Aux to Bluetooth car adapter

Richeh

Richeh

Richeh

Soldato
Joined
24 Jul 2003
Posts
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Location
South East Coast
Hello,
My mate has just got BMW 3 series 07 model. He is coming from a Fiesta that he had a bluetooth radio installed in so a nice upgrade for the car but he misses the bluetooth connectivity, His car has an AUX input so he can plug his phone in and it functions but as his birthday is coming up I looked into the AUX to Bluetooth adapters to give him Bluetooth connectivity. There seems to be quite a few on Amazon and not too expensive (Under £30) but some of the reviews suggest they are a bit hit and miss (Hiss, dropouts etc). Does anyone have any personal experience with any of these and would be able to recommend one? If someone knows one that works with a BMW AUX input that would be ideal.

Cheers.
 
Went through a slew of them with mine, in the end just gave up and had a proper aftermarket head unit installed.

Something about the 3 series aux port doesnt like those bluetooth adapters
 
Might be that you need to add an inline ground isolator if there's hissing, I know some cars have this issue with something plugged into aux and power at the same time
 
Depending on the phone, its headphone output(internal dacs) may give better quality sound than most BT units.

A more elaborate solution is a chromecast audio, and cast from the phone, (keep meaning to try my CCA out), but you do need a rechargeable battery pack for the CCA
 
Assume it just needs a 5v USB power source, which you could wire into the car easy enough. Seems to be a similar idea to Bluetooth adaptors, but no hardware buttons?
 
in a car, whilst charging a mobile phone (or running TomTom) you may not need a good quality usb supply, however a Chromecast is probably more sensitive.
see http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html
http://www.righto.com/2013/06/the-mili-universal-carwall-usb-charger.html
which shows how much noise there can be.
- the audio forum might elicit more feedback on both BT and wireless devices

I tested the Mili charger with inputs from 0 to 30 volts. 30 volts may seem excessive, but jump-starts often use 24 volts, and car electrical failures can result in a 120 volt "load dump". Fortunately, the Mili survived 30 volts just fine (unlike some other chargers I'm testing). The image below shows that the Mili generates a stable output voltage (horizontal line) for inputs from 7 volts to 30 volts. This is a good thing, showing that the Mili won't overload your phone even if your car is providing too much voltage. As expected, the Mili can't produce the full output voltage if the input voltage is too low (left side of the graph).
Click to expand...
 
Well, from my side of this, my Aukey bluetooth adaptor arrived today and works perfectly with no noise or interference plugged into the 12v socket with an Anker adaptor. Over the weekend I'm going to wire it into the fuse box via a 12v to 5v USB power adaptor and see how that works.

I have a 3.5mm grounding isolator on hand if it's needed, we shall see!
 
Invertigo said:
with no noise or interference plugged into the 12v socket with an Anker adaptor.
Click to expand...
hopefully no interference from Anker on the radio fm/dab either ? but sounds as though you have had the Anker for a while.

Invertigo said:
I have a 3.5mm grounding isolator on hand if it's needed, we shall see!
Click to expand...
will be interesting to hear back ... do they take a notch out of the audible audio frequency spectrum though ?
 
jpaul said:
hopefully no interference from Anker on the radio fm/dab either ? but sounds as though you have had the Anker for a while.


will be interesting to hear back ... do they take a notch out of the audible audio frequency spectrum though ?
Click to expand...

On 3 different cars the Anker has never caused interference on bluetooth, aux or fm signals, I have no doubt theyre well built bits of kit.

Regarding the inline isolator, I haven't tried it yet as I haven't needed it. It'll be Sunday before I can attempt wiring straight into the fuse via a tap so I'll let you know how that goes.

Perhaps having a separate amplifier works in my favour, but I'm honestly clueless when it comes to audio electronics so it might not make the slightest difference
 
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