M6 2008 (E63) - Music set up / bluetooth / sat nav upgrade

[ab-19]

Hi guys,

Owned my M6 (E63) for just over a month now and loving every minute of it. Minus the constant filling up at the petrol station, but that be my right foot fault. However....

Looking for a bit of advice on a couple of items and wondered if anybody could point me in the right direction or somebody has come up with an ingenious solution.... as having audio cables everywhere reminds me of my first car trying to impress Claire Gates that my tape deck could now play CD's through this nifty CD player gadget...

So the problem I'm facing is regarding getting my music to play through the speakers from my iPhone 6. I have an AUX input (my car doesn't have a USB input) which works perfectly fine but doesn't allow me to change tracks through the buttons on the steering wheel or see what's playing on the stereo/iDrive display screen. Which is fine, I can live with this but kind of want something a bit better as we all have those songs on the playlist where you go "why on earth did I put that song on there?". The other problem with this is you have to leave the phone in the armrest where the AUX plug is.

I'm trying to think of the best setup for my music and phone as the Snap In Adaptor in the car is for an iPhone 3 or 4 therefore cannot plug my iPhone 6 into this to play my Spotify. Strangely my BMW bluetooth phone connection works fine but will not allow me to play my music through this system, am I doing something wrong?

I've looked at solutions, my best one I can see so far is a bluetooth adaptor that can connect to the Snap In Adaptor 30 pin connector and use that as my bluetooth connection, keep my phone in a vent phone holder and play music that way. Does anybody know if this will even work? Or will it be trial and error.

Secondly I have the 2008 Professional Sat Nav dvd in my car, I have seen on the internet a few copies of the 2015 dvd for around £20.....are these any good? Or am I likely to bust my DVD player?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Ash

[Schermerhorn]

2015 sat nav DVD won't work with the 2008 interface. You will have to upgrade the entire idrive to an LCI facelift spec for it to work I believe.

[cosworth330]

I have the aux socket in my M5 but went for the OEM Alpine IPOD interface that was available through BMW. You unplug the CD changer in the glove box and plug the iPod interface in its place.. It has the older iPod connector bit I think you can get a plug to convert to the iPhone 6 type. It displays songs on the I drive screen and controlled by the steering wheel controls. I found it easier to buy a small iPod nano and plug into the interface lead and leave it in the glovebox. Note it doesn't charge the iPod so if you have a phone plugged in its going to go flat quite quickly,the nano lasts ages. I bought my interface secondhand off eBay for about £80. Sometimes they need coding to the car to work, luckily mine didn't need any coding.

Here's one on eBay
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-E60-E63-E65-E70-E71-...

Simon.

[likesachange]

Clare gates the one that got away

[AW10]

Schermerhorn said:

2015 sat nav DVD won't work with the 2008 interface. You will have to upgrade the entire idrive to an LCI facelift spec for it to work I believe.

No issue in my 2007 E61 using 2015 DVDs..

[minimatan]

AW10 said:

Schermerhorn said:

2015 sat nav DVD won't work with the 2008 interface. You will have to upgrade the entire idrive to an LCI facelift spec for it to work I believe.

No issue in my 2007 E61 using 2015 DVDs..

The 2015 Sat Nav disc works fine in my 2004 E63... The only credible source as far as I am concerned is the fella called Rusty. Message me if you would like his details.

[jcolley]

If want USB, you need to add a MULF2-HIGH module (power and fiber optic connections) and have it coded to the car.

If you want the Aux/USB connector in the center console, that's the 6FL retrofit, also doable easily.

These both work with the pre-LCI CCC without problem.

If you want Bluetooth streaming you're looking ahead to COMBOX retrofit which I've gotten to work with CIC (only 2010 M5/M5 came with this) which is the HDD based NAV system. Now that people are starting to retrofit NBT (F10/F30 nav system) into the E6x, CIC retrofits can be had much more reasonably. Bimmerretrofit.com seems to be a reputable vendor, but I have no personal experience with them, I cobble my own together.

[mycool]

Having dealt with both these "issues" in my 2006 e60 M5, I can recommend the following:

Get a 2015 sat nav DVD from the Rusty guy mentioned above, which will give you latest maps (not the fancy coloured ones of the LCi or newer i-Drive) but latest as in the roads will be there! You will also get 7 -digit postcode entry which once you learn how to enter them its fairly easy.

For the music it depends whether you already have a CD changer in the glovebox (or the car has the fibre optic wiring and coding already fitted). If yes then look for a Dension Gateway 500 (or 500s) on ebay - new they are about £300-£350 dependent on version but I picked one up with all the wiring etc for just over £150.

They are virtually plug and play (you might have to unclip the power plug and reconnect a couple of wires but it's easy and there are a few youtube videos showing you what I mean).

Essentially you replace the CD changer for this box and it gives you USB, aux in and ipod connections (old connector) through the i-drive. Dension sell a lightning connector cable for about £25 which means you can add your iphone too and charge it. Took me about 90mins to fit and get working.

[AW10]

One option is something like http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GX71GNO/ref=pe_385040_...

Power it via a USB cigarette light power adapter and then connect the output lead to your Aux In. You'll have to use the phone's interface to select music, playlists etc.

[Shaoxter]

minimatan said:

AW10 said:

Schermerhorn said:

2015 sat nav DVD won't work with the 2008 interface. You will have to upgrade the entire idrive to an LCI facelift spec for it to work I believe.

No issue in my 2007 E61 using 2015 DVDs..

The 2015 Sat Nav disc works fine in my 2004 E63... The only credible source as far as I am concerned is the fella called Rusty. Message me if you would like his details.

The latest satnav disc will work fine, the newer CIC ones are hard drive based (and much harder to update). Normally I try not to pirate things but these discs from BMW are pure extortion. The ebay seller will just be a torrented version anyway, I can burn you a copy if you like. But why you'd ever want to use the built in nav rather than Google Maps/Waze is another matter...

For your music you can also consider an FM transmitter, some of them will have buttons and displays which will be easier to change tracks than from your iphone. Not sure if the sound quality will be any good though.

[minimatan]

FM Transmitters are so annoying in London, but then again, I haven't tried the newer versions which auto scan for available channels.

I have PMd you Ashley.

I have to say that there is some awesome knowledge on this thread as I would love to stream music from my iPhone into my 2004 645Ci via bluetooth, but would like to keep the six cd changer too.

[mycool]

There is a way or wiring the Dension units up to retain the cd changer but make sure you get a dual port one.
All the details are on the dension website and the manuals there to download too to show how easy the installation is. I'm loving mine and now wondering why i took so long to do it!

[ab-19]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you very much for all your suggestions.

I have somebody from OEM Retrofit contacting me on Monday to discuss through some options but it appears that after speaking with the salesperson I'd still need to have the phone connected and left in the glove box which is a pain to keep getting in and out from the drivers seat and wouldn't let me control Spotify....the CIC COMBOX retrofit would be amazing but looks too complicated for me and pretty sure that taking the car apart and fiddling with the electrics will invalidate the mondial warranty??

So I think the one I'm going to give a go will be this bluetooth aux adapter as suggested above:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5mm-AUX-Bluetooth-Wire...

It needs to be re-charged every now and then from the cigarette charger but at least I can just plug it in to the aux and use my phone control from the phone holder on my air vent.

Not a perfect solution I know but at least it will allow me to use Spotify which is where I have all my music. Anybody see this not working??

Suppose I can put up with this small inconvenience as I'm madly in love with my V10

I'm also going to give the new DVD maps a go, thank you for Rusty's details.

Cheers,
Ashley

[Irish_Stu]

I used to have a Viseeo tune2air wma1000.. (I appear to have lost it somehow). It plugged into my e63 M6's 30pin ipod connector in the glovebox, and acts as a secondary bluetooth connection for streaming music. You can normally have two bluetooth connections on your phone, one for the handsfree phone connection to the car, and the other for streaming music to the viseeo device.

It worked well for me and I could stream anything from my phone easily through the M6 stereo. I have noticed however that it doesnt appear on the viseeo website now, maybe they dont support the apple 30pin connector any more. I have also heard that some people had issues with the iphone 6.

Worth investigating though...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ViseeO-Tune2air-Wireless...

[Grace1991]

I am using Bovee 1000 from viseeousa, I can stream music wirelessly to my car and no more fumbling with cables because it is an A2DP bluetooth adapter, you can connect iPhone and Android into it and do call switching in between music and there's a lot more to do with this device. I'm enjoying mine so far.