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

608K views 1K replies 289 participants last post by  jeffbert 
#1 · (Edited)
FIRST OFF: I must give much props and thanks to SycE46 for giving me the idea for doing this. He had already did this DIY on his car by the time I started it on mine and without his advice and directions this Pictorial DIY Project would not have been possible. Thsnks SycE46!


This DIY is for adding Bluetooth with Voice Command features to your 1998 to 2006 BMW E46 Sedan, Coupes and Convertibles. This DIY focuses on integrating an aftermarket bluetooth and voice command into the BMW Business CD53 Radio (all year Blaupunkt or Alpine models) so that you control your mobile phone's incoming and outgoing calls only using the steering wheel buttons and your voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3quf3KGjY0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xgV9v9Iak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0uJwknn3qw


The DIY difficulty of this project is very easy and takes the average Joe about 30-40 minutes. The only tools required are clean fingers, a star point screw driver and flat clean dull butter knife for prying the dash trim off. There is no splicing wires, no removing seats or console armrest, no adding antennas on your roof or digging around your trunk for cables. This DIY ONLY requires removal of the Radio, Center Vent and Glove Box (total of 10 screws) and everything else is plug and play. Some DIYs state that removal of the A P!llar is necessary for running the mic to the headliner but I will show you that it is NOT necessary to remove the A P!llar.

The cost of this DIY can vary. You will need to purchase the Connects2 CTPPAR007 steering wheel integration kit from the UK vendor
( http://www.lowcostcaraudio.co.uk/lc...+bluetooth+steering+wheel+adapter/pid/7642231 ) and their price is set at £49.99 (about $80.00 USD). And next you will need to order the Parrot CK3000 Bluetooth kit (it is also called the Parrot ck3000 evolution) which can cost from $9.00 and up on eBay. You do not need to buy anything else nor can you substitute other Parrot Bluetooth kits or aftermarket Steering Wheel/Radio Adapter harnesses. It will not work here. Also do not get tempted to save money on the CTPPAR007 and buy another similar Steering Wheel Control Adapter harness-and they are lots out there that claim to work with various bluetooth kits. It will not work here. This DIY will ONLY WORK with the CTPPAR007 and the Parrot ck3000 together!

When said and done this DIY will upgrade your BMW with much of what the OEM Bluetooth does including instant and automatic pairing and unpairing when you enter or exit the car, one button touch voice command, one button touch redial and full radio and steering wheel integration. The only thing you will not get is full Caller ID read out on your radio display-instead it will display PHONE or WAIT. This is something I can do without as I may have people sitting in my car and I do not want them to see who is calling me (see under girlfriend).



PART ONE: Looking at what we got

Here I got everything I needed off eBay. You need the CTPPAR007 kit which you can also find on eBay or eBay.co.uk. The vendor states that the CTPPAR007 is for the 1998 to 2001 E46 and the CTPPAR008 is for the 2002 to 2005 E46. This is wrong the CTPPAR007 has the 17 pin style connecter that all year BMW E46 cars and all year BMW Business CD53 Radios come with.
The CTPPAR008 is the flat style 40 pin connector that is found on the 2006+ E90 BMWs. So that will not work on the E46.






When you open the Parrot ck3000 kit you will see the obvious main bits (the blue box, the mic and the controller) and you will also see a bag filled with a few wire harnesses and a black rectangular module for connecting to the radio and allowing for the mute function. You do not need this since the CTPPAR007 will replace this portion of the ck3000 kit. Also you MUST HAVE the ck3000 Controller connected to the main blue box in order for the CTPPAR007 to make the steering wheel buttons work with the kit. You do not need the controller on your dash when using the Bluetooth as it only needs to be connected so you can tuck it behind the glovebox with the other modules.












 
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#723 · (Edited)
@Ausfahrt - It's the 600.

@paulthepwner - Probably, if you have access to the wires, you can just cut the mic it comes with and solder in the new one. I don't know about the 06's having a 17 or 40 pin or whatever, though...I'll let the electrical engineers of the forum help us out. ;)

@fourwhls - Sorry to hear that it's not working out for you. Did you try the resistor mod? I am getting a Droid X pretty soon. I saw somebody earlier in the thread was talking about their Droid not working because of a lack of BT Voice Dialing in Android. Luckily the Droid X has this, along with all other Android phones with Froyo (2.2 update) in the near future.

I am surprised that call quality varies from phone to phone though...
 
#728 ·
CTPPAR007 ordered from liquidice on ebay

hey guys.. thanks for this great DIY. I'm just bummed that I found this so late. ordered the CTPPAR007 from liquidice on 7/27/2010 waiting for shipment confirmation. I hope it doesn't take too long to cross the pond. let the waiting begin. :excited:
 
#732 ·
After a number of complaints about not being able to hear me and sounding like I had a "mouth full of cereal" I moved the mic from the factory location. I now have it coming out of the seam between the headliner and the removable panel that holds the sunroof switch, homelink unit and factory mic grill. I called a couple people back that complained and they said it made a world of difference.
 
#740 ·
I just finished doing the installation, took me 30' or so. First test was 100% clear for the caller and the receiver, that was with the car parked of course. I will test further and post the results. One thing I did is positioned the mic pointing down and isolated with tape so it will only capture cabin noise.
 
#745 · (Edited)
I'll throw in my experience from this past weekend.

I followed this DIY after receiving the kit from a fellow fanatic. The DIY itself is very precise and following it is really all anybody really needs. I will say however that removing the center vent was BY FAR the hardest thing I ever had to do. It's never been removed before so I'm not sure if it was a factor or not, but it took us almost 2 hours trying almost everything to get that damn thing out. Myself and my very loyal buddy worked on my car from 11 PM and we were done with it at 3:45 AM lol.

The install also included putting in a spec.dock which I'm quite happy about. Thank you so much to all those who contributed to this DIY and to this thread, your information and explanations are truly priceless. Stock location of the mic is by far the best. I can hear people's voices very clearly through the car's speakers. People hear me surprisingly well through the mic. I have heard from one of my callers however that (while I was on the highway), it sounded to them like I was "far away". The mic was probably picking up a bit more background noise than usual which would have probably been taking over my voice a bit. From what the caller told me, they would rank my voice quality at a 7/10 on the highway. Still loud enough to have a conversation but not the usual 10/10 clarity from when I'm on regular streets or at an idle.

I'm left with one final question: I will soon be upgrading my iPhone 3G to an iPhone4 however I wanted to know, is there any way at all that voice dialing can be used with the 3G? From what I've read, people need only press the voice button on the steering wheel to activate this feature on the phone. I know this feature was first introduced with the 3GS, but I was wondering if anybody had found a solution to this on the regular 3G. I suppose it's only a matter of time until I upgrade my phone and have this feature, but I was wondering if there was anything I can do in the interim. Thanks again for everybody's help :hi:
 
#746 · (Edited)
I'm left with one final question: I will soon be upgrading my iPhone 3G to an iPhone4 however I wanted to know, is there any way at all that voice dialing can be used with the 3G? From what I've read, people need only press the voice button on the steering wheel to activate this feature on the phone. I know this feature was first introduced with the 3GS, but I was wondering if anybody had found a solution to this on the regular 3G. I suppose it's only a matter of time until I upgrade my phone and have this feature, but I was wondering if there was anything I can do in the interim. Thanks again for everybody's help :hi:
The voice control needs a bucket load of processing power to operate smoothly, so while there are half-baked implementations available in the appstore, the new hardware really does enable it to work as it should.
 
#750 ·
I got the parts and installed this past weekend. Very easy. I got the center vent out in like 5 minutes. I pulled up from the bottom and pull out while rotating the bottom up. I hope that makes sense. kinda like an out and up at the same time.

Question though, may have been answered but am too lazy to search through all the pages. I have the Dice Ipod kit. I cant use my steering wheel controls or radio controls to change songs anymore. Can someone help please? :)
TIA
 
#751 ·
Well all the recent activity in this thread got me motivated to install my kit, so thanks everyone. The DYI was very helpful and I am quite grateful for the time and effort that went into getting it done.

That said I can offer a few thoughts on my install.

First and foremost I hate the glove box and hope this is the last time I will have to be upside down half in my car trying to get it back in place.

Secondly, I had some struggles with getting the A/C vent out of the dash. Obviously, I got it out but after taking a look at it there appears to be a simple way to make it happen.

There are two notched "wheels" on the top corners that anchor the piece in place. You should be able to slide a butter knife / panel tool in at the top corners to depress them and just slide it out. Hopefully that can save someone some frustration.

My "A" connector (original OEM harness) had virtually no slack and it was a real PITA to get it moved back, around and above the radio chassis. I managed to cut my hands up pretty good before finally getting the connector to face the drivers side with the wiring coming out of the back toward the passenger side. Once I did that I was able to get the harness out and slowly move a chunk at a time of the wires around the side of the chassis.

When reinstalling I wasn't able to immediately get the radio back in due to the cluster of wires. I had to run the Antennae lead above the new wiring rather than below. Once I got that done it fell right into place.

I have it paired with a 3Gs and so far people are telling me they hear me fine with the mic in the OEM location.

Other than that try not to do it in a 100 degree garage in the middle of the summer and you should be fine.


All in all I am really happy with it. Works well and only cost me about 130 in parts.

Thanks again everyone for the helpful input. :thumbsup:
 
#753 ·
....First and foremost I hate the glove box and hope this is the last time I will have to be upside down half in my car trying to get it back in place...
Cross your fingers you don't have to replace your Final Stage Resistor... http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=713544 like I have to next week :ben:

I've had no A/C for the last 3 days and now my battery is dead due to the fan not turning off when turning off the car. :banghead:
 
#757 ·
Hey guys! Just got done with the install, everything went smoothly. Two tips for others: 1. If you want the vent to pull out quickly and easily, simply take your palm to the bottom of the vent and push up...then pull out as hard as you can. 2. The C/A connector is the hardest bit because you have to pull the connector up through the left of the headunit cage. I found that if you pull the cable to the connector up first, it frees up space...then flex the headunit cage to the right as much as possible and pull/push the connector up quickly.

I have a problem, however. I have a Motorola Droid X. I have successfully paired the device, but the phone says "Paired - Not Connected". When I make or receive calls, the phone does not use the bluetooth and the button for bluetooth on the call screen is grayed out. Anybody else had similar issues? Anybody know if I did something wrong?

One more question, if you press either of the buttons on the wheel...should anything happen (besides voice activated bluetooth because the Droid X doesn't have that until the Froyo update.)

Thanks. I will continue searching this thread, sorry if this question is a repeat...but I've only read 12 pages in the 35 or so on here...don't have that much time on my hands.
 
#761 ·
I've had a few Android phones, and none of them do voice command. The Froyo ROMs I've run don't have it either. I think it will be in the next iteration of Android, 2.3 or something. Maybe I'm wrong and the full Froyo release will have it, but I don't think it was in the update Sprint released last week.

However, you can do a voice search using the phone, and it will dial the number then connect to the Parrot. Kinda defeating the purpose, but at least know that Google will be giving us full voice command relatively soon. PEACE.
 
#763 ·
Quick update, the bluetooth works in my car...but with a friends phone. We called somebody and they said they could barely hear us though.

Next step is to improve the mic quality. Pimpwerx, I will be waiting for this...I thought Google said that froyo would have bt voice dialing. If not, no biggie. This bluetooth mod isn't really that essential for me right now...I wasn't expecting it to work 100% immediately.
 
#766 ·
RIM needs to step their touchscreen game up. :str8pimpi

And actually, I might be wrong about BT. It might just be the ROMs I've used, as they're sometimes hack jobs. Google's dev site still lists it as a feature, so I'm gonna flash my phone again and see if one of the newer ROMs has it activated. It's really just a software thing, because our phones already do voice dial/search and also speech-to-text. PEACE.
 
#768 ·
I received everything and installed it over the weekend. I paired it with an iphone 3GS, all connected, but I am getting a lot of static when the engine is at idle. The static goes away when the engine is running at a higher RPM. I will have to look into getting a power line filter. I wonder if the placement of the "magic" boxes and the routing of the wires are picking up power noise from nearby power lines.
 
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