How can I add an external video input to the original Mmi or screen?

[changareth]

I bought this device where I can AirPlay stream my phone to the screen but it requires RCA input or HDMI. Is there a way to install this? or convert the output of this AirPlay device or something? I wish to display it on my LCD screen. I tried getting those RCA to AMI cables but it said it didn't support that type of cable after I plugged it in and tried to access it on AMI. 🤔🤔🤔

[Longwolf]

**UPDATED**
Thanks everyone for feedback to this post, I have updated these instructions to reflect the suggestions below and the requests for additional clarification.

Instructions: External Video Input to MMI Screen/Phone Mirroring

With a few simple parts, you can plug and play your phone (or even iPad, Roku, Apple TV) to mirror on the dash MMI screen. I installed this on my B8.5 S5, and the results are great. There will be lots of cables/wires/adapters involved, but it is an easy job and will cost you less than $200 and only a few minutes to install. I wrote this for mirroring my iPhone 6S, but it will work with any phone that has a video out adapter. Since the folks at Apple are greedy-planned-obsolescence-proprietary-cord scumbags, the Apple Lightning-to-HDMI adapter will cost $50, where those lucky to have a Droid phone will only need to spend half of that amount.


Car: B8.5 S5 (manual FTMFW!)
MMI Version: 3G+ w/Nav
Difficulty: 0.5 beer (0 beers being easy, 12 beers being a full day job)
Time: Less than 1 play thru of the song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Cost: $150 - $200 depending on iPhone vs. Droid.
Why: I mostly use it to run Waze through the MMI screen when I drive long trips. Praise Jebus for Waze.
What it will do: Mirror your phone screen to the MMI screen. Do not attempt to stream Fast & Furious to your screen, your Audi will self destruct.
What it won’t do: Allow you to listen to FM/Sirius/Jukebox/SD card music in your Audi while the video is mirroring. This kit ports the video AND sound to your car, so for music you have to also run music off your phone. Which is fine by me since I usually stream internet radio in the car (recommend Radioparadise.com) or MP3s on the phone (recommend Porcupine Tree).

** Before you start: You will need to have enabled the Video-in-motion (VIM) feature on your Audi through a VAG-Com. It is an easy hack, and there are lots of FAQs/resources online about how to do it. You just need to have the Ross Tech VAG-Com cable/software , or find a friendly Audi owner who will do it for you (I enjoy helping local VW/Audi people hack their cars with my VAG-Com).


What you'll need:
Audi AMI RCA Cable Adapter (I bought OEM since some people had compatibility issues with the knockoff ebay/Amazon cables): LINK $80


RCA-to-HDMI Adapter: AMAZON $34


3 RCA Male-to-Male Adapter: AMAZON $7


Apple iPhone to HMDI out adapter: LINK $49 (if you have a droid phone, you will be able to pick up a much cheaper droid version of this part)


Short HDMI Cable: Short HDMI Cable: AMAZON $7


Dual Port Power Outlet: AMAZON $13
NOTE: You need to have 2 charging cables; 1 mini USB to charge the RCA-to-HDMI converter (required for converter to work), and another that plugs into the iPhone lighting to HDMI adapter (optional, but recommended since you will want the phone to charge while mirroring). With both of those, the phone will charge while you mirror the screen.


iPhone Lightning Extension Cable (Optional): AMAZON $33
(be careful, cheaper generic ones will NOT work, I've tried)




Here's a quick summary of the installation:


Here are all the wires you need laid out:
(note: I am not showing the Lightning extension cable that I have running through the roof of the glove box down into the ashtray for a seamless & clean install)



Instruction Steps:

1. In your glove box, install the Audi AMI/MMI RCA adapter.

2. Plug the 3 RCA wires into the RCA-to-HDMI adapter (you'll need 3 of the RCA male-to-male adapters). Make sure the RCA-to-HDMI adapter switch is set to NTSC.

3. Plug the short HDMI cable into the RCA-to-HDMI adapter, and plug the other end of the HDMI cable into the Apple iPhone Lightning-to-HDMI adapter.

4. Plug the Apple Lightning-to-HDMI adapter into your iPhone, or what I did was install a Lightning extension cable, so you can then run the extension cable behind the glove box and down into the center console. I have my cable coming up into my ashtray so I can leave my phone there to charge while I use the adapters.

5. Once you have it all plugged in and powered, go into the Settings menu (while in Media), and scroll down for the options to switch the input to NTSC (vs. PAL) and 16:9 aspect ratio. In my experience, the phone mirror function would not work when I used PAL and the screen would be compressed if you chose 4:3 ratio.




Here are the wires installed in the glove box:




If successful, you should now see this new menu option in the Media Source menu:




Here is the phone mirroring Waze:




Here is the phone mirroring the web:



You can still make and receive calls as if the phone was directly connected to the MMI via the AMI Phone cable or as if the phone was connected via Bluetooth:


One part of the install you can't see here is the iPhone cable I have running up through the roof of the glove box, under the center console and into the ashtray. Next step is for me to install a power source in the glove box so I do not have to run the 2 charging cables and dual power outlet into the ashtray power outlet. I'll get to that in the near future.

Additional notes:
- This setup requires that both sound and video be utilized from your phone, which means that you can't listen to XM while mirroring your phone. For me, I run Waze while also streaming music off my iPhone at the same time.
- You can substitute other devices for the iPhone; such as a Droid phone, Roku (it's been done), Apple TV (it's been done!), iPad, etc

Now you can impress friends/cops/lovers with your car that has Waze built in to the infotainment center.

I cannot take any credit for discovering this; many people have posted about this before with great instructions and pictures. I am just posting my experience and lessons learned. Other resources on how to do this:
http://www.audiworld.com/forums/audi...creen-2888656/

http://www.audiworld.com/forums/a8-s...music-2846216/

http://www.audiworld.com/forums/s6-c...nment-2846402/

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...I+Phone+mirror

[rooneyy]

Longwolf, that is a great write-up! Will this work on 2G MMI by chance?


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine mobile app

[Longwolf]

I believe that this will not work with 2G MMI,but read through the other article links I posted, and someone may have fully researched the 2G application. I have the 3G, so I always skipped over the 2G posts. Sorry.

[Sweep]

Longwolf do you have a video of this working. Im wondering how the quality/framerate looks

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[AbeViator]

I just did this last Fall using the MMI-RCA adapter to integrate my iPhone to the MMI screen, and it works great. There will be lots of cables/wires/adapters involved, but it is an easy job and will cost you less than $200 and a few minutes to install. It will be even cheaper if you have a droid phone. Sometime this spring I would like to better integrate all the wires to hide everything. You need to have 2 charging cables; 1 to charge the RCA to HDMI converter, and another that plugs into the iPhone lighting to HDMI adapter. With both of those, the phone will charge while you mirror the screen. I did this specifically to run waze on my MMI screen, and it works perfect. This will work if you want to mirror a Droid phone, Roku, Apple TV, laptop, iPad.....and yes, even a VCR!

That's a great write up! Been trying to do this for a while on MMI+. If you can post a quick video demoing this, would be awesome! Thanks again for sharing.

[rooneyy]

Has anyone tried this on 2G MMI?

[d1amund]

Thanks for the great write up and photos, Longwolf.

[audibmi]

I ran this setup previously, but with my iphone 6 plus screen size, I find I no longer need mirroring on the mmi. Also, I found the resolution with the HDMI convertor is not that great.


Apple Lightning AV adapter
HDMI to RCA convertor
Audi AMI RCA cable 4F0 051 510 N (You will need 3G+ mmi for this cable to work)

[AbeViator]

Here are some pics of the kit installed. I"ll work on writing up a complete and comprehensive post that will have all pictures and instructions together.

Here are all the wires you need laid out:
(note: I am not showing the Lightning extension cable that I have running through the roof of the glove box down into the ashtray for a seamless clean install)




Here are the wires installed in the glove box:




If successful, you should now see this new menu option in the Media Source menu:





Here is the phone mirroring Waze:





Here is the phone mirroring the web:





One part of the install you can't see here is the iPhone cable I have running up through the roof of the glove box, under the center console and into the ashtray. Next step is for me to install a power source in the glove box so I do not have to run the 2 charging cables and dual power outlet into the ashtray power outlet. I'll get to that in the near future.

Additional notes:
- This setup requires that both sound and video be utilized from your phone...which means that you can't listen to XM while mirroring your phone. What I do is run Waze, but also stream music off my iPhone at the same time.
- You can substitute other devices for the iPhone; such as a Droid phone, Roku (it's been done), Apple TV (it's been done!), iPad, etc

Thanks so much for this! Hallelujah you cracked the MMI to finally mirror the iPhone. I'm going to order the parts next week and follow up with everyone.

[audibmi]

@Longwolf

i noticed in your schematic that you connected 12v power for the hdmi convertor box. i found in my experience that my hdmi convertor box did not need power to function. in fact, when connected to 12v power from the car, i recall having sound interference.

also, in the mmi settings, you have the choice to select PAL or NTSC and to change aspect ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9. i found only certain combinations worked for my iPhone 5s at the time, otherwise it did not display correctly on the mmi screen. what settings did you choose?

[Longwolf]

i noticed in your schematic that you connected 12v power for the hdmi convertor box. i found in my experience that my hdmi convertor box did not need power to function. in fact, when connected to 12v power from the car, i recall having sound interference.
also, in the mmi settings, you have the choice to select PAL or NTSC and to change aspect ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9. i found only certain combinations worked for my iPhone 5s at the time, otherwise it did not display correctly on the mmi screen. what settings did you choose?

Thanks for the info Audibmi, I am trying to gather everyone's input to help with my instructions. You are correct, I forgot that I made sure to match the PAL vs NTSC switch on my converter to match the PAL/NTSC option in the MMI menu. Let me add that to my list of instructions.

I was not able to get this system to work without powering the RCA-to-HDMI converter, but let me verify that again to make sure. Thanks for the feedback, keep the comments coming!

[Feryunda]

Great writing!... I'm not sure if it's just me, but I can't see some of the pictures like step 5 screen ratio, wires in the glovebox and the new menu option in the Media source.... Thanks!

[Longwolf]

I think I have everything fixed now, let me know if the pics aren't showing up.

[rooneyy]

I think I have everything fixed now, let me know if the pics aren't showing up.

Pictures still not showing up for me.

[Longwolf]

Pictures still not showing up for me.

Google Images is sure giving me a hard time with this. I think it is fixed now.

[Feryunda]

They are working now!! Thank you!...

Do you think it will work if we use an RCA extension cable and run it all the way to the center console under the arm rest and just put everything under or inside the console? So we can use the power outlet that is inside there and the lighting extension to the iPhone could be shorter?

[Longwolf]

I briefly thought about this scenario. I think that should work just fine, nothing complicated about RCA signal, so yes. The RCA extension cable would be cheap to buy as well. The only thing that kept me from doing this is that I use my center console storage more often than my glove box, so it was better to stash all these wires there.

[SnowWhite44]

Will this also work for 3g?

[changareth]

**UPDATED**
Thanks everyone for feedback to this post, I have updated these instructions to reflect the suggestions below and the requests for additional clarification.

Instructions: External Video Input to MMI Screen/Phone Mirroring

With a few simple parts, you can plug and play your phone (or even iPad, Roku, Apple TV) to mirror on the dash MMI screen. I installed this on my B8.5 S5, and the results are great. There will be lots of cables/wires/adapters involved, but it is an easy job and will cost you less than $200 and only a few minutes to install. I wrote this for mirroring my iPhone 6S, but it will work with any phone that has a video out adapter. Since the folks at Apple are greedy-planned-obsolescence-proprietary-cord scumbags, the Apple Lightning-to-HDMI adapter will cost $50, where those lucky to have a Droid phone will only need to spend half of that amount.


Car: B8.5 S5 (manual FTMFW!)
MMI Version: 3G+ w/Nav
Difficulty: 0.5 beer (0 beers being easy, 12 beers being a full day job)
Time: Less than 1 play thru of the song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Cost: $150 - $200 depending on iPhone vs. Droid.
Why: I mostly use it to run Waze through the MMI screen when I drive long trips. Praise Jebus for Waze.
What it will do: Mirror your phone screen to the MMI screen. Do not attempt to stream Fast & Furious to your screen, your Audi will self destruct.
What it won’t do: Allow you to listen to FM/Sirius/Jukebox/SD card music in your Audi while the video is mirroring. This kit ports the video AND sound to your car, so for music you have to also run music off your phone. Which is fine by me since I usually stream internet radio in the car (Radioparadise.com) or MP3s on the phone (Porcupine Tree or Pink Floyd).

** Before you start: You will need to have enabled the Video-in-motion (VIM) feature on your Audi through a VAG-Com. It is an easy hack, and there are lots of FAQs/resources online about how to do it. You just need to have the Ross Tech VAG-Com cable/software , or find a friendly Audi owner who will do it for you (I enjoy helping local VW/Audi people hack their cars with my VAG-Com).


What you'll need:
Audi AMI RCA Cable Adapter (I bought OEM since some people had compatibility issues with the knockoff ebay/Amazon cables): LINK $80


RCA-to-HDMI Adapter: AMAZON $34


3 RCA Male-to-Male Adapter: AMAZON $7


Apple iPhone to HMDI out adapter: LINK $49 (if you have a droid phone, you will be able to pick up a much cheaper droid version of this part)


Short HDMI Cable: Short HDMI Cable: AMAZON $7


Dual Port Power Outlet: AMAZON $13
NOTE: You need to have 2 charging cables; 1 mini USB to charge the RCA-to-HDMI converter (required for converter to work), and another that plugs into the iPhone lighting to HDMI adapter (optional, but recommended since you will want the phone to charge while mirroring). With both of those, the phone will charge while you mirror the screen.


iPhone Lightning Extension Cable (Optional): AMAZON $33
(be careful, cheaper generic ones will NOT work, I've tried)




Here's a quick summary of the installation:


Here are all the wires you need laid out:
(note: I am not showing the Lightning extension cable that I have running through the roof of the glove box down into the ashtray for a seamless & clean install)



Instruction Steps:

1.In your glove box, install the Audi AMI/MMI RCA adapter.

2.Plug the 3 RCA wires into the RCA-to-HDMI adapter (you'll need 3 of the RCA male-to-male adapters). Make sure the RCA-to-HDMI adapter switch is set to NTSC.

3.Plug the short HDMI cable into the RCA-to-HDMI adapter, and plug the other end of the HDMI cable into the Apple iPhone Lightning-to-HDMI adapter.

4.Plug the Apple Lightning-to-HDMI adapter into your iPhone, or what I did was install a Lightning extension cable, so you can then run the extension cable behind the glove box and down into the center console. I have my cable coming up into my ashtray so I can leave my phone there to charge while I use the adapters.

5.Once you have it all plugged in and powered, go into the Settings menu (while in Media), and scroll down for the options to switch the input to NTSC (vs. PAL) and 16:9 aspect ratio. In my experience, the phone mirror function would not work when I used PAL and the screen would be compressed if you chose 4:3 ratio.




Here are the wires installed in the glove box:




If successful, you should now see this new menu option in the Media Source menu:




Here is the phone mirroring Waze:




Here is the phone mirroring the web:




One part of the install you can't see here is the iPhone cable I have running up through the roof of the glove box, under the center console and into the ashtray. Next step is for me to install a power source in the glove box so I do not have to run the 2 charging cables and dual power outlet into the ashtray power outlet. I'll get to that in the near future.

Additional notes:
- This setup requires that both sound and video be utilized from your phone, which means that you can't listen to XM while mirroring your phone. For me, I run Waze while also streaming music off my iPhone at the same time.
- You can substitute other devices for the iPhone; such as a Droid phone, Roku (it's been done), Apple TV (it's been done!), iPad, etc

Now you can impress friends/cops/lovers with your car that has Waze built in to the infotainment center.

I cannot take any credit for discovering this; many people have posted about this before with great instructions and pictures. I am just posting my experience and lessons learned. Other resources on how to do this:
http://www.audiworld.com/forums/audi...creen-2888656/

http://www.audiworld.com/forums/a8-s...music-2846216/

http://www.audiworld.com/forums/s6-c...nment-2846402/

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...I+Phone+mirror

I actually got the video part working but not the sound part. I connect the sound to the aux input behind my 2G Mmi but apparently that port is disabled so in my menu I don't have Aux In. And I'm having problem u locking or enabling this part of the Mmi on my car. I also bought RCA ami cables but my ami said it wouldn't support it. I use to just use Bluetooth Tune2Air on my AMI which works fine.


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine mobile app

[changareth]

does RCA to AMI cables not work on 2G Mmi?


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine mobile app

[jwr9152]

You could always wirelessly mirror your phone to the Roku or an hdmi adapter to cut down on wires. I do that in my work car.

[Kwarner]

Can this setup be used with an MMI that does not come with factory navigation? I understand that the resolution would definitely be lower.

[changareth]

Can this setup be used with an MMI that does not come with factory navigation? I understand that the resolution would definitely be lower.

same.. my car has no factory navigation too... i tried using RCA (AMI cable) said didnt support it.. I added an external device to allow external video input but I couldn't get the sound to work..