Just wondering if anyone has any views or experiance with fixed bluetooth handsfree kits for the Car.

I use the Nokia one with my 6310i at work, and it works well about 95% of the time, sometimes it doesn't connect and other times it crashes my phone. But the audio is clear even in my noisy Transit Connect.

I am thinking about the Parrot CK3000 or Sony Ericsson HCB-30 or even the new fancy Nokia 610. Will these work with my 6310i???

Any views welcome.

Cheers

Cris.

I've got te ck3000 and I'm quite happy with it. If you havn't already, you can read about my install. I've used it with a t68i and a simens S56(s55) and both have worked well. There's a bug in programming it with the s56 that requires a reset after each number is added, but you only have to do that once.

If you're not depserate, the next wave of bluetooth car kits should come with displays for caller ID information. The ck3000 (and others, i assume) plays the voice tag for any incoming number it knows, so answering blind is rarely a problem.

Matthew

I really really like my parrot ck3000. Note that they're marketing it towards europe, so their wiring harness is ISO. And they've also designed it specifically to integrate with the "to-speaker" wiring, which ends up being annoying if you've got a separate amp.

I'm in the US, where cars tend towards much more proprietary wiring, and I also hate chopping wires, so I had to research for a long while on getting some additional conversions harnesses. Plus, I was dealing with integrating it at line-level vs. speaker-level, so things got a bit complicated. The threads are here somewhere (probably under installation Notes).

Parrot has already shown their to-be-released replacement for the ck3000 at trade shows as mentioned. The caller ID on that unreleased unit is somewhat useful if you get a lot of calls from people not in your phone book, but from phone numbers that might give you a hint of who it might be, I guess.

Nobody has complained about my outgoing audio.

My only operational problem is that I seem to randomly pick one of three ways to pronounce "cellular" and the voice-recognition can't always match what I'm saying. Mostly the problem lies in my lap there.

-brendan

Hmm. The feature list for the Nokia 610 includes:

- External antenna connection

Nokia must be using the new BT profile that supports using the phone as the SIM & Phonebook only, and integrates an entire phone into speakerphone. That's pretty cool, and likely to provide much better coverage than the typical cellphone radiating inside the car situation.

Still, I seem to receive calls OK with my T610 buried in the crease of the driver's seat, even with the transmitter/antenna buried in there as well. Couldn't find it for a coupla days, and was quite surprised to be getting calls while out and about...

-brendan

As far I can tell the Nokia 610 uses Bluetooth SIM Access Profile, which basically means it uses the bluetooth to access the SIM card and the kit itself is a phone that deals with all the call related stuff. This would mean I would need to buy a new phone, but I really like the idea of having caller display.

I didn't know that Parrot were bringing out a new version, maybe I'll wait for that if it has caller display on.

Cheers

Cris.

I have the Sony Ericsson kit, and love it other than the fact that i can't get the phone mute to work with the empeg at the moment, but i haven't narrowed down what the trouble is just yet. It's sounds great and the voice recognition works as advertised. I did have to change "home" to "at home" to get it to recognize it 100%, so you might have to play around with some of the wordings to make them work all the time, but once i got that down it's worked pretty flawless. (other than the mute thing. hehe. but that might be a wiring problem or something else... like i said i'm tracking it down now.)

I knew I spoke too soon. Made a call last night and the CK3000 locked up when the person answered with the mute line active.

Nothing seems to be able to unlock it, including removing the key from the car. I can only hope the battery isn't drained today. Sort of glad I never added the extra wiring and relay to power the amp if the mute line is asserted.

Grumble.

Notably, that means no music in the car at all right now. Gotta go dig through the dash and see if a hard reboot of the unit fixes it, otherwise, a speakerphonedectomy is in order.

Luckily, I wired in harnesses that makes that somewhat less annoying.

-brendan

Did you try the reset function? I think you hold the two buttons down for a certain length of time, but I don't reallly remember. Mine's never done anything that turning the car on and off wouldn't fix, and it never even did that with the t68i.

Matthew

Yes, tried the reset two button thing: nothing. Left the car for an hour: nothing.

Going out soon to check on it, 24 hours later.

-brendan

Did you pull the negative battery terminal and give it some time to reset? That'd probably be easier than opening the dash, so you might want to try it.

Matthew

Thanks. But...pulling the neg battery terminal has 3-4 side effects:

a) have to reset the auto-windows
b) ECU gets reset and loses the "i" part of "iVTEC" for a while.
c) have to reprogram the defrost to allow me to disable the a/c when it is on.
d) Might cause me to have to go through fixing the airbag warning/disable

I'm mostly concerned about d, which may or may not happen.

Regardless, if pulling the power from the constant feed doesn't fix it, i'm going to have to open the dash anyway.

-brendan

Ok, pulled the double din mount out (for headunit/empeg), pulled the power cable that feeds everything and reconnected it. Now everything works again. Parrot didn't even loose my voice tags & preferences. Made some calls, etc. All good.

Perhaps a firmware update past 3.10 is in order?

I'm a bit weirded out that it was stuck in mute for so long. I verified the button lights go off when the ignition is off, but it appears the embedded system is on soft power of some sort and wouldn't shut down.

Need a kill switch. Or just keep a coupla screwdrivers and shop towels in the car on long trips. Grn.

-brendan

Hi,

I thought I would just bump this thread. I was looking at the Parrot CK3000 a while back as a solution but never got around to it. I'm looking at bluetooth car kits again now and they seem to have moved on somewhat.

So, any more experiences / recommendations? I've got a Nokia 6230 and considering either the CK3000 or the CK3100. I don't have much dashboard space for a display so not quite sure.

Has anybody managed to totally drive one through the empeg i.e. use the empeg display, speakers and mic jack? Is any of this possible or is it just the muting that is available?

I went with a bog standard Nokia Bluetooth kit in the end, it works great!

I kinda wished I had waited for the new Parrot ones, they look really cool, esp the one with GPS built in.

Cheers

Cris.

I use the empeg speakers through a line level converter. The empeg pauses and switches to aux whenever the mute line goes high.

I was at some show in san francisco (ctia? cita? something like that) and played with the new parrot for a few minutes and it was nice, seemed to work just how you'd expect. (Side Note: I found the booth by browsing the bluetooth neighborhood on my pocketpc and seeing the parrot bluetooth kit)

The GPS one seems great. I know there was some issue about the GPS not working durring a phone call with some phones, which would be a deal killer for me. Parrot has a bulitin board on their site which is painful to use, but lets you see what problems everyone's having.

Matthew

Sometimes I impress myself about how much of a MONKEY I can be I'd just looked at the expansys pages and never really looked at the pages for the manufacturers.

Anyway, after taking a look at the manufacturers pages I think I may have to go for at least the CK3100 - but the CK3300 beckons. I have a TomTom wired Navigator which I connect to my iPaq 3660. I've been resisting the tempation to upgrade my iPaq even though my friends have. After all, it does everything I need so what's the point? However, a new bluetooth one that can connect to the GPS of my shiny new car kit ... now that is tempting. More investigation required!

I just wanted to update and say that I just today got the phone mute working. It's a problem with the sled wiring... I think it'll hold 'til i get home and can really take it apart and resolder, but the wires at the back of the harness that control the phone mute are shorting out or touching the illum. line. I discovered I could mute the empeg by turning off my head lights the last few days!

I just realized that the reason the phone mute started working might be because of the board swap I did... putting a MkIIa board in the MkII case. Hmmm...

Just to update - I got the CK3300 at Christmas and wired it up yesterday. The problem I have now is that the ignition and permanent power are both on permanent. Seems to be something to do with the way the alarm has been installed.

Anyway, if you're interested then install pics are HERE

I've just tested the GPS with a friend's iPaq and it works just fine.

Does the GPS work while you're getting a phone call? I read something saying that it didn't, and that'd be the only thing that'd keep me from getting one. (Well, that and the $350 I'd have to part with)

Matthew

I've just tested having the GPS running and making a phone call and it all worked okay. No loss of satellite signal.

Although, I've noticed that the comment was about receiving a call and not making one. Bugger! Would that make a difference?

I don't think it would make a difference. Thanks for checking... Hmmm. I'll have to put this upgrade on my list. Unfortunatly it's right after component speakers and a new smaller sub setup, which have been on the list for over a year.

Matthew