So I just finished my (long) journey to install an Parrot Mki9000 in my 2010 MCS with H/K. The car had steering wheel controls (MFSW), but no factory bluetooth. My goal was to get BT for phone calls only. I do not care that much about A2DP, as the iphone needs to be connected to a cable for charging (so why not get the audio from the cable too?). Also - I had a Parrot in a previous car and the iphone integration was not great as it would sometimes act erratically. I decided to keep it simple and connect the iphone through the car Aux (using a dock Y cable connector - ). I also use this piece for charging the iphone ( ).

I purchased the Parrot, a wiring harness and a Unika box (for steering wheel control) from Custom Cellular in CA. They are phenomenal. Bill, the owner, was very helpful, sent me what I needed quickly. Charles, the tech, put everything together for me and it came ready to install, plug and play, no splicing needed. He also helped me with my troubleshooting efforts (great communication on email and over the phone) and sent spare parts for my experiments. Amazing service. Cost - under $300 shipped.

What does the system do?
* for phone calls, Parrot "hijacks" the speakers from the car radio and uses its internal amp for calls. I believe that there is a way to wire Parrot to use line-in to the car radio (in conjunction with a mute wire). I believe that the harness from Custom Cellular does not support this.
* you can use the parrot for music, either stream music through BT or connect an iphone, 3.5mm source or USB to the Parrot cable. The issue is that (in my current configuration) the music uses the Parrot amp, which is NOT as good as the H/K system. I guess it would be OK as a replacement for the standard radio.
* I have MFSW control for the volume (radio, music, phone calls), voice dialing, answer/hang up. Due to the fact that I do not use the parrot cable for the iphone, I do not have the music/skip option.

Quality of Parrot
So far, callers have been very happy, even at highway speeds. You can hear your callers very very well.


Problems along the way
After taking the dash apart and installing everything, the system started working immediately. But then - I took the car for a test ride and heard a slight whine when the Parrot amp was activated (i.e. when on a phone call). The pitch changed with the engine revs. Luckily, I did not fully assemble the dash yet, but what a bummer!

I contacted Charles for advice and he said it never happened to him. Lucky me! I asked if he could send me a replacement harness which he did VERY quickly. Then came hours of troubleshooting in which I tried everything, but the noise persisted in any possible configuration, location, with the new/old harness, etc.

Then, I did more reading about ground loop problems and went to a local car stereo shop and bought a powerline noise filter (PAC CSS-5 http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_5268_PAC-CSS-5.html). This did the trick!!! I had to splice the Parrot 12v battery wire and the Parrot ground wire to add the filter (used butt splice connector and crimping tool to connect). Amazingly, after HOURS of work, the problem was solved!!!!!


How to take the dash apart

This Youtube movie is really good:
This guy takes apart only what's needed. What this movie does not show are:

(1) there are two screw covers above the speedometer that look like vent fins. You need to remove the covers and remove the screws before you can remove the speedometer trim. This document covers it well on page 3-4:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~djdnz/Chrome%...20How%20To.pdf

In the movie, the guy just pops the speedometer trim out, however, before you do it, you need to remove the 2 screws above it.

(2) the movie does not show how to disconnect the wire harness for the AC, windows buttons, etc. behind the center console. It also does not show how you actually take the speedometer and radio out (remove the two silver screws on each side of the radio and one silver on top and then 2 black screws on both sides of the speedometer.) For these, this movie is helpful:

(there is a part one for this movie, but again, this guy takes too much apart)


Good luck in your personal journey. I was very concerned about the plastic parts, but they are really not that fragile. First time you pull them out is scary, but then you get the gist of it. The good news is that MINI has plenty of room for the wiring and extra boxes (Parrot, Unika, filter box) under the existing radio.

Work is done. I just hope that nothing blows up/melts/dies on me now!

Let me know if there is any way I can help.

Edit 7/30 - this setup is great! I absolutely love it.
8/22 - still great!!!

 

hello, new to the forum!
I bought the Unika and the parrot 9100.
but I have only the Parrot STD cables, I did not know that I should use a different wiring harness... what is the name of the harness???

 

Call Custom Cellular (http://www.customcellular.com/)! They will sell you the right harness and their price and support are great. It is plug and play. There will be some extra wires but you will simply have to cut them and insulate. Bear in mind that with this harness, Parrot will take over when you use bluetooth streaming or the Parrot aux cable (i.e. the Parrot amp will be used to play the music, not the car stereo.)

Other harnesses **might** give you a different behavior. I **believe** that this one: http://www.justcarkits.co.uk/acatalo...90fullaux.html will give you parrot line out to car aux in and cancel your existing aux input - I contacted this company when I was shopping around and they were helpful, but I decided to buy locally and keep things simple. If you choose to use this config and it works, then you gain the option of controlling your iphone/BT phone through the steering wheel AND using the car stereo as the amp.

 

Thank you for this post, KatKat. I went to the site for Custom Cellular and they now sell a full kit (MKI9000 + Unika + Harness). All you have to do is install it. I ordered mine and I am anxiously waiting for it!
I will update when we take on the task of installing this!

 

Another old thread bring-back on bluetooth!

Does Custom Cellular sell the QCBMW-F harness by Quick Connect, or do they have something different?

I'm interested in how the Parrot works. I had suspected what Katkat reports, that when playing music via BT that you use the Parrot amp rather than the vehicle amp which in my case is the nice HK system. However, this is not always true. Mikey in the UK wrote me that his harness allows the Parrot to tie in between the HU and amp, so the signal is amplified and DSP'd just like the radio or CD signal. Jbing reports the same using Mikey's cable on his Klat unit. But Katkat says on his HK system with the Custom Cell cable, his HK is not used for BT audio.

Does anybody know?

Thanks!
Jeremy

 

So after finding this thread...thanks for bringing it back to life GearheadS...I contacted Bill and ordered one up. After talking with Bill for a bit it does inject the audio into the speaker output that heads to the HK amp. Now...you can not adjust the volume or EQ from the head unit because of that...but it does still use all of the HK speakers so it is AOK in my book. You do need to warn Bill when you order though that you do have an HK system.

 

I found a nice used Parrot Mki9000 and a QCBMW-F harness and installed them in our 2005 HK MINI yesterday. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of the system but the music playing quality is very good. Mic performance is very good at hiway speeds (but haven't tried with the top down yet ) with the mic mounted just in front of the tach. The way I have it hooked up, everything goes through the HK and everything is affected by the DSP and sound shaping controls of the MINI HK system, as well as the volume and SW volume controls. I did not connect the yellow mute wire. I'm told if I do, the radio will go into phone mode, but the DSP and volume controls on the HK system will no longer work. If I understand correctly, the HK system would set the volume around 80% and the tone controls flat, but the HK amp would still amplify the signal. I like it the way I have it so far.

All I did to connect this equipment was to:
1) plug in the QC harness adapter and Parrot harness.
2) One connection was missing - the IGNITION connection which supplies the main power to the Parrot with the key on. The violet/blue wire to the radio has key power, so I'm not sure why this was not pre-wired in the harness. I simply connected the orange IGN power wire with the fuse to the brown wire in the harness which came off the violet/blue wire of the car.

Jeremy