Alpine iLX-107 Wireless Apple CarPlay Install using LonGate MOST with stock BOSE

Cost: Alpine iLX-107 $699 Alpine | Wireless Apple CarPlay In-Dash Receiver LonGate MOST $120 if keeping the BOSE amp https://www.aliexpress.com/store/pr...-fiber-optic-power-amplifier-to-aftermarket-Car-DVD-GPS/607693_32708723316.html MicroBypass Parking Brake Override Bypass for Alpine $15 (optional) Scosche Cayman Dash Kit $45 if you don't like the FREE American International dash kit Crutchfield.com supplies PORSCHE 911 / Boxster 2005-2008 Double Din Radio Dash Kit SILVER by Spiral Installations Apple compatible black Lightening Cable -> USB $15 My advice is buy the radio from Crutchfield.com but specify the NON-BOSE Cayman even if you have BOSE, you should get an extra wiring harness you maybe able to modify/cut up so you can utilize the power/ground on the harness. If not no biggie, it was free. The BOSE kit comes with nothing special. I used these links which do a wonderful job of explaining how to install this or any car stereo into a Porsche: https://cai-store.com/pages/997-boxs...o-installation https://cai-store.com/pages/hur-installation GPS mounting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-XQ1lE88Uo The LonGate MOST fiber optic box works great and only has 3 wires to install, power (yellow), ground (black) and accessory (red). It seems to be well made and works in up to 2011 Porsches. For $120 I see no reason to buy a MOST HUR for $500 more. Fader control does not work just like the MOST HUR. You only get front speakers with the LonGate, which shouldn't matter, have you ever turned up the rear speakers to max on the stock deck to hear how pitiful they are, at max power you can barely hear them, and what you do hear is very halllow. You won't miss them. The trick to max out the rear's via fader before swapping out the stock radio did not work for me. When installing you must remove the little black plastic protector in the fiber optic port before the Porsche wiring will snap into the unit. The only downside with the LonGate is the 30 days it takes to arrive, plan ahead. Since these new Alpine stereos only have a yellow/blue parking brake cable, you should in theory be able to ground that wire to the radio itself as seen on youtube and it simulates having the parking brake always applied. This lets you do things like type into Apple Maps while moving, instead of only being able to use Siri voice searching. It did not work for me, the radio still thinks I'm moving, I will try to move from a bolt on the Alpine case to somewhere else and if that fails just buy the $15 defeat switch online. ***UPDATE*** Tried various grounds and researched more, the micro bypass is required, I bought it and install was simple, only use 3 of 4 wires. The GPS antenna gets mounted to the right of the cabin air filter in the frunk. There is ample space to mount the plastic sticker and then the GPS antenna on top of that. TAKE OUT THE BATTERY first as you have no hope of finding the grommet or opening it up if you do not first. Run the cable to the right along the metal "shelf" until you get to the right of the battery and below there is a large 1.5" grommt. Pull out the grommet, don't try to just poke through it our you will send the grommet into the footwell. Once the grommet is out cut an X into it with scissors in the middle and poke the GPS connector through. Pro tip, install the grommet backwards of how it was originally install to make it easy to install from the furnk side. Notice behind the grommet there is carpet, if you poke that with your finger the bottom is precut and will seperate enough to get the GPS antenna through. The cable will be sitting above your gas pedal. The supplied free American International silver dash kit aka "the economy kit" which retails for under $20 is pretty bad. The color on the silver and black versions is not a match to the factory as you'll see in the pics below. Buy a different brand aka "the premium kit". If you do use the American International you MUST break off the upper 2 tabs of the 4 tabs supplied to lock it in or you will NEVER be able to remove the new radio again. A coat hanger is a life saver in the install with some duct tape for shooting various wires around the cabin. Plastic pry tools are helpful for removing trim to run cables behind like the microphone up the A-pillar and through the side dash panels. The easy place to put the microphone is inside the steering column where the factory would have put it, but everyone says that location is terrible for sound quality. The concensus is to mount it high up on the sunvisor, or the perfect place is on the A-pillar. You could also put it on the silver trim piece in the article form CAI but I think it looks tacky. Eventually I am going to get a better mic mount that is flat and not a clip style and double side tape it to the A pillar. I should have a pic below of how the clip mic looks in the A pillar. Since you won't be using half the wires in the Alpine kit you can cut them off the harness. You don't have to though, there is so much room on top of the radio for cables I put the MOST box on top first then piled on all the wires and it fit no problem. an I used RED wire taps for all the splicing needed as I don't like to solder even though it is superior. I first tapped the LonGate MOST into the Alpine harness red, yellow, black. Second I put RED taps into the BROWN wires in the stock radio harness for ground, then tapped into the RED/GREEN wire in the stock harness for constant 12V power. Last was the tricky ORANGE wire in a seperate circuit from the CAI install guide where i got the switched accessory power. Brown then goes to black in the Alpine harness. Red/Green goes to yellow in the Alpine harness. Orange goes to red in the Alpine harness. I found the stock wiring to be very robust and had to go through 2 or 3 taps to get the taps to cut into the factory wiring insulation, each time doing the tap in the same place. A good tug confirmed all would stay put and a multimeter to test for constant and switched power was helpful before installing the radio to make sure the taps worked. ***NOTE*** if you go for the Orange wire for switched power, that bundle has a airbag or seat belt wire in it, so DO NOT turn on the car if this is unplugged or you will get a AIRBAG light and will need a $160 iCarsoft PorII to clear it! Leaving the battery disconnected would have prevented this. Last tip is to toss the USB cable that comes with the Alpine with one exception. Instead buy a black USB to Lightening cable to plug into the back of the Alpine. This is because you have no hope of running that big chunky USB cable into the lower pocket with the rubber floor without some major drilling. The Lightening cable instead just pops right through an existing hole in the back of that pocket (lower drivers side large hole with the rubber pulled up and out). The only thing you may want the USB for is to load a customer background image before you actually permenantly install the radio since it requires a thumbdrive with a file name attached (instructions below). But after you do your custom image you won't need it again. When you have the rubber black base of the pocket out, drill a hole to match where the cable it coming into the pocket, you will see a faint outline of the big left hole if you look closely, just drill that out and pop the Lightening cable through. PM me and I'll send you the custom Porsche BMP formatted file you stick on the USB drive which will become your boot screen. You can still toggle it back to the Alpine stock image if you prefer after its loaded in the settings. http://www.carplaylife.com/how-to/how-to-install-a-custom-launch-screen-in-a-alpine-ilx-700ilx-007/ Instructions on preparing the USB drive and details on the process of adding a customer boot screen from mehaase on the JEEP Wranger forum: "Format a FAT32 USB drive (name the drive whatever you want), make a folder called OPENINGFILE, and place openingfile.bmp inside that folder. Turn your head unit on, then plug in the USB. After a few seconds it should ask if you want to copy the image. Tap OK. When its done, you can unplug the USB. Turn the head unit off and back on to make sure it worked. There's also a configuration setting to switch between default splash screen and custom (a.k.a. "user") but that setting is toggled to "user" automatically when you install a splash screen" Various pictures of the installation documenting the above. Sorry its all out of order iCloud butchered the order on export and I have no easy way to see the image and type notes on it inside this forum, its just a bunch of URLs in edit mode. I'm sure you can figure it out after reading through the CAI install links above and get a visual on how I proceeded. I did not install the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) nor the foot brake wire (not available on newer Alpines thank God), nor the illumintation wire as it too is no longer needed, instead Alpine puts a light sensor on front of the radio. So the only wire you need to do other than power and ground is accessory making things easier. Since the American International dash kit doesn't match perfectly the silver inside the cabin I'm going to swap it out and then button up everything. Stay tuned for a final pic of the install and my thoughts on the Wireless Carplay features of the Alpine. I also hope to test out the GPS antenna far away from cell coverage and see if Apple Maps stays happy.

Very interested in seeing your review. Been wanting something like this for my 987 for some time now!

Finally got it installed with a dash kit that more closely matches the OEM Volcano Gray. I would NOT recommend the $44 dash kit from spiralaudio because its missing the little plastic / foam mounting blocks. They are shown in the picture but didn't come with the kit, verify they include these. The cage for the radio is not designed to sit flush with the bottom of the opening. The cage must be about 1/4" above the base of the opening. I had to hack something together by super glueing some plastic wedge pieces from a laminate floor installation kit Roberts Laminate and Wood Flooring Installation Kit-10-28 - The Home Depot . I flipped two together to make a plastic rectangle. I put two on the bottom lengthwise secured with thin double sided foam tape, and one in the center on the top vertically to clear the tabs for the frame bezel. I think it came out pretty good. The color match is a 97% vs the 85% of the American International kit. Perfect match kits seem to go for $150-$350 which is too high. I haven't spent enough time with it to give a decent review but will followup soon.

I installed this unit in my '02 Carrera 4S and have everything working except the start up screen. I've tried so many different USB drives with no luck, they all just say "Connected usb device is not supported". Can you give the the specifics of the USB drive you used? Brand, capacity, anything... Thanks!

I used a generic USB key shaped drive I purchased off Ebay for $4, 8GB and formatted it on my Mac using the Disk Utility in MS-DOS FAT format ( I assume its FAT32 but it doesn't get specific on a Mac). Then created the folder, case sensitive, and dragged the BMP into it. Then just plugged it in to the USB extension cable. The file is pretty specific on format, if you want to PM me your email I will send the formatted BMP to you or if you know of some free file hosting site I can put it there. Alternative is just download the free paint program called GIMP, open the Porsche .JPG startup screen in Google Image search (I think it originated on ********) and then save it in the right resolution and 24 bit color and exported as BMP format.

It turns out that my bmp was 32 bit, instead of 24 bit or under. The error message was misleading as it said "connected usb device is not supported", which led me to believe the problem was with the drive and not the file.

Preliminary review: First the bad: 1) If you hold down the Vol Down button it mutes the stereo. OK I can live with that, but when you go to unmute it by pressing Vol Up it starts at zero, so its not really a mute, should just go back to original volume. 2) There is lag when using the touch screen. If you press the Vol Up/Down the volume goes up before the screen shows you its increasing, making you overshoot, or undershoot what you want 3) This is a VERY basic radio with pretty much no features except CarPlay and AM/FM 4) AM radio does not work, just static, not sure what's going on here 5) Carplay needs more apps, di.fm my electronic music subscription is worthless and Pandora and Amazon Music and Spotify can't hold a candle to it 6) No Waze or good navi like Google Maps. 7) Only 6 presets for FM, you need to swipe your finger left to access these buttons, but they do stay up permenantely once you do that. Not sure how you save 18 stations as the manual says. 8) Radio does not stay on gracefully when you shut off the car before opening the door, my significant other missed being able to listen to the end of a song before getting out of the car 9) Lose integration with dash cluster, not a huge deal and there is a fix product if you care (I don't) 10) CarPlay definetely still buggy hoping Apple continues to improve it, thinks like a LOADING... screen staying up when a song already playing, power off fixes it. Some other glicthes if you lose cell, doesn't pair with the radio 100% when getting in the car, maybe if battery is too low and its in Battery Save mode, not sure why 11) Siri still can't understand most requests Pros 1) Updates from Apple so the radio should stay current with CarPlay upgrades and GUI changes 2) Good lighting 3) Matches the 987 gauges and colors perfectly, looks very stock 4) Legible, easy to navigate 5) Sound quality is excellent and lots of tuning options 6) You get an app that can tune your radio to match your model car using other Porsche owner's uploaded settings to the service, or make your own 7) Works well with the BOSE amp and subwoofer 8) Easy install minus the bezel/faceplate 9) Maps works well 10) Ability to add an RCA based + HDMI converter to play DVDs or Video Game systems If they just added a few things it would be a killer stereo. They need to be able to plug in something other than an iPhone and play MP3s from that. Say a USB stick or Android phone in USB mode. CarPlay needs to be 100% wireless pariing. CarPlay needs more apps. Havne't found anyway to type in destinations in Apple Maps, only Siri or HOME...you've got to be kidding me.

Thanks for the update. Can you bluetooth stream audio? Can you bluetooth stream directions from google maps if you start the navigation on your phone? How is the audio quality? Much improved over stock radio?

I would say the first time I turned it on to a jazz station I actually looked to my left and what like who the heck is making that symbol sound when I had my door open, THAT'S how clear it was, its like I never knew I had such good highs. However, I realized the sound is so much better only because the unit has an Equilizer turned on with the highs increased out of the box. If you switch it to FLAT it basically sounds exactly the same as the stock unit, as it should, since its using the same BOSE amplifier and speakers and output sound hasn't changed. If anything, since you are going from CD, a superior sound source, to compressed audio in AAC, MP3, and streaming services it should sound worse, but I can't tell, sounds identical to me. My official position is wait on this unit until you can get wireless carplay , WITH the ability to plug in a USB stick with MP3s, and also have HD radio. Plus the microprocessor should be a little faster, as there shouldn't be any lag when you press the volume as there is now, this is why I hate non-knob based volume control, too finicky. The markup on car audio is the biggest in your electronics store according to my fiance who worked in BestBuy during College, at best I think this unit should sell for $350 for what you get, its not worth twice that. I have not tried any bluetooth modes, that used to work on the previous iLX-007 model so I assume its still there. You can always start playing something on the iphone and it will play on the head unit just no app for it, like say WAZE you'll be able to hear it same with 3rd party music apps not app'ified yet. It uses WiFi for that though not bluetooth.

Bad AM reception and weaker FM reception. Crutchfield ships a cheap antenna adapter for our cars which I think is the problem with the reception, I believe they should have instead sent this Metra part number Metra Part # 40-EU55 | Aftermarket Antenna | Metra Online Anyone know if the Porsche 987 uses an amplified antenna? **UPDATE** pretty much 100% sure our cars need the amplified antenna Metra above after researching, FM works, AM doesn't without, and FM reception is weaker too. Going to install it in a few weeks and will report back. ***NEW UPDATE *** Crutchfield support said you just need to connect the white wire (?) in the OEM harness into the blue/white antenna power wire of the Alpine harness to fix the radio reception problem . Haven't tried it yet.

When I see a install like this it scares me a little since there are so many steps but I know I could do the install, but what scares me more is trusting someone else to get something like this right.

Hi, I just installed a similar setup over the weekend. The ILX-107, and the NavTV MOST-HUR. It works quite well, but I've been on a road trip the last couple of days and the GPS loses my location frustratingly frequently. Sometimes it's when I'm driving through a wooded area. I mounted the antenna to the right of the air filter in the front of the car. Sticking it to the metal, so it's about 4 - 6 inches below the plastic cover. @toy4two Where did you mount your antenna? Having the same issues? Have you found any way to check the GPS signal?

I have mine mounted in the same place. I haven't really used the navigation, and not without cell coverage to comment. If its really a problem you can mount it up higher by making a bracket from something at Home Depot , or CAI sells a mount. To see if that's the issue use some duct tape and stick it on the underside of the windshield wiper tray and drive for a week like that, if it fixes it please let us know as I'll have to move mine too. Porsche uses roughly the same location I understand.

LonGate MOST note, I notice there is a brief cut out at the exact same time everytime you start the car, maybe 30 seconds and then a brief loss of the fiber optic signal, almost like a coding error. The amp is trying to send something to the radio or vice versa the Longate doesn't understand and it softly cuts out for under a second, never returns, but it is repeatable. I guess that save $500 means you have to live with that:hilarious:

Did you get anywhere with this? I just fired up my new head unit, and FM reception is marginal and analog only (does not pull down local HD Radio signals). My understanding is that the car does have a power antenna. The install harness has a wire identified as the powered antenna, which corresponds to a yellow wire on in the car's wiring. I have it connected to system remote, but I'm still not getting good reception. I may fire it back up and get a voltage reading, just in case the current drain is excessive (head unit can only supply ~300mA). It sure seems as though the power antenna is not working. ***EDIT: Okay, may not be what I originally thought. I turned it on again and still had mediocre reception. Then I made double sure that the antenna connections were tight and well connected. Then I switched to a different station, and it locked on digital HD. Went back to the station that was originally giving me trouble, and it also locked on digital. I did measure the voltage on the yellow wire that should be the power antenna, and it was reading just under 11 volts, which should be good enough.

Finally had time to fix the AM radio reception. It is indeed the pale yellow, almost white (close Crutchfield !) thin wire in position 5 in the factory harness that needs to be bridged to the blue-white alpine remote power wire (or the blue power antenna wire). I went with the blue-white only because I cut off the power antenna wire earlier (whoops). Works fine. The only difference is the power antenna in the Porsche is now constantly turned on when the stereo is on, vs turning on when you switch to radio mode, maybe its faster this way I tell myself So now I've got everything pretty much perfect. I tried a ground loop isolator to eliminate the pop in the speakers on turn off but that failed miserabliy and just introducted alternator whine into the radio so that came out. I'll just live with the little pop on turn off unless someone has a solution. Still have that split second cut out after the car is turned on by some digital signal the BOSE amp is sending to the LonGate, but its so minor and occurs at exactly 30 seconds after turn on I could live with that too.

I want to try this DIY since I am tired from my dated PCM . Any other Cons other than what you have mentioned? Is it only 2 speakers that will work? I have read on other threads about this static pop from speakers when using these converters. How bad is it? In my BMW e90, I had same static noise come from speakers when turning car ON until I figured that AMP is on its way out which I had to replace later on. Do you think this MOST converter is missing with BOSE AMP ?

I appreciate if you can get back to me with your feedback and my questions above. Thanks

The Cayman has many more than 2 speakers in the front, there is 3 in the door I think and 1 in the center. In the rear there are only 2 very small speakers that sound awful. The problem is not the amp as its works fine with the stock stereo. I'm really not sure what causes the pop, it could be the Longate.

no all speakers work EXCEPT the rear 2. I just went for a drive and I see 3 speakers on the dash, and looks like 2 on each door so 7 speakers work out of the 9 with the LonGate. I should also say Im not 100% certain the rear 2 speakers don't work, but the fader when set to rear 100% I can't hear anything.

You are only using 2 video/audio wires (red and white) so these only corresponds to 2 speakers only if I am not mistaken. In my aftermarket headunit, I have about 8 wires and I have to use 2 out of these 8 wires?

Finished my installation of the Longate Most-HUR. Pretty straight forward install. works as advertised but you do lose the fader control. As someone mentioned previously, it does sound like the rear speakers work but when you try to adjust the fader to only the rear speakers, no sound comes from them. Also, I get the loud feedback chirp if I shut the unit off at the head unit. My solution is to leave the unit powered up and mute the sound if I don't want to listen to it. If you simply turn the ignition off and pull the key out, the unit powers off and no feedback. It took 29 days for the unit to arrive so plan on that. While you wait, order all the other harnesses and adapters you need for the job.

to fix that feedback loop your headunit needs to stay powered on a second longer than the BOSE amp . To do that you can install this: AMTDD12 Car Stereo Radio Head Unit Time Delay Device Turn Off delay AM-TDD12 - Car Stereo Radio Head Unit Time Delay Device - Turn Off delay - | eBay Worked for me. Once the BOSE is turned off any signals sent to it won't get out to the speakers

Not trying to bring back this dead thread, but it seems the most detailed of anything I've found after days of researching.* Looking to simply do one thing, add bluetooth to a 987 with Bose . Which would best accomplish this? Longate - https://tinyurl.com/ybjotnrz CAI - https://cai-store.com/collections/a...-radio-cd-player-installation-hardware-kit-98-05-911-boxster?variant=3737574725 AVIN - https://avinusa.com/most-fiber-optic-amp-interface-for-porsche-cayenne.html iSimple -* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FRU5UNA?tag=viglink20410-20 Dension -* https://tinyurl.com/y944mx88

Are you looking to replace the head unit to gain other features or simply add a bluetooth adapter to your existing system? If the latter, check out this thread http://www.planet-9.com/987-cayman-...ster-electronics/106153-bluetooth-phone-auto-connect-key-insertion-finally.html

Thanks for the response, though this is for a 987.2 which has an AUX adapter in the center console. Mine is a .1, 2006, so there is no AUX in which is my main issue.

Since the longate has the audio in through those two RCA's could I just get an RCA to AUX and play music that way?

I'm planning on copying this install here pretty soon, so thank you very much for the write up! Did you have a CD changer with your original Bose system ? If so what did you do with it? Leave it in and connected or pull it out? If you remove it does it mess anything up?

Thanks for the write up! First post here. I just bought a Cayman S with the Alpine ILX 007 (the one before wireless carplay ) installed. I uninstalled it because the parking brake wire was not hooked up therefore I could not access any settings. I thought it was the 107 with wireless carplay until I actually took the unit out of the car and looked at it. The previous owner did a wiring hack job (or paid someone to do it) but they did use the Nav-TV MOST HUR which I was suprised to find out the cost of when I started researching what I had. So I just cut out all of the bad wiring from at least 3 different stereo installs and got the unit reinstalled and everything works great! Your write up was one of a few on the web that helped me out. I wish I had found it about 2 hours sooner though as your airbag warning would have been helpful. The CAI website tells you to disconnect that harness behind the heating controls and then check for 12v switched power. DOH! Now I have a sweet airbag light on. Other than that though everything went great. I ended up not even using the 12v switched power from that harness. I ran an add-a-fuse from the fuse panel (C6) to the HUR and then tapped that wire for 12v switched to the headunit. Works great that way.

I reached out to toy4two about a year ago for some clarifications to these instructions. He helped out a lot and over the past year I started collecting the pieces I needed to get my system installed. I'm in Canada, so everytime it snowed I kinda forgot about this and would only get back to it when I could take the car out. A couple of weeks ago, the final piece showed up (the dash kit) and I went on Kijiji (sorta like Craig's List) and looked for an installer. So today I got a install tech to come over and help me out (he pretty much did everything - I think I only mounted the deck into the dash kit and slid it in at the end!!), but after about 3 hours, we were done. I can't believe how good it sounds! It was a good idea to set the fader before taking out the out system as I believe whatever setting you have before would persist to the new installation (I set it at -3 to the back - so most of the sound was through the fronts and a bit to the rears. This works perfect in my opinion). The bose audio system works perfect, subs and everything! I chose the SONY XAV-AV1000 because it has Apple Car play , it is compact (no cd player), and it was on sale. I got all this done for $726.74(CAD) or $543.61(USD). If anyone is interested, here are the details for the components: USD CAD Sony XAV-AX1000 $290.83 $388.49 - https://m.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/...n-ca/product/sony-xav-ax1000-car-stereo-av-receiver-with-apple-carplay/13290017 MOST HUR $96.99 $129.69 - https://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot...m=a2g0s.9042647.6.2.3c434c4dejHFRj&orderId=91344828822522&productId=32708723316 Dashkit $21.95 $29.35 - https://www.ebay.ca/itm/401258595468 Antenna Adaptor $11.39 $15.23 - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000329HEK/ref=pe_3034960_236394800_TE_dp_1 Metra 70-1784 Wiring $10.45 $13.98 - https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0002BEQKM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 TOTAL PARTS $431.61 $576.74 INSTALLATION $112.00 $150.00 TOTAL $543.61 $726.74