Hi

I have a 2006 X type with OEM sat nav that I'd like to add an analogue aux input to. I do not want to add an FM transmitter to the car, I want something to interface to the D2B fibre system. Traditionally I guess I'd buy an ACM, PN C2C40513, to install on the vehicle. I've been unable to find an ACM, either via a Dealer, other vendors or as a used purchase. A few vendors are advertising the ACM for sale online but on further enquiries they have been unable to source the unit. My dealer says that Jaguar are not saying the ACM is obsolete yet but they can't provide a delivery date. I have had an ACM on order from my dealer for 3 weeks now so I assume I'll get a refund soon as the item is no longer available. I've tried a few other countries to find an ACM too but without success. I've seen postings on other sites where bluetooth to D2B interfaces have been built which is great but wouldn't suit my application, where I need an analogue audio input.

I've read that the Jaguar ACM is basically a D2B Dension 500 Light. I spoke to Dension about obtaining an ACM and they confirmed that they supplied the ACM but said they could not sell them directly, they had to be supplied via Jaguar. This made me think what would I need to do to "convert" a D2B Dension 500 light to Jaguar use. There is a lot of information n the internet about the ACM. I do not have access to either the ACM or 500 so I'm piecing together what I might be able to achieve without access to either product. My thought process is shown below, if you can see any (many!) holes in my theory please let me know. In the unlikely event I'll get this to work it might help others who need an audio input.

Hardware
I've found a couple of sites that advertise that they have the 500 light in stock for early Mercedes use. I believe this will be the D2B version, I'll confirm this with the vendors though once I'd performed more research. Mercedes appear to of used D2B until 2004, when they moved to MOST. The 500 doesn't ship with the audio input interface unit, so I'll need to order this too.

Electrical
From photos I've seen of the ACM the ACM appears to be shipped with a Jaguar specific harness. Some 500s appear to just require 12V and ground, while other also have a wakeup signal too. I'd be able to pull power and wakeup from the harness that feeds the 6 CD changer so I'm not to worried about copper wiring, unless you know different.

Optical
I've read some posts that say that Jaguar might use a different physical optical connector than that supplied with a 500. I've ordered a used 3 way Jaguar D2B harness so I have something to play with/butcher if required. I'm hoping I can modify the 500 harness with the Jaguar harness bit to make an optical harness up.

Firmware
The 500 install manual (http://www.dension.com/files/product...tall-guide.pdf) mentions a config file called GW_CFG.BIN that must be loaded onto the 500 before use for each different car vendor. The 500 ships in Mercedes compatible mode. The Dension website contains configs for Mercedes, BMW & SAAB only. The Dension website (Dension - Jaguar) contains a firmware for the Jaguar ACM, I don't know if this contains the Jaguar GW_CFG.BIN details too. The Dension website car vendor specific config files are tiny at 5K, the Dension website Jaguar file looks like the entire firmware of the unit as the file is called G5DB_UPD.ROM and is 600K. This may be an issue, I guess I won't know until I try!

If you can add anything to this please met me know. If you know where I can buy an ACM I'd also be very interested!

Many thanks

 

They do come up for sale but are not cheap. Car breakers have them.

 

I have them on my saved items on ebay. They do come up now and then. But sellers either ask crazy amounts... $500+, or they bid up to $500+.
I got mine on this forum 4-5 years back. A guy was selling his X and stripped out the ACM and sold it to me for $200. I don't even use it for my iPod any more. I used the two RCA inputs to feed a Sirius Satellite Radio.

 

After I made the post above I spent a lot of time trying to find a used or new ACM before I bought a Dension directly. I came up with nothing but my local Jaguar dealer said the ACM was showing on back order, implying it might still be available from Jaguar. I ordered the ACM from my local dealer. After a few weeks the dealer reported that Jaguar had an ACM available at a dealership in Australia. My dealer then reported that Jaguar said the ACM was PN C2S44674, not the later C2C40513 I wanted ideally. Jaguar said that the only ACM they have anywhere globally is this unit but they couldn't confirm compatibility with my car in EPC as the ACM was part of a kit. I asked my dealer to continue to source the item. I purchased the later optical cable harness C2C38901 to take the ACM I was expecting from the earlier C2S44674 to the later C2C40513, as well as downloading the latest firmware for the ACM from Dension.

The ACM arrived at the dealership yesterday. The Jaguar instructions suggest installing the unit next to the head unit in the vehicle, As I only require a USB memory stick input I chose to install the ACM in the boot of my vehicle as I have satnav and so the optical connections are presented in the boot of my car. I didn't use the ACM supplied wiring harness, I took power and wakeup feeds from the satnav DVD. The ACM works well.

To assist others if they want to try my original route of sourcing a Dension 500 D2B and modifying to suit the X type I've taken some photos to show what the cabling and device looks like.

 

After I made the post above I spent a lot of time trying to find a used or new ACM before I bought a Dension directly. I came up with nothing but my local Jaguar dealer said the ACM was showing on back order, implying it might still be available from Jaguar. I ordered the ACM from my local dealer. After a few weeks the dealer reported that Jaguar had an ACM available at a dealership in Australia. My dealer then reported that Jaguar said the ACM was PN C2S44674, not the later C2C40513 I wanted ideally. Jaguar said that the only ACM they have anywhere globally is this unit but they couldn't confirm compatibility with my car in EPC as the ACM was part of a kit. I asked my dealer to continue to source the item. I purchased the later optical cable harness C2C38901 to take the ACM I was expecting from the earlier C2S44674 to the later C2C40513, as well as downloading the latest firmware for the ACM from Dension.

The ACM arrived at the dealership yesterday. The Jaguar instructions suggest installing the unit next to the head unit in the vehicle, As I only require a USB memory stick input I chose to install the ACM in the boot of my vehicle as I have satnav and so the optical connections are presented in the boot of my car. I didn't use the ACM supplied wiring harness, I took power and wakeup feeds from the satnav DVD. The ACM works well.

To assist others if they want to try my original route of sourcing a Dension 500 D2B and modifying to suit the X type I've taken some photos to show what the cabling and device looks like.

 

The Dension software allows you to control the music from your iPhone rather than the radio head. Thats good for a few reasons. Primarily because the radio will only allow you to play a handful of playlists. Controlling from the iPhone directly allows total access to everything.
A big negative I found was the system will only work with iphone/ipod 4 and below. I tried everything to get my 5s and now my 6s to play via the ACM. I bought adaptors and once got music to play. But it wouldn't charge. So as seen above I now use the ACM to route Sirius Radio to the system.

 

I've only connected the ACM to a USB memory stick so far, I've not tried any other device or the analogue audio input. I listen to spoken word podcasts and so I pretty much can just let the USB memory stick play in folder/file order of what is on the disk. Music would be harder to use via this method, but I never chose to listen to music. We don't get sat radio in the UK but we do have digital radio, which is broadcast from land based towers which the X type has no receiver for. I might obtain a DAB radio at some point that I could feed into the audio input of the ACM like you have performed with Sirius.

I removed a Parrot mk9200 from my last car, which provides the ability to play MP3s from a USB keyring. I thought about interfacing this device to my ACM to provide a small screen to choose which MP3 track to play. The Parrot suffers an issue though where it forgets were you had got to on a track, which is really annoying on on short drives. This issue has been raised with Parrot but no fix has been released yet. The ACM remembers where I had got to on an MP3 each time I start the car, which works better for me than the Parrot.

I'm currently running the latest Dension Jaguar firmware, G5DB1_09. I believe later non Jaguar firmwares also work but I've not tried this yet.

The ACM seems happy with most MP3 file formats, when I had my 3 series the car was very picky on MP3 file formats and wouldn't play a lot of my stuff, which was inconvenient when I had downloaded podcasts direct from the internet.

 

I've just purchased the Dension Gateway 500 with the BTA1500 Bluetooth module and am hoping to be able to adapt this to fit in my x-type. I have the Jag Nav system and the CD changer in the boot and have read this article with great interest, as I've not found anything else which covers this exactly.

It appears the ACM is just a slightly modded GW500, but whether the latter can be tweaked to work in the x-type is the big question. I'm interested to hear if anybody else has tried to get this working (even if it was a fail, it may save me time and disassembly)

 

I uploaded lots of pictures in case anyone else wanted to try this route so I'm pleased my photos have been of some use. Does the fibre interface on the 500 look the same as the one fitted to the ACM in my photos? The ACM fibre interface is exactly the same as the Jaguar one. The fibre side was one of the issues I thought about and that I might need to make an adapter optical connection up. You could purchase PN C2C38901 which provides a female D2B and two male D2B to hook an ACM up but to be honest it would be as easy to pull a spare D2B cable apart and just connect up another plug to an exiting harness (and cheaper!). One thing I found on my ACM is that I originally used ACC switched power on my ACM. This worked fine until I turned the car off, where I heard a loud pop through the speakers. When I turned the car back on again the ACM took ages to start and also returned to the top of the USB memory stick I use, meaning I'd never get very far into my MP3 collection! I changed the power feed to permanent power and all has been fine since.

I installed my ACM in the boot of the car as I had D2B, orange D2B WakeUp and power available there and access is much easier as I have a CD changer in the boot like yourself. I only used the USB MP3 input anyway so I don't need an ipod cable in the centre console (it would take room up that I'd prefer not to lose). I've placed the AUX box, USB cable and ipod cable in the left hand boot floor tray in my estate next to the spare wheel well.

I don't think the Dension 500 ships with the AUX box the ACM is supplied with. The AUX box contains the switch to swap between the ACM and 6 CD changer, as well as the phono inputs for audio and a reset button if the ACM locks up. The reset button might be important if the ACM is buried in the dashboard, you might need to hit reset after firmware updates via USB. When I upgraded my ACM to the latest Jaguar firmware it didn't play very nicely until I pressed the AUX box reset button, though a power cycle might have the same effect. I sourced an AUX box from eBay in Germany, item number 200868263246. The eBay vendor still has some stock if you require this part. I purchased the AUX box before I received my ACM and it appears identical to the Jaguar part. I'm keeping the AUX box as a spare in case I spill something on the one in the car :-)

If I can provide any details from my ACM please let me know to assist in modifying your 500.

 

I spoke to Dension technical support today for quite some time and they were very helpful. According to the techie I spoke with who appeared to really know his stuff, unfortunately it appears that the Gateway 500 has different hardware inside to the ACM and definitely cannot be adapted to fit in any Jaguar, this system is only compatible with Audi, BMW & Mercedes.

They confirmed that they supplied the ACM to Jaguar, but that they do not sell these directly and they can no longer be purchased, so I'm back to square one, albeit a little wiser. I really appreciate the information you've provided and I'm sure it will assist when I get my hands on an ACM.

 

This was always my concern with using the 500 instead of the ACM. I spoke to Dension too and they said the same thing. Is the 500 D2B connector the same as that fitted to the rest of your D2B devices? I've never seen a 500 to compare to my ACM. I wonder if the hardware is different on the ACM or if the issue relates to the GW_CFG.BIN issue I mention above? If I were you I'd test your 500 by pulling the D2B connection to your 6CD changer and plugging in to the 500. There is power via the AUX connector or via a cigarette lighter feed in the boot, it doesn't need to be pretty for a test. Do you have the Mercedes/D2B version of the 500? There is a MOST version too, which is more common but I doubt it compatible with D2B cars.

 

Hi

I just googled the ACM and there *might* be one for sale on another forum, if it hasn't gone already. Might be worth asking the guy.

Jaguar ACM

 

Thanks, just read that I'll ping him and see if he got it out and still has it.

The D2B connector in the Gateway 500 is definitely different to the ACM, the fibre connectors are closer together than in your picture, which suggests the hardware is different inside as suggested by Dension. I'm sure with patience I'll lay my hands on an ACM though.

 

Hi

I wanted to use an Apple Lightening connector for a later iphone with my Jaguar ACM and so I purchased a DENSION LIA1GW0 Lightning Adapter for Gateway Lite. My ACM doesn't say it works with with the LIA1GW0 but I thought I'd give it a try. I plugged the LIA1GW0 into my ACM and a USB to Lightening cable into the LIA1GW0. When I tried to play audio via my iphone via the ACM nothing happened, though the iphone did start charging. My ACM has the latest Jaguar/Dension firmware on it, v1.09. I checked the Dension website and I downloaded v2.10 firmware for the Mercedes D2B GW 500. The firmware notes for the Mercedes v2.10 firmware states on v.2.00 and upwards that "This and upper firmwares give you the possibility to connect Dension accessories to your Gateway 500." I installed the Mercedes v2.10 firmware on my Jaguar ACM and the LIA1GW0 now works perfectly. I can use the ACM with my modern iphone utilising the LIA1GW0 to play music via the ACM. Thought I'd mention this in case other may have the same requirements I have above.

Thanks

 

There is an ACM on eBay right now...didn't check the price today, but it was started yesterday with a starting bid of $300. I doubt it will stay that "low".

 

I used this adaptor with a Parrot 9100 bluetooth kit. Gives me phone connect , USB and Aux input. Cables are located inside the ash tray area.

Parrot MKi9100 Car kit for Bluetooth® cell phones at Crutchfield.com


Parrot Kits and Quick Connect Harness Adapters

David N

 

This is available now - Bluetooth Audio Update for Jaguar Cars
And someone is making on over here in the UK, not available yet!!!