[Skylaw]

Hi, Shaun. I spliced into the +12v (red/yellow) and ground (brown) wires on the back of the COMAND, using commercially available (Radio Shack) wire splices for 18-22 gauge wire. I held my breath doing it, and did it far enough down the harness to be able to solder the wires back together if I did any damage. But, it worked just fine.

I did it before rob13572468 told me about the better way I mentioned (going to the fuse panel on the side of the dashboard, and the ground connector under the side carpet in the footwell area). Looking at his suggestion, the power wires and ground wires are long enough - and if I did it again, that's what I'd do.

So, no pics of that - but a good opportunity for you to advance our knowledge!!

To the extent that I tried out the voice control on the GW 500, it did work like the CDC - but I haven't tried everything yet. I was just trying to see that voice control worked as it should on the various components after I made the changes in the trunk.

Right now I'm working with the menus - but not in an adequately controlled fashion (just one thing at a time, and checking it out before making more changes). I was having trouble with getting the right things to load in the browser folders initially - think I traced the problem to an apostrophe in the name of my iPod, which the firmware translated as a period - i.e., a change in the file path. You can see it on the screen in the COMAND photos. When I tried to load playlists into the browser menu, I got song titles instead.

I deleted the apostrophe, and got playlists to load into the browser [playlists] folder in the Dension menu - and then, selecting a playlist with "Seek+" I could get songs within them.

However, I also then resynched the iPod (on iTunes) to get rid of nearly 100 "track XX" titles in some folders (I hadn't imported the ID Tag 3 info with the music when I imported it into iTunes - mostly movie sound tracks). Afterward the iPod wouldn't complete the load of its menus, or show on the COMAND display. It hung up on the check mark startup page on the iPod display and kept cycling back to it when trying to continue - and I couldn't get it to show in the menus (though the GW 500 was trying to control and start the iPod). The only device that showed at the highest level of the menus was the AUX input - not the iPod. A reset of the GW 500, the iPod menus, and re-starting the MOST bus cured that.

Right now I can load all playlists into the Dension browser menu; select a playlist by scrolling and then using the "Seek+" button; and show (and scroll) all of the songs in the playlist. However, song titles show with a period in front (e.g., ".Fur Elise" rather than just "Fur Elise"), and I cannot select the song using either the center (OK) button or the "Seek+" button. Still have to work that out and could use some hints myself. The user manual doesn't cover it.

I am having no problem navigating the iPod using the iPod screen and controls when in the "iPod" user interface.