I'm still troubleshooting the head unit on my 2010 after I attempted a Wakaa installation. One thing that has been eating at me is a couple connections on the back of the head unit. Does anyone have a diagram or a picture of what the connections should all look like when they are correct (especially regarding the colors of the connectors)?

The most basic question here would be, should all the connections on the back of the head unit have something going to them? I seem to have one connection that has no cable going to it. I've dug and dug around and can't seem to find a loose cable down there.

The follow up is should all the connections mate to their own same color? When I pulled the head unit out the first time (after having previously paid someone else to do the installation) I found that the teal and grey connections were swapped; the teal colored cable went to the grey colored connection and vice-versa. Is this correct? I thought it may have been a mistake - the system was not working correctly and I've had an air bag light on my dash since the installation - so I swapped it back but it's not any better. The picture below shows what I found.



Connections found when removing the head unit

If anyone has pictures or diagrams that would be great!
thank you

 

I can likely help you out if you will post what issues you are troubleshooting; I've installed it into two Q7s, and had to remove/reinstall/remove/reinstall in our '10 after getting a bad kit from WAKAA on that one...it just worked randomly/occasionally (but perfectly, when it did work) and threw a ton of codes in the car. No issues at all with the first kit from WAKAA installed in our '15.

The color coded connectors you reference are inputs from various systems, like the satellite radio antenna, radio head unit, backup camera, etc., and they do need to be matched to their twins on the OE head unit, or you will have lost some functionality like normal radio/satellite radio, video feeds, etc. The car's actual 'radio' head unit is located in the right rear in bottom of the same column/holder the tow harness lights controller box sits on top of. I'm pretty sure the deeper blue color goes to satellite antenna. The lighter blue/turqoise color cable should be the MMI video feed cable, which is why that one has a special adapter with the kit to allow the Carplay unit to control the throughput to display. The yellow should be the reversing camera feed.

 

Also, if you've got the USB cable that came with kit, and can reach the Carplay box to plug it in, then you could simply run the cable down into the passenger footwell, and roll it up in that little webbing/storage pouch in passenger footwell area, for easy access. You will want and/or need that USB direct connector at some point.

 

Thank you! I figured the cables would go to their own color coded mates; it was hard to come up with a justification for something else.

Right now my symptom is that I can't get the Wakaa to come up at all. I hold the Nav button for 3, 5, 10, 20 seconds or more and nothing ever happens. The "Air Bag" light is lit on my dash as well and has been since the initial install of the Wakaa.

I know there is also one port on the back of the stereo (what I was calling the head unit though I may have misapplied the name here) that has no cable going to it. I don't recall now what color that plug is but I'm pretty sure it's another one the shape of the grey and teal ones in my picture above. I can't seem to fish it out for anything, and I do have pretty slim hands so reaching down into that space isn't terribly difficult for me.

Honestly though our Wakaa has never worked very well. However I didn't realize beforehand that it's for Android 11 and up, and neither my wife nor I are running phones that new at the moment so that likely isn't helping. The bluetooth has been garbage on it when it did work so far but I'd prefer wired anyways.

I did snake the USB cable through into the passenger footwell the last time I reached in. Haven't tried it since the Wakaa doesn't seem to be turning on.

 

I should also add that currently the stereo itself and all the other functions that seem to go through it (climate control, sat nav, etc) are all working fine. The Wakaa itself though is doing nothing whatsoever.

Would I be able to clear the air bag light with a code reader? I've been going back and forth on a reasonable code scanner to get for this (I've read a couple threads on the matter and haven't pulled the trigger on an option yet). The air bag light is rather vexing really in that it only says "air bag"; as a consumer I don't know if that means the car thinks the air bag has deployed, or if it thinks it is faulty, or absent, or on fire, or just letting me know that it exists ... No better than the old "check engine" lights, really

 

I just pulled the head unit back out to check the connectors again. The connector I don't have anything going to is the *dark green* connector which seems to be a *single pin* coaxial style. I reached around down in there and still couldn't find a cable that would go to it.
Just to really put the effort in, I disconnected everything from the back of the head unit and dug around as much as I could. With everything reconnected I still can't get the wakaa to start when I hold down the Nav button, it does nothing at all.
I did notice that the *grey* connector doesn't seem to sit as well as the others on the back, but it certainly is sitting and doesn't fall out under repeat removals of the head unit. The tab though never seems to fully pop down on it.
Also, this time when I started the car back up the Audi MMI startup took quite a bit longer than normal; I probably saw the Audi MMI splash for 40 seconds or so before I could access normal functions. Everything was fine after that but it doesn't normally do this.

 

This is what I saw on the back of my head unit when I pulled it out today. I'm not sure if there was ever anything connected to the dark green connector (between the grey and the large harness) before I started on this but I couldn't find anything for it when digging around in there. My next step would likely have to be to pull the wakaa back out entirely and start over.


Connectors on back of head unit when removed today

 

Yeah, your connectors are in correct spots on back there. Be sure you check for any trouble codes it fired off besides the airbag light...that makes me wonder about your installer, lol. you need a VAG-compatible scantool to see those, and a good one to understand them. If you like DIY, or just want to be able to competently fix things and know what's going on, then spend the money on the VCDS cable...you will earn back the cost quickly in time saved/problems fixed/DIY coding, etc. If not a DIYer per se, get the OBD-Eleven bluetooth dongle...don't pay more than $60 for it, and don't buy the 'upgrade' subscription that allows for some coding access; that's just a waste of your $$...nice interface with smartphone app that is great for scanning car and clearing codes.

I'd bet you got plenty of trouble codes when you go look; I did. Based on codes I was seeing, it made me think that the wire connect harness I got was bad at the connector where it plugs into the HVAC head unit in dash, but when the control unit stopped turning on and then just working randomly, I figured it was bad. I rebooted MMI fair amount of times trying to force it to restart, cycled ignition on/off via key instead of push-button, removed, verified all codes cleared, drove it, no codes, reinstalled Carplay kit, codes all reappeared, etc., and I was very fastidious in the install process and ensured all connectors where seated properly nd nothing grounded out from the extra wires included with harness...no dice, same exact failures and codes thrown. My other car's carplay kit from same vendorworks fine and has for quite a while now; the new one has just been trouble since installed. Brilliant if/when it worked, but it generally didn't. Nothing else on car was affected though, so seems like just a hardware failure issue, and soon as I removed it and cleared trouble codes, all was back to normal again so far as the car is concerned.

I would have liked to simply swap the wire harness portion of it out to see if that was the real culprit, as the errors were consistent with a wiring issue showing me it sensed a ground fault in HVAC controls, etc.,intermittent connection/static in rear HVAC, etc. I did ask WAKAA to send me another harness, but as they wanted to fart around doing basic decision tree troubleshooting and play with firmware updates, I got fed up with them as I had already done all the troubleshooting possible to isolate the problem and detailed to them what I had done already.