When I first picked up the car, the car recognizes my ipod touch right away. I would plug it in, press the audio button, and the ipod icon would be there.

Fast forward 3 weeks later. I tried to extend the ipod cable with usb and mini jack extensions. I plug everything in using the extensions, but no ipod icon. I thought it was a faulty extension cables but the ipod shows the charging symbol. I tried to plug the y-cable in by itself without the extensions, still no ipod icon. The radio will tell me to plug in USB if I clicked on the USB icon. After a few more attempts of unplugging/re-plugging, the car finally recognized my ipod again. However, ever since this little incident, the car won’t connect to the ipod right away anymore. This morning, when I first plugged in the ipod, it recognized it right away, played a song for about 5-10 seconds, and the radio tells me USB unplugged and jumped to Tuner instead. About 5-10 minutes later, I tried the audio button again and the ipod showed up and played normal for the rest of the trip to work.

Does anybody else have this issue? the only other electrical mod I did was the auto sport button mod and hardwiring my radar detector. Both of these should not have affected the ipod connectivity in any way. As a test, I unplugged my add-a-circuit for the sports button mod and detector but the same thing still occurred. It sounds ridiculous but did I damage something by using an usb extension cable?

Another side effect from this incident is now my ipod doesn’t always show the lightning-bolt charging symbol when plugged in. it would sometimes show the “plugged in” symbol like it had finished charging even though the battery is still at the same level when unplugged. A few unplug/re-plug seem to fix that but its annoying.

Thanks for reading.

 

I had a similar problem and after doing some work on the car where i had the battery disconnected for a while the problem seemed to go away and i had had not problems since.

I would try and disconnect the battery for five minutes and then reconnect it and try again with the iPod.

I will not guarantee that it will work but it seemed to work for me.

Just not that you will probably have this problem again if you try to use a USB extension cable. USB does not support Extension cables well at all.

 

Could be a poor connection or a flaky cable. Easiest/quickest way to diagnose is to try a different cable. Don't overlook a possibly dirty/damaged connector where the cable plugs into the MINI.

 

thanks for the suggestions. i will try to disconnect the battery tonight. do i have to reprogram everything afterwards? or are the settings already set in the key fobs?

The cable was 3 weeks old and working fine until my extension cable experiment. i was attempting to extend the y-cable under the center console to come out by the handbrake. that way i can place the ipod under the brake handle and not up-side-down in the cup holder.

 

I had the battery disconnected for over an hour and had to reset everything. So i would say that you may have to reset your settings.

I have my iPod sitting in the little cubby at the bottom of the center stack and as it is black no one even knows it is there.

 

thats where i have it now, but i'm putting a 3.5" reverse camera monitor there so i don't want the ipod and the y-cable clutter blocking it...

i thought the key fob was supposed to retain all the programmable features...

 

Well actually the it seems the car remembers them and just remembers a key code

Not sure if that is true but that is what it seems like and if it is true then there is not actual data transfer between the key and the car.

 

well the battery trick didn't work. i took off the negative cable for about 3 hours. after re-connecting, the car still won't see the ipod. maybe it will take a longer time to initialize. i guess i'll find out tomorrow during the trip to work. but for sure, it doesn't recognize it right away like it originally did.

all i had to re-program was the time. everything else stayed.

 

Sorry to hear this did not work for you. But at least you setting stayed.

I unfortunately have no other suggestions.

 

surprisingly a firmware update did the trick. i don't know why but after updating the ipod to the latest firmware the car recognizes the ipod right away every time now...i'm debating if i should try the usb extension stunt again. i really want to relocate the ipod to somewhere else instead of sitting it in the cubby hold or cup holder.

 

Not sure if my experience is relevant here, but...

What I've noticed with my 32 Gb iPod Touch is that when I sync it with my desktop computer and then plug it straight into my MINI, then my MINI doesn't recognize it. I've also noticed that, independent of my MINI, the first time after a sync (or a reboot) that I select "Music" on my iPod touch, that my iPod takes a few seconds, maybe 5 or so, with a blank screen before the music list shows up. And, I've noticed that if, after desktop sync, I turn on my touch and select "Music" and wait the 5 seconds or so, and then plug it into my MINI, my music is recognized no problems.

So, without any real knowledge of what's happening inside, my guess is that the first time it is started in music mode after a sync (or probably a reboot), the iPod has to re-index all the music and generate internal lists of playlists, artists, genres, etc. If I plug the iPod into my MINI without this (possibly mythical) re-indexing having already happened, then the MINI doesn't see it.

Any chance something similar might be going on with your iPod?

 

My guess would be that the iPod needed a reset. Reset comes as part of doing a firmware upgrade. I was going to suggest you could try resetting the iPod, if I remember right, holding down the middle and top button will do a reset.