly rated.

This isn’t about playing music. This is mainly about CarPlay for navigation, dealing with text messages, etc. I am extremely reluctant to replace the head unit: First, it would be expensive–a problem with what these gig companies pay. Second, I would lose some of the interface to the car itself.

This isn’t about playing music. This is mainly about CarPlay for navigation, dealing with text messages, etc. I am extremely reluctant to replace the head unit: First, it would be expensive–a problem with what these gig companies pay. Second, I would lose some of the interface to the car itself.

You’ll want a bucket and probably a mop.

When I first moved back east I was reveling in a thunderstorm, left the window open to hear the rain and the thunder. Did that a few times actually.

But yours is bigger.