I have read all I can about the Hondalink process and have done the following.

1) purchased the Lightning A/V adapter and a spare data cable and a short HDMI cable and plugged them in according to the instructions from Hondalink. i have downloaded all 4 hondalink apps including the $60
nav app.

2) iphone 5S is connected to the lightning A/V adapter. engine is started and I am sitting in the driveway with the vehicle in park and the parking brake on.

3) I hit the hondalink connect icon on the cars a/v display. I click allow on the iphone. I then hit the hondalink navigation icon on the iphone to start the nav program.

4) The cars a/v display goes blank with the time in the upper right corner and the iphone has a hondalink symbol with the figure 8 on its side.

5) nothing else happens.

Can anyone shed some light about what is going on here? Is there a correct startup sequence for the nav app on the iphone?

Any help is appreciated!

Jim

 

Just read something, Honda sells an IOS link kit. I assume that consists of a lightning A/V adapter, data cable and a short HDMI cable. OR...did they modify on of the 2 cables specifically for this setup?

Jim

 

OK. I updated the iphone to IOS 8.1.2. Thought it would work with IOS 8.1.1
but no dice. After the update, when I hit allow on the iphone...then the menu actually appears(Services, Navigation, Locations, etc). Hit Navigation and the map comes up. Excellent. Still having trouble navigating around the menus but...its progress. Also...dont know if you can actually fiddle with the radio without having to restart the Hondalink? Same same on telephone calls?

Jim

 

I'm a little uncertain about what cables to buy. Do I just need the Apple Lightning Digital AV Adaptor, and an HDMI cable? It looks like the adaptor has a spot for the standard lightning to USB cable, right? So I plug this adaptor between the regular charging cable and the phone?

Staples looks to have the adaptor at a reasonable price:
Apple® Lightning? Digital AV Adapter | Staples®

There are tons of them on eBay, but I wasn't sure if those are real or not.

Any advice welcome.

 

Those two, plus a USB Lightning cable. The AV Adapter goes in your iPhone, and the HDMI and USB go from the adapter to the car (the USB provides charging to the iPhone, which you will need on longer trips).

You can use the head unit interface (or steering wheel controls) to cycle from Nav to Audio, etc., but if you go to another app on your phone, I believe you have to re-approve when the Nav app starts up again. If you take a call from the head unit, it should drop you back in Nav without further intervention.

The Nav app is very basic, but I've found it works well for my needs. The biggest problem I have is that I have a flakey connection somewhere and sometimes the screen goes to static. Seems to get worse as the iPhone heats up (which happens any time I use any GPS app).

I really REALLY wish Honda would get off their tuckus and release an update to enable CarPlay…

es

 

you can not touch your phone while it is running the honda link app. You can make and receive phone calls via the car, but not via touching the phone. If you exit out of the app while it's running you might as well forget about it, because it freaks the phone and the car out and causes all kinds of trouble. I've also found that if you have been using or trying to use the app it won't connect to the car properly until you totally exit out of the app. You know by double tapping the home button to see all the active apps find anything associated with honda link and swipe up to close it. Then start the process over again. I've found it best to hook the phone to the adapter then hit the link button on the dash it will then prompt you to accept on the phone, after that put the phone down and don't touch it. You can toggle between steering wheel control between audio control and navigation control by hitting the menu button on the wheel (the one under the volume) once in control of the Nav you can bring up or hide the turn by turn by hitting the right arrow, you can zoom in and out by using the volume up / down, and you can access the menu / settings by hitting the source button.
You can go to other screens on the car without disconnecting, if you want to change the audio hit the menu button on the dash and it will take you to the normal screen. Do what it is you wanted to do and then either hit the link button again, or just hit the arrow that will show up on the right side of the screen. It will take you back to the nav screen. I've seen other post saying you can't use the console USB for music while using the app. This isn't entirely true. If you are using a USB memory stick, or any non apple device it works fine, if you have an iPod, or a second iPhone it get's confused and doesn't work. I have a usb stick in mine and can use that while using nav no problem.
I've found it hard to get all this straight at first, but I've gotten pretty good and the dance, and now it generally works the first time I plug it in. I really like this feature, it could be a little better, but in general I think it's great.