Hi- I have tried to find an answer to my question, and I emailed mike on his website, but have not heard back yet. MY question is this, I have a 2006 mini cooper with the controls on the steering wheel. Most important is that I want a blue tooth kit like the parot 3100 which can be installed through the car radio, has mute function, and is charged by the radio power. My ideal install would be having control on the steering wheel controls, sound through car speakers, mute function, and have the info displayed on the screen of the car radio. I have the Harmon Kardone stereo. The parrot 3100 has the display, but I would have to mount it somewhere, and I dont' know if it wll look all that nice. If I can't have it all, I would rather have it go through the radio, and be displayed on the car radio. the controls on the steering colum are secondary. Please can someone help advise me. I can't seem to find an anwer anywhere.

 

http://motoringfile.com/2005/11/22/n...mes-to-the-us/

 

My MA told me it was the most expensive hands-free phone kit for a car made, over 1200 bucks and you still need installation and the compatible phone...

 

sigh. it A)doesnt work with my razr and B)is WAY overpriced and C) i just got the other one installed.

 

Hi- Thanks for the replys. That is totally crazy that bmw mini is offering such a oem bluetooth system. They really don't get it do they. I agree that first of all I wouldn't spend that kind of money even if my phone were compatible, but then to offer it to be compatible with most phones that have been out 1-2 yrs already? Well, that being said, I am looking for what I described above. Does anyone know what parts I need to order from mike, and is it possible to have phone info displayed on the car stereo with any of the bluetooth kits and set ups that Mike offers? Please help.

 

Actually, it probably would. You just wouldn't get the "charge my phone in the armrest" feature.

No argument there... although if you have Nav, integration with the screen may be an incentive... it is for me.

You mean the one with the external keypad? Yuck. I'd rather buy aftermarket and use the steering wheel buttons (unless your MINI is older than 01/05 and doesn't have the buttons?).

 

Re: the new phone kit, I think this product exists because someone, somewhere thinks that car kits aren't car kits unless they allow charging and connect to an external antenna (this means higher transmit/receive power and thus better signal quality).

When, in fact, the whole point of Bluetooth kits is that are easier to use, don't require all the extra engineering of a wired kit, and are less expensive. Audi and Honda are doing this right -- add BT to the system and let the customer worry about where the phone goes and how to charge it.

Now back to your answer. It takes a lot of digging to find it in this forum, but Mike sells two harnesses. One for the Parrot 3100 and one for the Nokia CK-7W. There are pros and cons of each. But I have a friend who tests BT car kits and he's not a big fan of Parrot. So I'm leaning towards the Nokia.

What I don't know (nobody replied to my thread last I checked and Mike hasn't answered my email) is whether these kits work with the Dension Ice-Link Plus.

• NewMiniStuff Parrot 3100 Page
• NewMiniStuff Nokia CK-7W

Though the interface cables are not listed, Mike has said that he will sell the interface only so that we can buy the kits in the US.

I've done neither as I'm still shopping for my MINI. But once I have a MINI and an answer re: aftermarket BT kit + Ice-Link, I'm sold!

--dwf

 

Get the VControl kit. I have one in my 2004 MCS and mutes the radio and the control pad is really nice and just as convenient as the MFS buttons (I have mine on the mirror control plinth in front of the handbrake).
It does need a speaker but I have mine sitting in the rear cupholder right now (waiting for me to attach it) and it's inconspicuous and sounds great.
The big plus is it's cheaper than the factory (their's is a ridiculous price and the control pad looks stupid attached to the RHS downtube). The VControl is $299 with free shipping and a H-K compatible plug-n-play harness is $29.95.
Alan

 

I have mike's Parrot CK3000 Evo kit installed in my 2006 MCS and so far I'm loving it. I previously had the CK3000 MFSW kit and while that kit integrated into the steering wheel's controls, it wasn't loud enough and my Moto MPx220 phone relies on the BT kit to control the volume, however the CK3000 kit relies on the phone to control the volume. The end result was that the volume was too low and there was no way to increase it.

Mike swapped me out for the Evo kit and now even though I have to use the little control pad (not that bad, actually), the kit's audio is far cleaner and the volume controls on the steering wheel and the radio function! The radio no longer says "Phone" when connected, but I'd gladly give that up to have the audio controls function. The Evo kit even has built-in voice reco (simple pattern matching) for phones like mine that don't enable voice dialing via BT. I can send contacts from my phone to the Evo's internal memory, add a voice tag in the Evo's memory and then dial by voice. In fact, I have the Evo's "magic words" set up so that I don't even need to use buttons to answer/end/initiate calls.

Mike has notified me that an updated harness that integrates the MFSW buttons into the Evo kit will be available in a few weeks (mid-December) but even without that, I still like the Evo kit's voice reco and better sound over the CK3000 version.

Put me down as a satisfied customer of both newministuff.com and the Parrot CK3000 Evo kit!

 

Well then consider yourself sold... Mike's kits work fine with the ICELink. I'm using his harness and an ICELink connected to the CD Changer Plug/Sirius Passthrough and a Sony Ericcson HCB-300 (while the HCB-300 still worked that is).

However his kit should work just fine if you connect your ICELink directly to the HU as well. I've also got the AUX jack in there too and it's not a problem.

The one thing to keep in mind though, the ICELink doesn't have any mechanism to pause your iPod. So should you get a phone call the radio will mute, but the iPod will continue playing. It's not a big deal when listening to music, but it's absolutely frustrating when listening to audiobooks or podcasts...