Finally finished my Bluetooth hands free install!

[gaogi]

I figure that fumbling with headsets is probably as dangerous as not using one, so I decided to get a car kit for my phone. I didn't really want to give up the cupholders in the armrest, which leaves me with no other locations to mount a cradle for my phone. Being that I'm in the wireless LAN industry, I thought I'd be geeky and go with Bluetooth. I paid quite a big chunk of dough for the phone anyway, so I wanted to try to use every function that it had, you know, make it worth my money.

I've looked at many kits (Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola) before I decided to go with the Parrot CK3000 (www.driveblue.com). Actually, it was a close call between the SE and the Parrot, but after doing some research, turns out that SE actually licensed their technology from Parrot, and Parrot OEMs their kits to Acura for the 2004 TL. And the Parrot kit can actually utilize the "Magic Word" function on the P800 while the SE cannot (kind of ironic...). I can record a key word, like "telephone", so everytime I say the word "telephone", the kit would kick in, mute my radio, and beep once to ask me to speak the name of the person I want to call (assuming I had pre-programmed the phone to do voice dialing).

The install took about 3 hours for me, but that was because the Parrot manual suck ass when it comes to installation instructions. It took a while for me to figure out that I connected speaker in wires to the radio instead of the speaker outs. But once that was taken care of, the install was smooth. The main unit is small enough to fit between the metal braces under the knee bolster and the wires were plenty long to re-route out of the way.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with the kit. The voice command feature works about 80% of the time, the other 20% it'll make you repeat before working. I'll need to get a windscreen for the microphone, since I mounted it under the rearview mirror and the vent blows right at it, giving people the impression that I'm outside walking. Other than that, most people couldn't tell that I was talking to them using a hands free kit.

Anyway, I couldn't have finished this install without the help of AW. I researched the forums and used many of the handsfree and radar detector installs as a reference for installing this kit myself.

I'll write up a install if people are interested, otherwise, enjoy the pictures.


The control panel is barely small enough to fit into this panel. I purchased a black one from the dealer, because I thought it matched better than the gray one that my car came with. I cut a hole out of it with a Dremel tool, and I had to cut off almost all of the back of the control panel, and trim the PC board inside to make it fit.

[coolnesh]

[mattchow]

[needforsleep]

[shadyraven]

[ILMA_Revo_Stage_2+]

i have mine on the top-dash and am thinking about designing a custom pod for it to blend in.

[gaogi]

[ILMA_Revo_Stage_2+]

[the16v]

[RikiTik]