^well, considering that the car is already in production, I'm not sure I can make changes...

and yea, I know it's not actually free, that's why I put it in quotes... My car was expensive enough, no need to throw it even higher. I will never use the bluetooth, so I couldn't justify spending $500 on a usb plug.

 

Sorry My mistake. If you call your MA and the car has not actually started through the factory then you may be able to have it added.

Note: There are two (2) different types of iPod hookup. You need to make sure it is the one that has the USB option on it. I am not sure what the order code is but it is the one that is part of the "Convenience[FONT=&quot][/FONT] Package" One of them is only a audio cable interconnect to the head unit that will use a 3.5mm male to male cable for taking audio from any MP3 players head phone jack and is located in the hidden glove box.

As for the Bluetooth feature if you have a cell phone and use it in your vehicle then it would be a great thing to have as many states bring on required hands free cell phone use. I travel in Connecticut regularly and let me tell you if you are seen by the police with a cell phone in your hand it can get very expensive especially if it is not your first time getting caught. Having the phone controls on the steering wheel is a great feature and I will not have another car with out it.

There are other options for Bluetooth that are cheaper ($300.00) but mean adding wiring and extra displays to the interior of the vehicle. Other options can be as little as $100 but then you still have to look at the phone and have it with in sight distance near the dash so that you don't have to look at the seat or center console, having it integrated into the radio system makes for a clean looking Mini.

 

Reagarding music storage. I use the MP3 player on my Garmin 780 with the aux in port [FM tranmitter is crap] and it works fine for my needs. I have pretty much music on it and it takes up to a 4 gig card [bouht 2 at microcenter for under 40 bucks] so for the most part i am covered on my music selection.

 

edit: I'm beyond confused about this usb thing... Some people are saying that all MINI's come with usb, others say you have to pay for the option, others say you have to pay for the option in order to get digital music. I have absolutely no clue. I'll just wait until I get my car, and regardless, I'll enjoy my mp3 cds as I have been doing for 5 years now...

And as far as talking on a cell phone in the car. I absolutely hate talking while driving. I focus very hard on the road and other cars around me, so hard that I cannot carry a decent conversation on the phone while driving. Even if there's a passenger in the car, I space out during conversations when traffic gets heavy. I do not want talking on a cell phone to be convenient for me, and I'd prefer if other people on the road weren't talking either, because that's less that they are paying attention to me. Therefore, I did not want bluetooth capabilities...

/rant.

 

dwf137,

All New Mini's are capable,it's just that if you do not order the parts the make it useful then it is a very very expensive option to add at a later point in time. Take for instance the USB port in the dash if it is not installed at the factory then the dealer has to practicaly take the whole dash apart to install one. It's not just an easy add-on.

Yes it can be very confusing but when it come to music in the car well there is so much road noise that even the bests in digital or analog music is shrouded in noise from the car.

 

thanks, you cleared it up quite a bit for me...

So what you're saying is that all radios have the usb capability, however in order to make use of it, there's a plug or some sort of wiring that needs to be installed. So all in theory, someone who is okay with ripping a part a dash could install the said wiring, and have the ability to use it.

I'm surprised so many people complain about road noise. The mini is super quiet compared to my 1990 accord. I guess it's all relative...

 

Kind of... basically the car's computer system gets swapped for one with the USB/Convenience/Bluetooth capability.

It's only been available on cars manufactured in 2008 in the US, but cars going to Europe built from the factory break in 09/2007 on have it. (Even "US-Spec" cars delivered to military residents in Germany have been reported to have it...)

Short story: If you have a car that's already been built without it, you're looking at about $1000.00+ for a retro-fit. We've seen a couple estimates posted, but so far as we know, nobody's tried to make the swap yet. For all we know an attempt could end up looking like Edge's amp swap

 

I ordered mine with the Sport package and thus it comes with run flat tires which in my experience are a lot noisier than standard tires. whin i changed my '03 BMW over to run flats the noise increase was very dramatic. Even to the point i took them off. It is more a luxury car than a sports car so i went for the quite ride instead. The run flats also made a large negative difference in the ride quality.

Back to news for this thread the Western Digital MyBook series drives Straight out of the box do not work. Unfortunately i have not gotten a chance to reformat it to see if that helps.Others on other forums have reported that the drives still need reformatting to work in BMW's.

Is there any one out there that can tell me if there is a difference in the USB standard for hard drive as compared to memory (i.e. stick type) that would cause the drive to possibly not be seen by the MINI USB?

The reason I ask is that when a USB Stick and a USB Hard Drive are connected to a PC they show up as two different types of drives. Example the WD MyBook shows up under the "Hard Disk Drives" listing, yet a USB Stick (thumb drive) shows up under "Devices with Removable Storage". As they seem to be recognized as different types of items in windows xp, it seems logical that they register as different types objects to the MINI and the hard drive may not be supported.

Anyone have a comment on this.

Schatzy

 

While my mini doesnt have usb i do lots of car audio and have done harddrives in cars for a number of customers. one of the issues with harddrives is the headunit generally doesnt output enough power on the usb to spin then up so you need a usb hub and power the hub to get it to work

personally i use an old 80 gig laptop harddrive with an enclosure i got off ebay for like 7 dollars. its has a pigtail for power at the end which is nice in some cars it works great in other cars you gotta give it power

 

After 3+ hours of testing I have found the following:

• USB Hard Drives and USB Thumbs Drives are seen by the USB port as two different items. USB hard drives show sectors just as a standard internal hard drive. USB thumb drives do not show sectors.

• If you use a buffer in between such as a USB Hub then the USB in the car will then see the USB Hard Drive.

My test set up

• Western Digital 500GB MyBook USB Hard Drive. 302GB of music
• Western Digital 250GB Passport Portable Hard Drive. (no external power required and only 3GB of music
• Staples 4 port USB Hub. USB 1.1 only
• Extension cord to power The USB hub and the MyBook as they require 110V AC.

After plugging in the WD Passport to the USB Hub and the hub to the car and power the car USB saw the hard drive with in about 3 seconds, and indexed the music in less than 15 seconds.

Success.

Now to test a larger hard drive with 30GB of Music. Unplugged the Passport drive and plugged in the 500GB MyBook. It took the car about 8 minutes to see the hard drive. But it did come up and started playing a song. It then took another 20 minutes for it to index all the music, but did allow me to play songs that it had already indexed.

Again Success.

The MyBook actually runs off up 12V DC so it just need to have a cable adapter made to connect it to power.

The Passport drive runs off of USB power so it can run directly off the powered hub.

The USB hub runs off 5V DC so I need to get a voltage regulator to regulate the 12V DC down to 5V DC.

After shutting off the car and waiting 15 minutes the car lost all the indexing that had been done.

The second, third and fourth times it indexed the 500GB MyBook was much quicker but still more than I would like to wait. To see the hard drive was about 1 minute and to fully index it was about 4 minutes. I then had over 300GB of music in the car. For long trips this would not be bad but for short trips around town this would just not work.

I will up date this information after purchasing the extra parts I need to regulate the 12VDC to 5VDC.

Schatzy

 

I'm loving your testing. I would like to see your Western Digital 250GB Passport Portable Hard Drive (no external power required and only 3GB of music) what if you put up to say 125gb capacity of music and see what happens. Speed slowers considerably? Same?

 

There is a picture of a Red WD Passport hard drive in my previous post.

I am currently waiting on a few part to arrive hopefully mid week so that i can continue the Testing.

In the mean time I loaded over 200GB of data on the Passport drive and found that the time to index seems to be proportional to the amount of data.

As for scrolling thru the music once it is indexed seemed to be good. only had one brief time for selection that was more than 4 seconds in length.

Of course all this testing is still being done with an extension cord going to the car as the 12VDC to 5VDC regulator i need is on order and should arrive this week.

 

Keep us informed.

 

I have a key question... how is the USB connection attached to the stereo?

Does the USB pass to an external controller of some type, or does it interface directly to the head unit via the wiring loom?

If someone wanted to connect a USB device but had no interest in connecting an iPod, could the USB/iPod connection kit be eliminated and a USB cable wired into the loom to the radio?

If there is an external controller box, is it there for the iPod primarily, or also for the totality of the USB functionality?

 

These are all good questions and i am trying to find the wiring diagrams so that i can check the answers to you questions but the diagram can be hard to find. I had found some diagrams for the audio system but they did not show the USB/iPod connections. If I find them I hopefully will be able to answer all you questions.

 

That would be fantastic!! Thanks Schatzy!

 

Yes, The USB port connects to the ULF-SBX-H Module. The following are involved with the ULF
1.ULF Control Module
2.RAD2 - Radio connects to ULF
3.M-ASK - Multi Audio System Controler
4.CCC - Car Communications Computer
5.CID - Central Information Display
6.Controler - Controls the M-ASK and CCC on the CID
7.USB Port -
8.Audio port -
9. USB Hub -

So basically if you do not have the ULF-SBX-H module then you can not have a USB connection. I.E. cars with out this module have a ULF-SBX (non usb) module

As above if you do not have the USB option installed then you cannot connect a USB/iPod device.

The USB/iPod connection in not necessarily[FONT=&quot][/FONT] only for iPods, it is designed to handle USB Storage devices for music playback, but there are limits.

The short set of limits taken from three pages of material from BMW/Mini
1. USB Device must be formated in the FAT32.
2. Save files to USB device using Windows Explorer (no mention of MAC computers)
3. Only MP3 and WMA without DRM (digital right managment)
4. You can only play DRM encoded music with an iPod^^
5. Up to 20,000 items of track information are saved in the control module. if this number is exceeded, track information for the first USB device that was connected is overwritten.***
6. Only latin letter are shown on the CID Other lettering i.e. greek cna not be recognized.
7. Only the track information is saved in the control module. not hte MP3 file

^^ DRM Music can be played from other MP3 device such as a Zune or SonyMP3 walkman by using the headphone out jack and connecting it to the AUX In jack of the vehicle. but all control of the MP3 player is only form the MP3 player and not the radio controls.Only iPods and USB devices can be controlled from the Radio controls.

*** i believe that the track information allotment of 20,000 items is a combination of title, artist, track #, genre etc. so that would mean that if each track had 5 peices of information attached to it then there would only be information stored on 4000 songs. I.E. 4000 times the 5 pieces of track information = 20,000 pieces of track information. The reason i say this is that i have had only about 500 songs on a device and it displayed the track info immediately but when i had about 7000 songs on the USB device it had to rescan the device each time it was installed.

Notes for iPod users.:
The y-shaped cable adapter that can be ordered from BMW/Mini is recommended for the operation of iPod devices. If this cable is not used, the iPod can be used via the USB port as a so-called "volume" (i.e. plain old portable hard disk). If the iPod is connected without the Y-cable, no directory structure in the form of albums, genre, and tracks is available. The music files are stored by iTunes in a incomprehensible for such as aghde.mp3. iTunes automatically names the files so that they are not recognizable for the purpose of not allowing music to be shared easily.

If anyone has any other questions on this i would be glad to try an answer them.

By the way my hope to have all 59000+ tracks i own on a hard disk in my car have just been squashed because of the limits of the control system. I guess i willjsut have to upgrade from my 30gig iPod to a 80Gig ipod but eve nthen i can not get all my music on the ipod as it is in excess of 300Gig.

Schatzy.

 

Excellent information, Schatzy. Good work.

Now, here's the million dollar question... Can a ULF-SBX-H module be purchased through a parts department and installed into a vehicle in place of a standard ULF-SBX module? And how to go about determining the part number?

 

Unfortunately it seems that from a dealer you can only get a Generation 1 ULF module. You can check with your dealer but also check with bimmernav.com. When i tried to get a newer generation ULF for my 03-525iT the only number the dealer could order was the Gen 1. BMW seems to have made the newer versions a BULK purchase item only. www.bimmernav.com sells the latest version. They also seem to have great instructions for changing modules in BMW but i am not sure about Mini's

This page lists all the part numbers for the different generations.
http://www.bimmernav.com/ulfchanges.html

Although, when ordering i believe you must also state that the ULF must include the 6FL option. This is the option number that adds the USB/iPod interface. Also there may be other parts such as the wiring harness that needs to be ordered as well.

Schatzy

 

Wow, it begins to sound like the way to go is simply to cough up the $500 at build time.


You'd think they would just use a single wiring harness for every version of the car, and have all of the options available through the dealer as simple plug-ins. I guess that's too "Japanese" an approach for BMW though...

 

From looking through all the wiring diagrams all the wiring is there it just has plugs or connectors to route thru if there is no module there.

You can probably find someone to sell you all the parts needed, it willjust cost you a ot more money. for instance if you go to any of the sites to get the lates Gen 13 ULF module it will cost you a minimum of at least $700.00

 

here's an idea... use an MP3 tagging program to delete any tagging info you don't need to sort by in the car... eg. Genre

I bet that would speed up indexing, and would also allow for more songs to be stored in index memory in the car.

Thoughts?

 

That is something i am going to play with this weekend when i have more time. Work and household chores are keeping very busy this week.

 

hey anyone got any idea why my 8gig Sandisk cruzer flash drive wont work in my mini? its formatted in FAT32, i plug it in and sometimes it flashes, and says "load" on the screen, but then it goes to "- -" and stays that way and when i click it it says Empty. and then other times it gets reconized, as in the little usb connection shows up, but it says the device cant be read. and when i click directory nothing comes up. the weridest part is that i have the Excact same drive in a 1 gig form and it works perfectly, and right away from the moment i got the car 3 weeks ago, the 8 gig was an upgrade, i filled it with 1.5 gigs at first just to check and then 5 and then just 50mb and it didnt work in the mini at all. the drive is fine, it works everywhere eles like my Xbox 360 and oviously my computer. any ideas?

 

I found that I had to reformat some of my USB sticks to get them to work. I can also tell you that the Cruzer's have other software on them that will confuse the ULF and CCC modules in the car.

Make sure you back up all the software on your curzer and then reformat.
Do not put any of the original software back on. just load music.
I prefer the following directory structure for anything more than a couple hundred songs.

A folder > Aerosmith > toys in the attic> tracks
A folder > Aretha Franklin > Album > tracks
B folder > Ben Folds Five > album > tracks

this make is much easier to search in larger libraries.