I haven't gotten my car yet, but here is my thought. Do people think this will work? Anyone want to try it who actually has a car (and a warmer place to work than my VERY COLD driveway)?

The Aux-In should be locateable if you can pull the radio and jury rig it up on a bench. Even better is to do it in the car with the harness still connected if there is enough loose wire to work in the car. Mini claims that it is purely an audio input. There is no logic functionality to try to control a device, or anything else like that. So the input must use either 3 or 4 pins. (left +, right + and possibly a shared or separate ground/neutral)

Most of the pins on the back are being used for either the speakers, the CD harness, or the H/K upgrade. So that eliminates most of the available pins. Mark which pins are being used (actually have a wire attached to the plug), note which are currently unused.

Next step, hook up a speaker and some 12V power to the appropriate pins. This could be done on a work bench, or even better, if there is enough slack, just pull the radio forward, leaving it attached to the car wiring harness.

Take an old portable tape/cd and make a connector from line-out (or headphone out with volume set to around 5 or 6) to 2 stripped leads.

Then carefully connect the source to the possible pins. There couldn't be too many combinations to attempt. There isn't enough signal being passed to worry about damaging your head-unit, and if you don't connect it to the powered speaker outs, then you shouldn't risk hurting your sound source.

Once you find a pair that make sound, note if it's left or right. Then look for the other channel. Once the other channel has been found, connect both channels from your source to make sure you have the correct polarity. If they use a 3 pin set-up, then the shared pin will be neutral and polarity takes care of itself.

Once the 3 or 4 pins are located, then it is a quick trip through radio shack to make your own cable. Just solder or crimp the wire into appropriately sized pins and connect a female RCA/miniplug connector to the other side.

That should be all there is to it. Any daring souls out there?

Comments?

I'll post my results in a month or so, when I have my car, if nobody beats me to it.

wactuary

Anyone with a car want to give this a shot? Otherwise I'll send another post in about a month or so with the pin locations and instructions for d-i-yers.

 

I am also waiting with Baited breath for the arrival of My MCS IB/IB I,II,III. H/K. I should be picking her up on the 15th of Feb. and will delve into the input jack as soon as time permits. No one seems to have taken the H/K apart yet. Keep me posted on your findings and I will do the same.

 

How do you select the AUX IN so that this test will work?

 

>>How do you select the AUX IN so that this test will work?
>>

Not having the radio yet, I didn't realize you couldn't select aux-in without the jack plugged in. This may actually be good news.

Somehow the radio must sense a connection of the MP3 player. The simplest way I could think of for them to do this is to test for less than infinite resistance on the MP3 inputs (unless there is some physical switch? Unlikely). So, if that is the case, you could wire a 300 Ohm resistor (a typical output impedence for a cd player) between two test pins and plug them into the different combinations until the Aux-In became available!

An advantage is that this would be passive (no voltage being pumped into the radio) so a little bit safer. Also, If you happened to connect 2 pins that pushed power out, the resistor should prevent the radio from being damaged, but I expect all the powered outs are located on a separate multipin connector than the line level in/outs, anyway. At least you wouldn't be risking the actual player.

A disadvantage is I have no idea if would work. :smile:

An open question would also be if the radio requires 1, both or either channels when detecting the existance of a player. If both need to be connected that would make it a little harder to get the right permutation of pins.

Just thinking out loud. My car should come mid-Feb now. Then I just need a warm enough day to work outside!

Wactuary

 

does anyone have a picture of the back of the stereo?

 

does anyone have a picture of the back of the stereo?

 

wactuary, i understood very little of what you wrote in your two posts but i'm certain you know well of what you write. i found a 3 pin connector in the front (see my post on another thread) but i don't have your know-how about what to do next. unless there's an adapter in radio shack waiting for me, i suppose we'll have to wait for one. or use the blitzsage adapter and hope all works well without any 6 pin connector in the equation. the wire in front splits off into the 3 pin connector and what is presumbly the ground wire attached to body of the car.

 

Could this be as simple as Left and Right signal and a common ground? I should have mine within two weeks and can take a look then.

F

 

>>wactuary, i understood very little of what you wrote in your two posts but i'm certain you know well of what you write. i found a 3 pin connector in the front (see my post on another thread) but i don't have your know-how about what to do next.

This is exciting news! Can you describe more of what you see? From what I am guessing from the VERY skimpy info from MINI-USA, it is very likely that it is as simple as a Left, Right and common Ground. I also will have my car in about 2 weeks or so (The Falstaff is hitting NJ on 2/7! ). I checked your post, and it looks like you may have found the connector. The next step would be to debug which pin is ground and which is left/right. Then jury rig an adaptor to convert it to a Mini-plug.

Is anyone with a car willing to try the experiment?

robhuang, can you post pictures or more detail on what you found and where?

Wactuary

 

i will try to take a photo and post it here. i looked at it again this morning and it looks identical to the 3-pin connector in the boot.

 

I'd look if my car wasnt burried in snow