Re: Houston, the parrot has landed.... (long) (archive)

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I am interested in what you did, especially regarding the steering wheel interface.

To make a long story short, I hard-wired a HDD-based MP3 player (Neo-35) into the X5's (DSP) electronics, with the player in the back and the wired remote in the cockpit. Simple if was not, but it is well worth it.

The next phase, planned for next weekend, is to install a steering wheel to Infra-red interface so that the buttons on the wheel will control the MP3 player.

Well, I spent most of my weekend fitting the CK3000 hands-free kit into my X5, I've done a lot of easier installation stuff in my time!! The good news is that it all works well, the bad news is that it took me about 12 hours of sweat and toil. The CK3000 kit arrived Friday so I went out Saturday morning and bought myself a new Nokia 6310 mobile phone to go with it, nice phone.

The CK3000 control box is small (4" x 2" x 1") and fits easily behind the glove box (once removed). I could not get an X5 to ISO speaker convert cable (X5 is too new a model!)so I had to make one up (about +3 hours), I had to cut the existing audio connector from the harness and use this. The CK3000 needs the usual power connections to Ground, Battery +12v and Ignition +12v. The X5 wiring and electrics are so complicated it was a nightmare just finding suitable wires to splice into! I must have spent a couple of hours just finding the right wires at the fusebox behind the glovebox (RHD).

Anyway, it all works great. When I get into the car with the 6310 it detects the CK3000 within a few seconds of the ignition being switched on and just gives a beep to let me know it has connected OK. There is a little button panel that came with the CK3000 that has 2 buttons on it, it is mounted on the dash just to the right of the steering column. One 'green phone' button and one 'red phone' button, just like on many mobile phones. These work just the same way as on a mobile phone, press the green button to answer or make a call, press the red button to end or refuse a call. As these are just a couple of simple buttons wired back into the CK3000 unit I had the great idea that I would use the R/T and voice buttons that are on the steering wheel instead. After spending a couple of hours stripping down the steering column to try and trace the wiring I gave up! Because I disconnected the little green connector under the column that carries all the wiring for the steering wheel buttons I now have the air-bag warning light on, sh1t! I then gave up on this idea, there are only 9 wires in the cable to the green connector but there are 10 buttons on the steering wheel plus illumination and airbag - so the wiring is not so simple as it may seem.

I could not find a 'mute' input to the head unit so I did without this and everything seems fine. The phone audio over the speakers is good and strong, very clear. The phone audio volume is adjusted with the volume control on the phone (the stereo volume has no effect of course). I mounted the mic in the roof centre console just where the normal BMW mic is mounted, I could not trace the existing mic wire but it was easy enough to remove the left A pillar trim and route the new mic wire across the headlining and out of sight, down to the CK3000 behind the glove box.

If anybody else is interested in doing this mod I can provide you with details of which wires to use to get the required power feeds for the CK3000, the rest is pretty straight forward. I would still like to use the steering wheel buttons instead of the little switch panel that came with the CK3000, so if anybody has any details of where the steering wheel button wiring goes to and how it works???

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