New TCU and Voice Command
 

Good morning,

I have a 2004 M3 Convertible (prod 11/03).

I purchased the new TCU unit - 84 10 9195455 to get bluetooth in the car.

The bluetooth works fine, pairs up great, downloads my address book and I can place and receive calls well.

I did have to install a bluetooth antenna in my console.

I cannot seem to figure out how to get the voice command working.

I've searched endlessly. Yesterday I went to the dealership and purchased the SES Jumper Plug, but I cannot find the SES cable in my car. If it was there, it should be around where the TCU plugs in (behind the driver rear seat), but there is none.

Is there another way to activate voice recognition with the phone?

Do I need to get the separate voice recognition module? If so, where does that plug in?

Thanks in advance.

Brian

General experience with buying one of these modules new from Tischer (or a different BMW dealer) is that it comes with the voice recognition function turned off. The Dealer should be able to turn this on for you with their computer (typical coding charge 1/2h or 1h depending on how "nice" the dealer is), but it their computer may not allow this for pre-2004 cars as it was supposed to be only a feature on 2004 and later cars.

There are a couple of threads over at bimmerboard asking kiwijochen, the author of Navcoder (software to allow owners to do some of their own coding) to add a feature to turn on/off voice recognition in TCUs. Note navcoder is not free and you also would need to buy (or build) and iBus/USB or iBus/RS232 interface to do this coding yourself (assuming Navcoder is updated to allow it).