After thb introduced their first 'real' blueangel carkit, could this be the second ? I prefer this one because you don't have to connect a wire, but have a real cradle. The gps is also a plus.
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=122685
Ciaos,
Kristof
I have it installed now and it worx good. Only problem is that it keeps muted VERY long (about 10 - 12 secs) when the BA produces a sound. Have to find somthing to fix this. I know this is a problem of the carkit because when the mute wire is grounded it switches directly on & off.
Just purchased this, and it looks pretty good, but the instructions are a bit naff.
Do i gather that the car kit's control box in effect gets placed in circuit "between" the car's head unit and the Front Right (or left) speaker. The cables are labelled radio FR + and - and FR speaker + and -. Do I just cut the iso cables for the front right speaker and connect the two ends to the ends of the car kit cables? I'm fine with car audio so this shouldn't be a problem
Does the car kit mute the radio for *every* noise or just phone, tom-tom etc? I guess I could just stick a switch in the middle of the mute circuit if i wanted to stop this (like WMA playing through aux in on head unit)
Hoping to have a play tonight...
It depends on the car you have. I have an Opel Omega with Bose Sound System fully integrated. At the passenger side under the glove compartemant was a plug that had al connections. The BSS has a phone audio input that outputs the pda sound to all speakers including Tomtom, and yes, all system sounds come over the speakers too. If this bothers you you could turn the sounds off in the Sound & Notifications menu. Check your car, maybe it has such a same plug (for factory fitted Carkits). First i wired it directly to the radio but it produced a horrible sound when the phone was cradled. It sounded like if 10 cats where fighting on the backseat. But that is over now. Could you let me know how long it takes for the mute signal to UNmute it after a sound is played. It takes about 12 secs here and that is WAY to long for every damn sound.
GaMeR64
Oh ok. I have a vauxhall vectra with the same mobile pre-wiring so I wonder if that might work for me as well.
Did the car kit cables just clicp straight in or did you 'butcher' them?
I'll let you know about the delay to turn mute back off again once i've fitted it (probably at the weekend )
What i did not to kill the originall plug is that i soldered off a connector from a broken VGA card. It should be the same one as that where you plug in your IDE HDD at the back off the HDD (male plug strip). I soldered all the carkit wires to that. It almost looks factory fitted. Pay special attention when connecting the audio wires to your plug. At first i fixed tham at the back of my radio but that made a sound of 10 fighting horny cats on the backseat. Be sure to connect it to the plug because there is some filter between it. At least that`s with my carstereo (Philips CCR800 /w Bose Sound System.
If anyone could help me with modifying teh Tomtom 5 sounds the help will be appreciated. I unpacked all the voice files but i can`t seem to find the RIGHT editor to open these .ogg files. I tried SoundForge and Audicity but no luck. They can`t open them.
Related
HI,
i was just wondering the simplest and cheapest was to hook my xda IIs upto my car stereo, i know there is a similar topic to this but it confussed me a little since im not to fussed about the "car kit"
Here is the easist method.
Get one of these adaptors:
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=PPCPADPT01
And a FM transmitter:
http://www.expansys.com.cy/product.asp?code=120328
This will play your music over an available FM frequency on your car stereo. This generally produces good quality sound with out a lot of fuss.
I’m not vouching for this vendor they showed up first when I goggled for the hardware. You can look around for better prices. I would stick with Belkin brand transmitter its worked in the for me. I’ve heard bad reviews on others, also returned a "Monster" brand transmitter it just sounded horrible.
Good Luck,
N2O2
Heres the hands free and audio solution I put together... pretty similar...
The hands free "kit" I put together is actually an assembly of individual components I selected, rather than an actual kit.
I use a standard non powered, vent mount holder for the XDA 2s and power the device via a standard car charger. The holder does not have any kind of speaker built in. I am currently using the PPCtechs "16" adaptor, with the 3.5mm side plugged into a cassette sound feeder (have also used it with an FM sound feeder as well) and the 2.5 mm side plugged into a standard 2.5mm mono hands free speaker/mic combo. I have the mic part of this attached to the drivers side door pillar. Then, I have MS Voice Command installed on the XDA, with the "record" button on the XDA mapped to the Voice Command software
So the way it works is as follows.
1. Get into car and place XDA in vent mount holder. Attach car charger and PPCTech # 16 adaptor to XDA.
2. Turn car radio / stereo on and insert casette sound feeder adaptor (you can use a FM Sound Feeder here instead and tune to the appropriate FM station)
3. Hit the XDA "record" button and at the Voice Command prompt say "Play Don Henley" (It's the only CD I have on my SD card right now.. ) The music starts!
4. Then I decide I want to call someone, so, while the music is still playing, I hit the record button again and on the Voice Command prompt say "call Veronica at home". The music stops and the phone dials the number from the contact list.
5. The phone rings and I get her voice mail (she's never at home ) So I hang up and restart the music.
6. Then a call comes in, which interupts the music with the ring tone through the car speakers. I can see who is calling via the XDA screen and hit the "call answer" button on the XDA to answer the call. My car has volume up and down on the steering wheel, so that its pretty convienent to adjust the volume from there.
7. When the call is done, I hit the "call end" button on the XDA and the music starts back up automatically.
It works pretty well. A couple of other things to address your questions.
a. I don't have a speaker built into the XDA holder, so sound coming out there is not an issue for me.
b. The 2.5mm headset side does still have the speaker attached, but sound is not a problem as its so low.
c. I too have not found a (cheap) 2.5mm "mic only". I asked the PPC Tech folks if they had or could recommend one. They did not, but their solution was simple and inexpensive...."we find just cutting of the headphone part off the handsfree works well"!!
The other thing I use and love is PocketMax "PhoneAlarm" (www.pocketmax.net) As well as some great alarm functions, this app supports various profiles that control, amongst other things, the input and output sound on the PPC mic and speaker. So I set up the "car" profile with a mic sensitivity and audio output that matches the car stereo best. That way there are no big volume changes when switching from say the car radio to the MP3 music on the XDA (BTW, you can also listen to internet radion on the XDA this way too!)
Well there you go, hope that helps
Regards
Chris
thanks for your help guys.
ill prob just get the adaptor you recommended and then e-bay for the transmitter!
thanks!
Sounds like a plan. BTW, I would agree about the Belkin unit being preferred. I used a ''Sound Feeder" unit, but it did not have an "on' indicator light or external power feed... consequently I kept forgetting to turn it off and needed a new set of batteries every day! I also found that my FM bands in Atlanta were pretty packed, so I could not find a free channel to tune the fm feeder and radio to without some kind of interference... I think the Belkin unit has more frequency options though... Anyhow, thats when I switched to the cassette based feeder, which has worked very well
Good luck!
Chris
Yup forgot about that, cbrow51 is right the audio cassette feeder is the best option if you have a audio cassette player in your car audio system. I went to CDs years ago.
I have an mp3 cd player, I already have one of the tape adaptors, used to use that with a minidisc. so I definitely want a fm transmitter, i think it generally would be handy
anyway noticed there are loads of these going on e-bay, pretty much just paying for postage! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=58350&item=5787660321&rd=1
Cigarette power cable and power light
I have an mp3 cd player, I already have one of the tape adaptors, used to use that with a minidisc. so I definitely want a fm transmitter, i think it generally would be handy
anyway noticed there are loads of these going on e-bay, pretty much just paying for postage! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=58350&item=5787660321&rd=1
Cigarette power cable and power light
Installation
Well, installed it on Saturday - a professional looking, wires-hidden install took less than an hour - quite impressed as i'm not a 'Pro'
The kit comes with everything needed to install it, so as long as you know which wire is which in your car audio harness, you should be ok.
I purchased a spare ISO harness (£10) and chopped into that sitting inside, rather than cramped into my car. It also means if i change cars it's easy to move the car kit without taking wires from the car. The instructions aren't really much cop... But there is a chart detailing which wire on the wiring loom should be connected to which on your car audio leads.
It uses your ignition switched ACC circuit to turn on and off the power to your device, so you won't discharge your car battery if you leave your XDA in the charger. If you don't have an ignition controlled ACC circuit or you don't want it controlled like that, just connect both the 12v and ignition sense leads to your BATT lead on your car audio (put a switch in the ignition sense lead on the car kit if you want to control it yourself.
The kit uses your drivers side car speaker (or which ever one you want). You simply split the pair of cables between your head unit and speakers and the control box sits 'between' them. An external speaker is available but not included (despite what expansys' site said for ages) They can sell you the speaker but they don't stock it.
The microphone has a fairly stiff wire so it's easy to pass it through the headlining in your car to hide it. It's not as 'discrete' a microphone as the "bump" ones that come with Nokia car kits - think Tie-Clip mic and you're on the right track. It more than makes up for it's looks in pick up and echo reduction though.
I hide the fairly chunky control box behind the glovebox in my VX Vectra. It's about 2 foot from there to the back of the head unit and there is cable on the loom to spare. There's about a yard of cable from box to cradle as well. Watch out - the box gets quite warm when powered up, so be careful where you place it.
The cradle itself comes with backing plate connected to the cradle by a ball and socket connector that doesn't budge when tightened. however the backing plate can only move through fairly small angles, so for certain cars you'll need right angle brackets or custom made mounting points to put it on.
Sound Quality
The Sound quality on this is excellent. . There's no echo, no hiss, and the tones are natural unlike the usual tinny or dead car kit speakers. There is a car kit speaker for it seperately if you don't want to use your existing car speakers.
The kit doesn't have any problems powering my aftermarket 70W front speakers either - full volume is TOO loud (no distortion though).
The microphone is excellent. there's no need for the usual 'shouting' down the mic so the caller can hear you. On the motorway at '70' mph (!) i can talk softly and the caller hears me perfectly.
No echo or feedback and there wasn't any Dut-Dutde-Dut-Dutde-Dut pickup either (you know what I mean - the interference the phone signal makes)
GPS
The system provides a female PS2 port for GPS connection & external powering. Be warned! The PS2 port is the 'wrong way round' for Rikaline, Holux, Fortuna etc PS2 GPS mice. Expansys list the adaptor cable (female to female PS2 lead) as one of the accessories for the device, but don't regularly stock it.
I bought a Fortuna U2 PS2 GPS mouse - cheapest one they stock - and it's excellent. TomTom 5 accepts it as a TomTom branded wired GPS and cold start to readings on 7 Satellites was about 35 seconds. Perhaps it comes preloaded with some Epheremis data? I dunno. If i drive from home to work (50 miles) with everything switched off and then plug it in, tom tom takes maybe 5 seconds to notice the change. So far it seems spot on. MPH is out by 2 MPH compared to my speedo, but think that's my speedo
Audio Out & Telemute
The car kit has a telemute cord that you attach to the telemute wire on your head unit or car loom. In my case the head unit mutes the sound to the speakers completely and the car kit 'takes over' the front speaker.
As far as I can see the car kit notices the sound coming out of the XDA and mutes the radio then - theres no telemute signal coming from the XDA. The mute lasts for about 10 seconds AFTER the sound has finished. So when you first press TALK on the phone, the car kit mutes, but if the call hasn't connected and given you a ringing tone 10 seconds later, the kit 'demutes' the stereo. As soon as the car kit starts playing the ringing tone the stereo mutes again. A bit annoying when connection takes a while. The ten second pause in my stereo just because i've recieved a text message gets irritating, but not too much.
The downside for me is that the device plays everything the XDA2s outputs. TomTom, phone, WMA, notifications, the lot, and therefore mutes the stereo while this is going on, so i can't use the headphone socket to play MP3 into the Aux In on my stereo. I'm sure, however that i can figure out some way to 'switch' the wires into a WMA mode where telemute and speaker leads are disconnected. I'd have to switch it back for calls though...
Summary
Excellent car kit , let down slightly by the telemute and audio out function, but fantastic sound quality and nice connections. 8/10. Considering the opposition, there's no contest.
Fortuna U2 GPS seems an excellent receiver, made all the better by the £50 price tag...
Pics later in the week
Links (on Expansys)
Car Kit: http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=122685
Extra Speaker: http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=124130
Fortuna U2 GPS: http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=108897
PS2 Adapter cable: http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=122674
Dear NG,
may be someone from you has an idea, if such a car holder is available? I would like to install a car holder which allows two may be even three things.
First it should be active and allow charging via USB. This would be hooked up to the car power.
Second, either an additional audio plug or may be audio can also be acquired through USB?!? I could hook up this to the car stereo with the appropriate adapter and have Navigation or Media Player available through car stereo. A separate loudspeaker just makes the holder bulky or gives me a big black box, which I have to place in the car.
Third, hopefully not impossible, a separate mic that can be placed somewhere else in the car to allow true handsfree calling!
A dream, sitting down in the car and having all this available by only sliding the wizard in the car holder! I haven't made up my mind, if I would like horizontal or vertical installation of the unit, but I guess I would go for the first available option. Only have to check, if Navi TomTom 5 works in horizental mode...
Am I asking too much?
Any help or recommendations are welcome!
Lars
Third, hopefully not impossible, a separate mic that can be placed somewhere else in the car to allow true handsfree calling!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm an owner of a JAM and have been working on making my own car kit. I have everything ready to have an active powered audio device- with hopefully a separate mic of sorts.
This is what I am using for the mic/audio setup:
http://www.expansys-usa.com/product.asp?code=PPCPADPT02
This way I could buy an external mic with a 2.5mm plug and connect it to the above device (and route it anywhere in the car) and also have the audio connected directly behind my car stereo.
I tried out a dry run yesterday and all seems to working well.
@sh500 : could you please detail your setup?
I saw the cable that you use and it seems exactly what we need ...
I just want to understand a little bit more: it has an 2.5mm jack which we plug into the qtek's headset plug.
Then we have two 3.5mm plugs. In these we can plug a 3.5 mm mic (not 2.5 ) and a 3.5mm stereo out cable which you connect directly to your car stereo ?
Does it act like a car kit? I.e.: does it turns the cdplayer/radio volume lower whenever there's an incoming/outgoing call? and back when the call is over?
Thanks
TrickyHH:
Wo ist Luenburg? Ich hat gewohnen auf Deutschland in siegelsbach (nach Heilbronn), Moerfelden, Ruesselsheim, und Mannheim. 'Tut me leid, aber mein Duetsch ist sehr schlecht! Ich habe vergessen so viel.
Oh, well. :O)
I have a Parrot CK3100 handsfree. It has a dispaly and connects to your car stereo speakers to allow for auto mute and volume control. It features voice activation and uses bluetooth. (www.parrot.biz)
I just ordered a Brodit wizard holder and dash mount for my wizard. They are available in either portrait or landscape mounting positions with the device either open or closed. They offer passive, active, and ps2 hard wired holders. They have dash and console mounts for over 800 cars and trucks, all without even drilling a hole. (www.dsldevelopments.co.uk or www.brodit.com)
Viel glueck und viel spass!! Tschuess...
itsmewhoelse
How well does the 3100 Display work with the Wizard? I am considering this option only thing holding me back is I don't know if the display works or not with the Wizard.
Thanks!
It works just as advertised, which is very good. I only wish I could have had the color display (ck3200) instead. I wear glasses, but not always while I'm driving. The color display shows picture contacts also, so I wouldn't need my glasses on to see if the caller is someone I want to talk to. Also, the 3200 can be upgraqed (flashed) via bluetooth, the 3100 needs to be removed and attached with an optional cable. Other than that, it's pretty great, seeing how the wizard speakerphone is useless!
This may be close!
http://www.gpsforless.co.uk/product_details.php?id=3090&PHPSESSID=18e575902cf018ceda84c8695d526b3f
I've just recieved mine, and yet to test it, but it seems to have a DC jack for power (on/off switch), an RJ11 connector for 5v2a power out to charge a gps, on the right side, an audio out jack and a connector which seems to put audio in (although opening it up, the built in twinpole 2.5mm plug in the holder (which the KJAM sits on) is just directly wired to the audio out on the side, so to use the inbuilt amplified speaker, you plug the supplied cable into the side connectors looping back the audio through the amp.
Personally I wont be using the inbuilt speaker, and attempting to get stereo audio output from the side connector to my car stereo.. not sure of the correct wiring pinout yet, if I plug my 2.5-3.5 convertor and my headphones into the side jack I get output on the left only) so will need to rewire the jack or output cable accordingly....
Anyone else got one of these?
Does anyone know if the HTC P3350 W100 Wired Remote Control
http://www.expansys.com/htc/p_htc_item.aspx?i=147564[/URL]
will work with the Cingular 8525 (Hermes, TyTN)? This is sold in Europe and can be had in the US from Mobile Planet which seems to be the same as expansys.com.
On the European HTC site there is also a media fix that may apply to this accessory as well as the Y connector.
HTC audio Drivers
Downloading and installing this driver update will provide your HTC mobile device with the latest available optimised software for use with the following accessories:
YC A120 Y-Cable adaptor
The hot music setup for Mogul and 8525
I just purchased the HTC RC W100 Remote from Mobile Planet. It connects to the phone's extUSB and provides a 3.5mm headset jack that carries the mic port out to the connector. It has a 36" cord so there is a lot of cord if you have a long headset cord.
The head has controls for fast forward, pause, +/- volume and you can answer/end calls, mute and put a call on/off hold. This assumes that you have a mic on your headset to talk into.
The http://www.Europe.HTC.Com site says it is for the TyTn II but it seems to work with both the 8525 and the Mogul . . . It is not on the USA site at all.
I use the Sure SE110s stereo headset (individual internal sub-woofer component) and added their MPA-C cable that has a mic in it (Thsi would work for any headset). I have not found any other solutions that wok this well.
The standard headset really has poor quality and is uncomfortable for my ears. Bluetooth is either a mono headset w/ mic or a stereo headset (no mic) and the battery life is unpredictable.
This way I can ride my bike and control my music while the Mogul stays in my camel-back and when a call comes I can actually answer it and then go back to listening.
Very cool setup.
So this doesn't solve the headphone problem? Can't I just buy this and a pair of headphones? I don't need handfree anyway
E: Why a 36'' cord? I totally lost interest
Headphone Problem
N1c0_ds said:
So this doesn't solve the headphone problem? Can't I just buy this and a pair of headphones? I don't need handfree anyway
E: Why a 36'' cord? I totally lost interest
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
N1cO;
I do not know what headset problem you are referring to but this is definitely a solution if you want to listen to music with a good stereo headset. I just happen to like the Shure stuff because they eliminate some road and wind noise while I am riding my bike or skiing. Also the higher end ones actually have miniature tweeters and sub-woofers built in.
All you need is the W100 and any headset with a 3.5mm jack.
As it turns out, I just found out the unit has a built-in mic and that eliminates the need for a more expensive headset that has a mic. There was nothing in the manual that came with it that talked about the mic! So RTFB does not work!
It also comes with a small disc that has the driver in it. I tried to install it on my Mogul but it said that I had the latest driver . . .
As far as the 36" cord, my Shure headset comes in 2 pieces, the earphones are on a short cord so it is not too long. If you had a standard headset, it might get a little long.
The other side of the Shure headset has the connectors that go into the device(s). This way you can have several different connectors for different phones, MP3 players, etc. Blackberry's and Razor's have different jacks and most cell phones like the HTC 8125 (Cingular) use a 2.5 mm jack.
http://www.shop2us.com/car_mount/d2_fm_kit.jpg
Hi All,
I have just purchased and tested this product. It cost just £22 from Ebay. Quite a bargain really. The build quality is quite poor. However, the D2 does fit quite nicely and you don't need to fiddle with it too much to get the mini USB connected. One strange thing is the side flanges. They do overlap the green and red phone buttons slightly, so you could find yourself accidentally calling someone when inserting the D2 into the cradle.
Once in, it is an excellent product. The sound quality through the car radio is superb. Even driving through London (where the airways are filled with legal and illegal radio stations) there is no interference with this transmitter. I have tried a few of these type of FM transmitters and can happily say this is easily the best so far. The volume on the D2 needs to be turned down to about 13 or 20% on the HTC, otherwise you will get some distortion when playing loud music.
Re-tuning is a breeze with the back-lit LCD screen, if the frequency you have it on has some interference.
One problem is making or receiving a call. When a call comes in, you can hear the ringing through the car speakers. However, this device disables the D2 microphone and does not have one built in itself. The only work around for this is to have a bluetooth headset. Therefore, once a call comes in, the bluetooth headset will then provide the sound and microphone and so you can speak/hear as normal. The car speakers will be disabled once you accept the call through the bluetooth headset. Obviously the headset will need to be connected first. Personally, I use a small programme called bluepower. This turns on bluetooth on my D2 when it is being charged and then turns it off (to save battery) when it is not being charged. Therefore, as soon as I put the D2 into the cradle, it links with my already paired bluetooth headset
So, I can now sit in my car with my D2 charging, playing music through my car radio and make/receive calls using my bluetooth headset without any problems....
All sounds great doesn't it?
However, there is one small problem.
If I choose to listen to a different radio station, I will not be able to hear my D2 ring or hear when an email/text comes in, or to the voice guidance on my iGO8 (not that I use it).... You may consider this a safety feature because you don't want to have this distraction whilst driving do you? Obviously you can still see these events in the usual way, if your screen is turned on. This is not such a huge problem I don't think, but some might.
Perhaps it will be easy to be able to somehow link up a working microphone with this system and have a rather decent hands free system, but I don't know how to. I have seen other threads which have also described this problem with other such systems, but never a solution except the bluetooth headset one. Maybe someone can suggest a registry tweak for this or a Mortscript programme???
Anyway, to conclude, I am very happy with this purchase, especially at the price.
Hope this helps someone
will the Pure fit in a TD2 cradle?
Will the Pure fit in a TD2 cradle? The bottom ends appear to be differently shaped. Is it close enough that the two can be interchanged for a cradle like mitsi posted?
I want a nice cradle with a built in usb plug so I dont have to figit. The proclip one is too darn expensive. Whereas the custom fitted car cradles for the TD2 are plentiful...
Mic For the FM Transmitter ALMOST !!!
Well like you i bought one of these fine products I did come across a couple of issues (and work arounds).
1. At certain output frequency's the GPS did not work ??, noticed that when the power to the FM Tx was removed the GPS signal returned. as I tried different channels the interference varied so worth looking out for.
2. Again at different output channels I would pickup the mobile trying to make a connection to the network (approx every 10min), again changed the channel the effect varied from bad to zero.
Microphone, I took my unit apart and the pcb has the position for a MIC marked on the pcb but no mic fitted. I took out a mic from the supplied handsfree kit supplied with the phone this fitted and off I went to try but no luck.
On further investigation the mic needed to be wired pack to the usb plug BUT the pins for the plug are enclosed in the glue used to hold the plug in position and there were no leads off the plug to wire too !!!!!!!!!!!!
But like u the unit is still worth the cash