VulcanGrey

ordered mine... I did email the Russian company Trioma with the 4 channel (Pseudo-fader) MOST adapter, but they don't ship outside of Russia... They did have a German re-seller, but they didn't seem to carry that device.

AJ88CAB

That AGAMA launcher is really nice. Thanks for sharing!
I think it is the best "Factory Look" launcher app so far. There are a couple of items that have been noted here and on the Play Store reviews that need to be addressed by the developer, but there doesn't seem to be any response from them..

The Google Voice search button (lower left) does not work. This is a good feature to have if you want to do a voice command from the HU. It is important to me because if I use the "Hello Google" voice command and I am using my phone as a hot spot, both the HU & phone will respond. Turning the Hello Google feature off on the phone is a PIA. Having a button that brings up the Google Assistant on the HU solves this, even if it is a workaround, and sort of defeats the purpose of a hands free voice command. I discovered that if you go to the menu (AGAMA app menu, lower right, not Android settings) there is an option for the "Quick Button", in that setting there is the default "Google Voice Search" which does not work and can not be changed/assigned. The other option is "Quick Camera". If you select the "Quick Camera", then go back to the Home page, and then long press the Quick Camera icon, you get a menu of all the apps on the HU. You can assign Google Assistant, or anything else, to the button. The icon is a camera, but I can live with it, I am not sure what the Quick Camera is supposed to do but I am using it for the Google Voice Search feature.

Another item are the arrows on the bottom, they do not work for changing the radio channels, but they work for my music apps like Amazon Music & Pandora.
Anybody have any luck getting these to work with the radio app.

Another feature, that is not in the AGAMA app, but is in the HU Android settings is a "Touch Assisitive/Display" option. Pick the "Display the Button" box. This puts a small round floating button on the screen. See Brainz's post above to see the button. It can be placed anywhere. It will float over any Launcher screen you use. It is a quick menu. One of the most useful items in the quick menu is a Screen Blank button. It turns off the screen at night. This was really helpful when I was using the stock launcher because it was so bright at night. The AGAMA launcher has an automatic night mode, and the theme is dark enough so it is not as much an issue but it is still nice to be able to blank the screen. Plus it give you access to to many of the Android features that are not easily reached from the AGAMA launcher, the icons and quantities if icons are assignable. My HU is a recently purchased 9" Android 8.0 PX5 4G ROM/ 32G RAM unit from the AliExpress "AE Online" Store, so i don't know if this feature is available in other versions or models.

I also have the same issue as Brainz with the WiFi hotspot not connecting automatically. I have to go into the HU settings menu and select it. It connected fine when I was using the stock launcher. Maybe there is something in the password protected Factory Settings menu, but I have not tried to sort it out.
FYI...the Factory Settings password on my unit is "126" ...if it works for your HU too...use at your own peril

Brainz

Interesting - - I'd not considered that the AGAMA launcher may mess up the Wifi autoconnect. I may disable it and test mine to see if that fixes it.

I did a lot of driving today in crazy traffic. It's really nice running Waze on the screen and getting real-time re-routes (as well as speed trap notifications) with Pandora steaming in the background.

MKITGO2

For those that have switched off the factory head unit, how do you find the radio (FM) reception? Currently on my Factory unit, it is crap... not new news for these cars. I have not dug into it to determine if its head unit or the amplifier.. most of what I have read seems to be very inconclusive to a solutionm, so my motivation is low to spend a bunch of time farting around.

I guess one question is if you disconnected the the amplifier or took it out of the antenna circuit?

MK

Jonathan H

It'll never be great but reception exists if you use this
There are two factory radio antennae and both must be utilized to get any reception. I recommend wrapping the metal area of the amplifier in electrical tape. The amplifier must be powered

deilenberger

To what end?

Zakowsky

With the head unit I got, as with most HU's these days, I don't think they use the Diversity antenna switching technique any more, so I think just using one is fine. I just hooked up the main antenna from the car to the thin rectangular box antenna input thing on the head unit. Although I never use the radio, I did test it and I get the same signal reception or better than I do in my Jeep Grand Cherokee so I think it is fine. The two antennas were never for longer range reception I don't think, they were just for the flutter that can happen with newer high sensitivity receivers.

Zakowsky

Edit: If you are going from a PCM 2.0 to an android unit the FM will inherently sound better, because as I was somewhat shocked to find out, FM is in mono on these PCM units. At one point I couldn't believe you could only have a mono AUX input installed by Becker, so I bought a second PCM 2.0 and took it apart, went over the entire circuit board, and sure enough, no stereo FM - in fact no stereo amplifier at all. Thus why you can't have a stereo AUX input. The CD data goes direct to digital, into the optic interface and to the amp, so it is in stereo no problem. But FM is mono...

MKITGO2

Wow... that is interesting.. And explains a lot I guess.

MKITGO2

Thanks for the link. So after using this, you will end up with 2 Amplifiers for the FM Signals.. which you would think would interfere with one another but I assume not if your using it successfully. Despite the use of the 'Bose' name and the Optical inputs, I would have to say that , at least in this time period, the Stereo/Audio/Entertainment was not an area of competence for Porsche's.. Overly complicated and yielding poor results.

Brainz

Partial response/info here:

A couple additional thoughts:

1) All my experience/comparisons are FM band.

2) My radio reception is worse than the factory PCM. I reliably only get the strongest stations. The digital tuner on the Android HU seems less willing to tune the weaker station -- it's binary -- so the weaker stations go mute rather than get "fuzzy".

3) Per my post above, I've used the dual fakra adapter and didn't notice any difference. I want to confirm that the factory diversity antennas are getting power per the schematic posted by Don E in my link above, but I've not had time -- my suspicion is that the factory antennas are currently unpowered.

4) As a work around, there's no reason one couldn't install a separate antenna, or maybe an antenna amplifier and see what happens to reception. Probably easiest/cheapest to try an antenna amplifier first, but I've got no idea whether that'd work acceptably.

MKITGO2

Thanks again. Sorry I glazed over the more detailed info on the set up. I think your suggestion #4 might be the best idea all round... walk away from the complex and problematic factory antenna system and just run a more traditional antenna to the new Head Unit... probably easy enough to find something that would run up the inside of the front pillar behind the trim out of sight.

AJ88CAB

On my HU (with single Fakra connector for the antenna) there were a couple of wires with connectors on the cable harnesses labelled "ANT". These are on separate harnesses, so they are not connected out of the box.
Unconnected reception was terrible, when I connected them reception was restored to as "good" as the factory unit.
I also used the 2-into-1 Fakra cable connector for the two factory antenna cable connections to the HU.

deilenberger

What did you connect the wires labeled "Radio" to?

AJ88CAB

They were two blue leads on the separate harnesses that came with the HU. Two harnesses get used for the install.
I just connected them together. They had matching connectors (one male, one female).
They are labeled "ANT" not "RADIO" as I incorrectly mentioned before.