Bluetooth calling in car with stereo aux input?

January 20, 2007 7:29 AM

What is the best way to set up Bluetooth calling in my car if I have a stereo with an 1/8" stereo input & a Bluetooth phone/headset?

I figure there must be a device or combination of devices that will allow me to pipe calls from my Bluetooth phone through my stereo via the 1/8" input & use my Bluetooth headset. But I can't find any easily. Any suggestions?

posted by borrowed_tunes to Technology (3 answers total)

I'm unclear what you want to achieve, because I think you're unclear what you want to achieve. Nothing in your stereo is a phone, or has phone functionality. If what you are trying to do is use your stereo as the audio portion of a speaker phone, you need to understand that there is no microphone component in your car stereo, nor is there any circuitry to make the stereo work in half-duplex voice control mode for side tone operation, like a speakerphone does. Furthermore, there is no circuitry to drop whatever program level you happen to be listening to when a call comes in, so the microphone functions you don't have in the stereo, but would like to add, would work. And finally, if you're going to have to wear your Bluetooth headset, for it's microphone and call control capabilities, why would you want the recieve portion of the audio running through the car stereo?

Maybe, if your car stereo supports phone mute function, you could use something like this, but understand that the only interface to your car audio that it uses is the phone mute function.
posted by paulsc at 8:34 AM on January 20, 2007

Check out Parrot's line of products. They make bluetooth gear you can permanently install in your car or even just use the cigarette lighter to power a bluetooth mic.
posted by mathowie at 9:52 AM on January 20, 2007

I tried this (with one of them PDA phone deals - it had a regular headphone jack, which I hooked my tape adapter to). it sucked. everyone complained about the echo. you have to switch inputs to answer a call (or plug the phone in instead of your ipod or whatever). I did it with the speakerphone feature, and I still had to hold the phone near to my mouth to have it work. it was, though, the best sounding phone (on my end at least) that I'd ever heard. if you're going to use a headset anyway the headset will take over your phone's normal mic/speaker, and you can't really hijack the signal going to the headset. the Parrot deals mathowie linked to look really nice, though. you might also do some googling - some cars had factory-available phone systems that you might be able to tap into (even older ones, though until recently that was pretty much a luxury-car-only feature).
posted by mrg at 8:10 PM on January 20, 2007