My Favorite Ride is Back in My Drive

We recently purchased a more up-to-date used car for my youngest daughter to drive back and forth to college, so my 2002 BMW 325i is once again back in my drive way and I have the keys! This is my favorite car of all times and it has survived being driven by both of my kids.  The only body work resulted from a bad hail storm several years ago.

This car is just so fun to drive!  Plus, today I just resolved one of my biggest complaints about having such an old ride.  I love satellite radio (Sirius), plus I wanted to connect my phone for hands-free communication via bluetooth.  The 2002 BMW was also not equipped with an AUX jack to play music from an iPod or other MP3 device.  We went for years burning CDs and listening to boring old FM radio, but no longer.

After researching the matter on BMW forums, I discovered the Mediabridge from Dice Electronics.

I found several good installation step-by-step posts online.  Here's one.  There are also numerous  Youtube videos if you search under "Dice mediabridge" about how to install it in your E46 BMW.  What I love about this device is that it attaches to the CD changer port on your factory BMW radio. It comes with a long cable that you can run from the trunk to behind your glove box where the mediabridge hides.  I was also able to add the Sirius SCC1 direct connect radio (another similar size box) to the Mediabridge.

Everything is hidden away and looks like factory install. Sirius radio, BT, USB, AUX can all be selected by pressing the MODE button on the radio.  The radio controls and steering wheel controls all work with the device and with my iPhone 4 to select tracks, playlists, artists, etc.  Plus, the factory radio displays the track information.  Mediabridge gives audio cues as to what device has been selected and tells you the name of the Sirius station that is playing before it starts playing it.

When you pair your phone to bluetooth, the music on my iphone can stream to my car stereo wirelessly via bluetooth and I can still change tracks with my steering wheel. Alternatively, I can connect my iPhone via USB cable for charging and playback through USB. Sound quality is very good too.  This device has really pimped out my ride.  I'm very excited about it!

Dice makes similar devices for other makes and models of cars besides BMW.  If you're missing satellite radio and bluetooth in your ride, check out Dice.  I ordered both the Dice Mediabridge and the Sirius SCC1 module from Amazon.  The whole kit was right at $300.  It took me about 2 hours to do the installation.

Making Progress with Sambutu

Sambutu is my Samsung Q1 running Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu 7.10. I'm typing this message on Sambutu using the Thinkoutside Stowaway bluetooth keyboard. I was able to get my computer to recognize the bluetooth keyboard. Although, it wasn't without a bit of trial and error and it involved typing in the terminal.

I found instructions on setting up a bluetooth mouse and keyboard in the ubuntu forums

Here's a screenshot of the Bluetooth preferences panel:


You'd think it would be a matter of launching the bluetooth preference control panel, telling the computer to accept the connection and boom! But no, I had to type in the terminal commands listed in the link above. You'll notice that the screenshot shows that the computer recognized my Targus bluetooth mouse too, but it actually doesn't work. I've got more work to do on that.

One note: the instructions in the link say that you have to type a command to restart the bluetooth system. When I tried to type in the suggested command, the terminal came back with an error message "command not found". Maybe this command isn't needed in 7.10. I dunno. Anyway, I ran the next command to scan for devices and it found both the mouse and the keyboard.

I've seen a couple of notes in the forum suggesting that other people are having problems connecting this particular Targus bluetooth mouse to their Linux computer so maybe it's just this mouse. Anyway, I've got touchscreen working and the bluetooth keyboard, so my Linux experience on Sambutu is up another notch. More on this story as it develops.

Activesync: Synching with Bluetooth via Parallels on Mac

Thanks to the instructions on this blog, I was able to sync my HTC Advantage via bluetooth with Activesync running on my MacBook with Parallels. It works great!