For the last week or two I was furiously looking into how to add Bluetooth to my XK8, without removing the OEM system and without splicing into it. Everything I found was concerning Alpine AI-Net connections between the CD changer and the radio, and that this is the best place to look for doing this. There were options with keeping the changer and not keeping it, but I couldn't find anything on the market that would do either jobs.



Also it turned out that my CD Changer uses M-Bus rather than AI-Net. Same concept, slightly different pinouts. I do not know if it has anything to do with the Harman Kardon speakers setup... Only one shop around me offered a makeshift emulator which will add the option for USB playback (no AUX) at the cost of no CD changer for 100 euro 60 more euro to add bluetooth support. Suffice it to say I didn't take the deal... All shops were telling me that directly splicing in the audio lines is not gonna work because of it being different kind of signal or something else, I don't remember.

So I decided to splice in. But like I said I didn't want to splice into the factory cables. Sadly I was searching for a week or so and I couldn't find any M-Bus extension cables locally. To be fair nothing M-Bus related was available anywhere. I did find one on amazon:


but just before ordering it I managed to find some really cheap *** M-Bus plugs, which I decided to make into a "cable" and test with first. (soldering on the male plug was a pain... the pins were obviously not made to hold solder which was weird...)



Firstly... I am truly sorry about the quality of what I've built I used whatever I had laying around, and the only purpose was to test the function, but not to leave it in the car.



The plan was simple - make a M-Bus extension, and add a switch for the Audio inputs - one from the cd changer and one from the AUX. The audio ground was common for both inputs.

I've used this pinout: http://pinouts.ru/CarAudio/alpine_cd...r_pinout.shtml

It took me more than it should have, but to be hones, I haven't held a soldering iron in probably 10 years or so

The final result was satisfying The contraption and the switch worked as intended. Granted there was a static noise/sound when nothing was playing while switched to AUX, but I would give it to the poor build quality of... everything But the sound itself is awesome!


Next steps are to order a proper cable and splice into it. I will move the switch into the cabin, probably next to the steering wheel - there are to empty switch spots next to the Valet button (can anybody tell me what OEM switches fit there which I can retrofit for this). I also plan to put an antenna on/off switch there too. Of course the AUX in will be replaced with bluetooth

I will post the full DIY solution when I'm finished

 

Kainy, I too used that space for switches. Instead of using a single switch, I use it for 4 switches (up, down, in, out - for my steering wheel movement).

I took a piece of Rosewood, cut it into a rectangular cube, length about 15mm.Lets say the hole is 20mm x 20mm. I cut the width and height of the cube 25mm x 25mm.

then I made 4 cuts , one on each side, from the back towards the face. Each cut was 12mm deep, and took 2.5mm of wood off the side.

hope I described it well enough for you to be able to picture that it can now be inserted into the hole and it will stop at the lip of the slightly larger face . This can now hold 4 or 5 micro switches. Just be very careful to drill the holes out with great precision. You'd be surprised how good you eye is at picking out even the slightest misaligned placement on something this small.

of course I rounded the visable edges for a finished look.

all measurement numbers are for illustration and description. The wood is probably thinner back to front.

it sounds complicated , but if you have the tools (I used a radial arm saw) its far easier than finding a good looking switch that fits the hole.

please ask if I wasn't clear.

John

 

I did something similar on my AI-NET car - however I used a Motorola T605 bluetooth kit, which has the added advantage of automatically switching between bluetooth and line-in, so no need to add any kind of mechanical switch, the T605 does it for you. The output from the CD player goes to line-in on the T605 and the line-out from the T605 then goes back to where the CD player was connected to.

This would work on your car also.

 

Sadly it is a pretty old kit. I was thinking in looking into some Parrot kits or similar, as I am not at all familiar with them. They should have the same option I guess... I do aim at having A2DP and HFP both in the car, but for now I repurposed my Raspberry Pi into a bluetooth receiver, which will work for a temporary solution until I find the perfect build

 

I put a very small double pole changeover relay next to the CD player in the trunk / boot. I ran the "new" aux-in cable into the back of the car - it is long enough to connect to my phone (for playing music) put on the passenger seat if I am on my own, or the back 'seat' if I'm not. There's then just one single wire required to ground the relay and I put this in the centre compartment along with an antenna on/off switch. I didn't want to add anything visible and non-original, and this doesn't.

 

 

It's old, but still works, much like my XKR.

You can still find new old stock on ebay.

 

 

 

 

 

Hey guys. I am moving forward with the plan to upgrade my current bluetooth setup, but need some circuitry help

In short my plan is to install



with a setup similar to the above one but with 1 crucial difference. I want to make the switching between the AUX sources to be automatic. When the Bluetooth is on (as this one has a switch) it will be the audio source, but when it is off the cd changer will be the source again.

The only way I figured to achieve this, aside from tearing apart the bluetooth and using its switch to control the AUX switch, is to use a which would detect when the Bluetooth is on and then send a signal to whatever is switching the AUX input. For the AUX switching I only came up with using relays, each with a signal wire coming from the current consumption module. But I do not know if this is the best solution, sound quality wise

A very rough and amateur schematic below. I will take any suggestions on how to better achieve this

 

First of all turn your relays around, so the pole goes to the line input on the car radio and the NO goes to the bluetooth output and the NC goes to the CD player output - this way you only need one DPDT relay. Be warned however that this kind of simple switching of line inputs using a relay causes a nasty crash sound when it changes over, which is very bad at high volume. Another of the reasons to use a ready made solution like the T605.

 

I have nothing to contribute, other than to say this is really cool, and I may copy it in the future

 

Agree that this is way cool! No idea what your “Tech speak” means, but looking forward to the “hearing” the results

 

The relays are just to show the concept and I haven't thought on how to correctly connect them (also the software I used was a bit limited ). As for the switching, the above working solution uses an mechanical switch for the AUX and there is no crash when switching. Still I was told there might a better kind of switch for the job or at least the schematic might needs some additional components which will make sure there is no crash or additional noise. However the only switch I found was a solid-state relay, which looks like a worse solution when dealing with sound.

On the other side, I do not see how T605 is a ready solution when it is practically the same as the bluetooth I am using now, albeit way older in specs. It still needs to interface through AUX, and I can easily do that if I do not want to use the ce changer.

The only other thing I think I won't be able to figure out is how to override the radio when there is an incoming call on the bluetooth and the radio is on FM or Tape. But this I think will be asking too much from the existing setup However I do have a spare radio which I can play with and try to rig up something that will "press" some buttons on demand

 

The T605 does everything you want in one package without any extra relays, switches or circuits- it will automatically switch between bluetooth audio and CD audio, automatically mute the radio for phone calls etc. All you have to do is wire it in.

 

I can't seem to find an installation guide of the T605 where there is automatic switching between the CD Changer and the bluetooth module. Also if I am understanding it right, the mute function works, yes, but the sound is coming from the device itself. In any case if you have a more comprehensive guide for the T605 where I can see how it wires up, I would appreciate it. However is there a newer model of it, as that one is discontinued and hard to find?

 

Have a look at Jim Roal's tutorial on how to install a T605 in a 1998 XJR - it works through the car stereo like an OEM phone kit, with the addition of stereo audio streaming via hacking into the CD player connections. In other words its exactly what you are trying to do, but in one off the shelf device. You can research if later models from Motorola have the same functionality

http://jimroal.com/cars/X308Bluetooth.pdf.

 

Yeah, I know this one, but he is not using the cd changer, which is my main point. I will still investigate how the phone bit works in more detail.