BMW E46 Integrated Bluetooth and Voice Command for Less than $100 Pictorial DIY

Dam good DIY. I will be trying this on my sports wagon 325i next month. I appreciate your time and effort. I am looking forward to the IPOD DIY. AGAIN..THANKS ALOT.

Originally Posted by nhs99v

First off - brilliant post! I am definitely going to follow this!

However, I don't have the CD player in the dash, I have the tape deck as there is an autochanger in the boot.

Please tell me that this will work with that as it is too good to be true if it does! I have read some very complicated posts about how you can get the phone controls activated in the steering wheel and all very very expensive!

Thanks again!

Thanks,
Should work with the tape deck. As long as the A connection is 17 pin style, you have steering wheel buttons for Bluetooth and you have a display on your radio.

yeah the OEM Bluetooth upgrade is almost as exhausting and expensive as putting in the OEM nav unit. When a DIY asks of me to remove my seats and carpets, drill antenna holes in my roof and 90% of my dash panel for putting in 10 year old technology that can cost me $2,000+ at the dealership I gotta ask myself is it worth it.

The OEM bluetooth kit has like 5 or more parts that never seem complete and can cost about $1000+ and I think it only works with like 2 or 3 phones.

Originally Posted by FlzRider

I just realized this wont work for iPhone users UNLESS your iPhone is a 3GS. The 3GS is the only iPhone with voice dialing capabilities.

Get a Blackberry. iPhone and Apple should have had simple stuff like voice dial and V.2.0 bluetooth wrapped up since the 1G iPhone. These are not new technologies.

So you mean to tell me there is no App for that!?

lol

NIce DIY. Two questions:

1. Do you know if this will work on the Professional headunit?

2. Will this work with the iPhone sans voice dialing? I don't really need voice dialing... I'd just like to be able to receive calls and make calls from the steering wheel.

Also, I already have Assist, is there any way to tap into the OEM mic or would I have to mount the aftermarket one elsewhere?

Originally Posted by redrum0486

NIce DIY. Two questions:

1. Do you know if this will work on the Professional headunit?

2. Will this work with the iPhone sans voice dialing? I don't really need voice dialing... I'd just like to be able to receive calls and make calls from the steering wheel.

If that head unit had the 17 pin round connector in th eback then the CTPPAR007 will work. If it has the flat pin style 40 connector then you need the CTPPAR008 connector.

iPhone sucks for ALL voice dailing bluetooth system. Fortunately it will still work for all iPhones BUT it won't be like in my video with my Blackberry 8900.
Your voice command is done thru an App that you have to download or something. I don't know much about it but you can find out from SYCE46-do a search for his threads.

Originally Posted by redrum0486

Also, I already have Assist, is there any way to tap into the OEM mic or would I have to mount the aftermarket one elsewhere?

You car has that!? I want it as well? How did you get that? Is your car imported or something?
Is the Assist in the mirror or in your headliner?
I've been told that splicing MICs don't usually result in happy endings but no need to splice anything since the Parrot's ck3000 MIC is really good-if not better than anything BMW put in your car 5-6 years ago. You can just install the Parrot's MIC in place of the the OEM MIC (which should just clip off of the MIC grill) before anything to see if you are happy with it before cutting up your car and the parrot's MIC.

Originally Posted by redrum0486

Also, I already have Assist, is there any way to tap into the OEM mic or would I have to mount the aftermarket one elsewhere?

If you have BMW assist and install the Parrot/Connects2 bluetooth kit you will lose the Assist function.

fantastic write-up! certainly more cost effective and cheaper than this: http://www.bigpatsfans.com/bt/bluetooth.htm

BTW, how did you attach the mic to the OEM bracket? Some silicone or something?

Originally Posted by sna77

fantastic write-up! certainly more cost effective and cheaper than this: http://www.bigpatsfans.com/bt/bluetooth.htm

BTW, how did you attach the mic to the OEM bracket? Some silicone or something?

No, no glue or silcone required. The MIC comes with an adhesive sticky footprint.

The entire ck3000 kit is quality. I get a lot more questions about the MIC than the rest of the kit.

The MIC is really the best part. I've no experience with the OEM E46 Assist or Bluetooth MIC but the ck3000 MIC is good enough on it's own that you shouldn't have to splice it or "Frankenstein" it to any other OEM MIC to get a better performance.

Folks who have placed the mic on top the A p!llar column have complained about road noise and echo but follow my DIY and place the mic where the oem E46 sedan/coupe mic grill is and it will work perfectly at any speeds, on any roads even with the sunroof and windows all open.

This is absolutely brilliant!

Quick question though, my steering wheel isn't equipped with any of the buttons. Will I be able to control the functions with the buttons on the navigation unit?

Dude, I asked on E46zone too, do you know if it'll work with the factory nav unit?

Originally Posted by Stan 24v

Dude, I asked on E46zone too, do you know if it'll work with the factory nav unit?

If you have OEM nav, its worth putting in BMW's ULF so you can have integrated voice recognition with the Nav system.

Originally Posted by redrum0486

NIce DIY. Two questions:

1. Do you know if this will work on the Professional headunit?

2. Will this work with the iPhone sans voice dialing? I don't really need voice dialing... I'd just like to be able to receive calls and make calls from the steering wheel.

On the iPhone 3GS, the phone has voice dialing built in (on the phone, a long press of the home button activates it). On the steering wheel controls, quick press of the "telephone" button activates the voice controls. No programming of parrot unit is necessary since it's using the iPhone 3GS to do voice dialing instead of the Parrot Bluetooth unit.

I'm not sure how this works on the 1st Gen / 3G iPhone since they don't have voice controls.

You can always dial numbers directly from the phone. It'll still go though the bluetooth speakerphone.

Originally Posted by delmarco

You car has that!? I want it as well? How did you get that? Is your car imported or something?
Is the Assist in the mirror or in your headliner?
I've been told that splicing MICs don't usually result in happy endings but no need to splice anything since the Parrot's ck3000 MIC is really good-if not better than anything BMW put in your car 5-6 years ago. You can just install the Parrot's MIC in place of the the OEM MIC (which should just clip off of the MIC grill) before anything to see if you are happy with it before cutting up your car and the parrot's MIC.

I believe BMW assist came in cars from 2004 and up. BMW assist is like OnStar. So... all the late model e46s (in the US at least) have a Microphone already in the stock Mic location instead of a blank panel.

I have a small concern about your mic wire running up the A-pillar. Your wire is now sitting against the airbag! I removed my pillar cover and ran my wire UNDERNEATH the airbag in order to get around that problem. Removing the cover is not that difficult...but you will need a hex head driver of some sort (cannot remember the size).

Just an FYI.

Originally Posted by 3WheelGTi

I have a small concern about your mic wire running up the A-pillar. Your wire is now sitting against the airbag! I removed my pillar cover and ran my wire UNDERNEATH the airbag in order to get around that problem. Removing the cover is not that difficult...but you will need a hex head driver of some sort (cannot remember the size).

Just an FYI.

it's a t-20 torx bit. But yah, it's really easy to remove the pillar cover and run the mic wire with the other wires running along the pillar. I have a picture of it in my writeup.

Originally Posted by 3WheelGTi

I have a small concern about your mic wire running up the A-pillar. Your wire is now sitting against the airbag! I removed my pillar cover and ran my wire UNDERNEATH the airbag in order to get around that problem. Removing the cover is not that difficult...but you will need a hex head driver of some sort (cannot remember the size).

Just an FYI.

My mic wire is not inside the A p!llar. It is running on the door-side edge of the p!llar in the felt lining and only crosses at the top edge of the p!llar to the headliner.

It is not laid in front, crossing in front or touching any of the air bag zones in that p!llar.

I made sure of that.

I'm not sure if this is the same for coupes or converts, but the sedan you can tuck the wire in the felt lining on the door-side edge of the p!llar without having the need to remove or go into the p!llar.

Hi guys, sorry I've been offline for a while & haven't chimed in lately.

I popped off the A-pillar cover (screws were long) and clipped the mic wire in the four or five clips that run along the airbag like synE46 did.

As I have PM'ed with delmarco, for some reason I was not able to get quality mic responce when I positioned it inside the headliner as he shows in his DIY. A bit of a bummer really because I really wanted it to be a 'stealth' install. It sounded like I was talking with a mouth full of cereal or something. I also found that the mic was clipping at normal voice levels but sounded much better when I wishppered. So like was discussed earlier in this thread I started to play with a series resistor to reduce the sensitivity of the mic. Since the youtube video suggest 10 ohms, I started with 20 ohms, then 75, then 200, & I stopped at a 300ohm.

And as I have already hinted, my final mic position is below the headliner.

Can anyone tell me how people do their posts with thumbnails of the pictures & then when you click on them the go full size? I can't figure it out.

On another note - I have been having experiencing eratic behaviour with the whole system since installing it. It will work fine for a while & then I hit the steering wheel phone button and instead of hearing my blackberry prompt "say a command" over the speakers, the phone seems to be in discrete mode and is not sending the audio to the system.

When I initiate a call with the phone keypad, everything is fine.

I called the place where I bought it & they said that it sounded like a parrot/bluetooth problem - not the quick connect / steering wheel control box so they helped me open a support case with parrot. Of course the first thing parrot wanted me to do was to disconnect the steering wheel control box & use there controller until we got things sorted. The problem still existed. I spent a few days making sure my 8110 BB Pearl had the latest OS then I gave up.

ACS agreed to send me another parrot kit but instead I borrowed one from futureshop and it was still glitch. So now it's actually looking like the phone. My IT department had a go with it (and Rogers) since it' s an Enterprise phone, etc, etc.

I broke down & asked to my wife (nicely) to borrow her 8310 curve & I could not repeat the problem.

Soooo, now I have to wait until January to swap the phone through work.

Originally Posted by steve.325i

Can anyone tell me how people do their posts with thumbnails of the pictures & then when you click on them the go full size? I can't figure it out.

Manage attachments -> Upload JPG

If you then want to integrate the picture to not be a tumbnail, click the attachment to expand it, and copy the properties into the thread with img tags as such: