The IT Nerd

This likely isn’t a unusual situation as distracted driving laws such as the ones that exist in Canada which have some really stiff fines make people think about adding Bluetooth capability to their cars so that they can do hands free calling. The thing is, there’s only a few ways to do this:

• Replace your head unit (which is car speak for the stereo system in your car): Now that is doable, but you have to find the right head unit that works with the audio controls that you might have on your steering wheel, and the right installer who will not butcher your car. In terms of price, this can get expensive in a hurry depending on the quality of the head unit and what someone has to do to make it work in your car.
• Get a add on that works with the head unit that came with your car: An example of this is the BluLogic add-on that Toyota has for late model Toyota cars. Seeing as I own a 2009 Matrix, I asked my dealer what this goes for and they quoted me a price of $300 plus labor and their labor rate of $109 an hour. They figured it would take about 2 hours to do. Still not cheap, but at least you have don’t have to swap your head unit. Of course this assumes that such an option is available for your car.

Now you can use a Bluetooth headset which is the path of least resistance, but you’re in trouble if you forget it and a call comes in. That’s happened to me a few times and driving is not safe when you’re not 100% focused on the road. So after some researching, I reached out to my friends at Belkin and they provided me with their CarAudio Connect AUX with Bluetooth. The purpose of this kit is to leverage your existing car audio system to allow you to do hands free calling with an easy install that anyone can do. Before you put down your hard earned cash, make sure you have the following in your car:

• 1/8″ Aux jack and a car stereo that supports that.
• 12V DC jack

So to test this, I set it up in my 2009 Toyota Matrix which does not have Bluetooth, but has all of the above. One thing that I had to do is take a trip to Best Buy to get this dual port DC adapter for the car as the CarAudio Connect AUX with Bluetooth is powered by the 12V DC power and I have my Garmin 1350LMT GPS plugged in the 12V DC plug already. Thus the adapter to make them co-exist. I also had to plug in the audio cable just to the right of the 12V DC plug so that audio can flow to the car stereo. Here’s how it looks after I plugged everything in:

The next item was to find a place to put the combination button/microphone. That took some experimentation to find the right location, but I chose this one based on some test calls with my wife and the ability to reach the button while driving:

Now the button/microphone is magnetically attached to a mount that has an adhesive that sticks it to your dash. That way you can put it out of sight of potential thieves. Now you have to power on your car and pair it to your phone. Press and hold the button on the CarAudio Connect AUX with Bluetooth until it flashes. Then go into your phone (in my case an iPhone 5) and find something that says “Car Audio” as pictured below.

Now I should note that unlike built in car systems that will look for your phone every time you start the car and automatically connect to it, you have to manually connect the phone to the CarAudio Connect AUX with Bluetooth every time the car turns on. Not the biggest deal in the world, but you have to remember to do it every time you get in the car.

The setup took about 15 minutes and the results were as follows:

• I can answer the phone by simply pressing the button. As long as the stereo is on the AUX setting, I can hear the caller clearly. There’s a bit of bass, but it sounds pretty good. Callers commented that I don’t sound any different than normal. Pressing the button again allows me to hang up. Nice, simple, and clean.
• I could stream audio from my iPhone 5 via Bluetooth and when a phone call comes in, the music stops and allows me to take the call. Also, tapping twice skips forward a song and tapping three times skips backwards a song. The sound quality was excellent.
• Pressing and holding the button three seconds allowed me to use Siri to voice dial, send and read iMessages, and read notifications. As you can likely tell, I’m a bit of a Siri addict, so having access to Siri was important to me.
• There’s a built in USB port that allows you to charge your phone. Simply supply your own USB (or in my case Lightning) cable.
• It works with multiple phones as both my wife and I were able to use our respective iPhone 5’s without issue. Though I will note that they will not work at the same time which is not a big deal.

Complants? Other than the fact that I have to manually pair my iPhone 5 every time I start the car, I really don’t have any complaints. And even then, pairing the phone every time I get into the car isn’t the biggest deal in the world as I said earlier.

The best part about the Belkin CarAudio Connect AUX with Bluetooth is the price. The MSRP is $79 USD. So if you want Bluetooth hands free in your car, and you don’t want to spend a lot of cash to do it, this is the way to go. Assuming you’re willing to put in a bit of sweat equity to do it, which isn’t a whole lot based on my experience. From where I stand, that’s hard to beat.

Many thanks to Belkin for helping me to answer this!

This entry was posted on June 1, 2013 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Products with tags Belkin, Bluetooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.