broadband2

I just bought a off lease 04' RX8 and wanted to update the stereo with MP3 capabilities or install a hard drive in the glove box.

I was on Ebay and found the XCarLink-6 for the RX8 from a seller in mainland China. The one I purchased has a type A USB jack, a SD slot, and a mini type B USB jack that is either used for the bluetooth mic/button or a aux input that can be used to pipe in mp3's from a IPOD or equivalent. This unit's connection to the radio is in the form of a plug that connects directly to the female plug that is used for the cassette/minidisk player port that is located on the back of the head unit on the drivers side.

Sooooo, I took the chance and ordered the unit, it took forever due to the PRC's (Peoples Republic of China) partial lockdown on port shipping traffic due to the Olympics, just over six (6) weeks for it to arrive.

Today I got the unit and installed it and it works great.

I am using it with a 4GB Kingston USB drive with 1114 songs split into six folders on the drive, and its not close to full. The instructions say it has a limit of six folders to mimic the cd head unit. I am going to play with it more to see if I can actually add more folders than the designated six. I hooked up the Bluetooth dongle and it works pretty good, a little on the bass side, but it does work.

Ok now the things you should know up front;

The installation instructions came in Chinese and there was nothing to tell you how to pair the Bluetooth at all. I went to the manufacturers website; http://www.chelebao.com and they did have some info on the Bluetooth. I cut and pasted those Chinese instructions to the Systran language converter on-line and was able to figure out the pairing.. quite simple actually... Oh, and the pairing code is "0000".

On the thread I found to take the radio out to access the female plug on the rear it mentions the 10mm bolt on the drivers side that is hidden and approximately where it is. It is much easier to see and to remove it if you first remove the metal brace under the steering column that is located under the black plastic swingaway cover. There are four screws that hold this metal piece on and once it is removed you can actually see the bolt to take it out.

I popped the radio forward and I did not have to take the radio all of the way out or remove all of the connections on the back of the unit to attached the plug from the XCarLink. There is enough room to slip your hand from the top of the unit to the back and plug the plug/dongle from the unit in. Remember to: set your parking brake, disconnect the battery, and shifter back all the way, **** off of course the the stem of the shifter covered completely with a towel os something so when the radio does "pop" out the black shiny face of the radio does not hit the shifter and put a huge divet in the face of the radio.

The XcarLink is powered by the one connection to the back of the factory radio so there are no other wires to run with the exception of the Bluetooth dongle.

I located my XCarLink in the glove box and tomorrow I am going to velcro it in so it will not move around.

On the Bluetooth mic that is supplied the cord is somply not long enough to go from the glove box to a visor, so temporarily I have it just setting loose by the dash pod/speedo. I ran the wire down along the steering column where there is a space of about .25". I am going to make my own shielded extender cable for the Bluetooth mic so it can be mounted up by the visor for better audio.

The in-dash 6-CD player is still operative with the XCarLink installed. All of the steering wheel mounted radio controls still function as they should which is a plus. The last rig I had I purchased one of those aftermarket interface's that is supposed to be a full interface with the steering wheel controls and your radio..NOT.

If you have questions just let me know. I will be trying to take some pictures to post a few so you can see the unit and where I finally put everything. Oh, and the audio quality sounds good coming through the Bose factory stereo..

broadband2

Kaine

hi. when on a2dp mode, are you able to control the songs on your phone, eg; forward, rewind, play, via the steering wheel controls?

thanks.

BBQdDude

Very curious myself on that question.

Thank you,

Brian

broadband2

Just a few updates;

I have switched away from the USB drive and went to a 4gb SD card. The access time with the USB option sucks. It took forever to access the folders and mp3's.

The standard SD card worked ok, but it took an unusual amount of time for the access/startup. So I switched away from a standard SD card. The other thing is that the timer count down on the lcd above the radio always read 0.00. I am assuming with everything I have tried that this function is directly tied to a faster read speed provided by SDHC cards. This symptom told me the unit was having trouble on accessing everything it was supposed to. It did not state in the Chinese instructions I translated that the XCar Link was compatable with SDHC, but I figured for $20 it was worth a try.

A 4gb SDHC card was purchased and loaded with 846 songs in six folders and I have to say it made the unit's operation ten times faster. It boots and reads the folders much quicker and it sounds great and the counter works.

The next thing I did was to try two 8gb SDHC (class 6) cards I bought locally at Fry's. I bought one Panasonic and one Kingston. This was a total flop as both of the cards were junk right out of the packaging. The Panasonic was un-formatable for some reason, and yes I had the switch on the card in the right position, I was able to format the Kingston and load the songs but nothing would playback in either my laptop, computer, Creative Zen, or a friends laptop. I reformatted the card and tried it in my camera, it stored the pictures I took but after taking them I could not access them in the camera or computer, another junk card. These are both going back.

One other thing; it seems on colder days the unit takes longer to access the SDHC card. I tried taking the card out of the XCar Link at night and keeping it inside and re-inserting it in the morning when I left and it improved the access read time.

I will make another trip to Fry's next week and purchase a Sandisk 8gb SDHC (class 6) card, it seems everything from Sandisk works.

As far as the phone access goes, I honestly don't know. The IPhone I originally had when I started this project way back when conked out (dead and would not turn on) so I now have a different carrier and phone but I will try the mp3 access on it if that is what you are referring to.

Let me know....

RX8jtm

Awesome! I am looking to get this too. I can only seem to find version 5. What are the advantages of version 6? Should I wait to get that one? Also I would love to see your solutions for mounting the speaker for the bluetooth unit. I am looking for a very clean looking installation,

Thanks

aboveandbeyond

Hi, thanks for the info, previous poster has asked if you can control the music using a2dp from the car stereo controls....any news? thanks

Daisun

You cannot control the music using a2dp from the car stereo. All you can do is Pause/Play the music once its playing using the channel '6' button. That same button also serves as 'answer' and 'end' when you get a call. It may function differently for different phones, I have a Sony Ericsson w910i.

It would've been good had the '6' button also turned the music player on, that way i can just get in car and hit that to start the music without fiddling with the phone.

/edit
I found that on an iphone, after the phone connects to the bluetooth you can hit the '6' button to start the ipod. Maybe I should get myself an iphone....