jedcred

I just got a Pioneer 9800BT, a head unit with built-in bluetooth. I've been trying to get the auto-connect feature to work, which is basically where a phone that is registered to the unit connects when you turn on the car. Unfortunately this feature doesn't seem to be working. The unit never seems to attempt to find bluetooth phones automatically; it only works when connected manually. Only one other post available online refers to the fact that another person could not get this working either. Pioneer tech was of no help, simply reading the manual back to me. Other than this problem, the unit works perfectly. If anyone has any personal experience with this unit, any help would be much appreciated.

A list of what I have done already follows, so as to preclude generic suggestions.

- reset unit
- reset unit, then only connected and registered phone
- auto connect is on
- turned auto connect off, then on
- tried with multiple phones: Mpx220 and Razr
- shut off bluetooth audio input, didn't make a difference
- registered multiple phones, no difference
- waited 5 minutes for it to auto-connect, didn't happen
- manually connected and let sit for 15 minutes, didn't make a difference
- initialized connection from both head unit and phone, no difference
- RTFM
- STFF

So, here I am. Thanks in advance.

jedcred

Ok, so I figured it out, thanks to some helpful people over at the caraudio.com forums. Turns out the phone must be in discoverable mode for the unit to pair with it again on restart. This is silly and overly complicated, since the unit has no problem connecting when manually done (from the head unit, which they could basically do on startup automatically anyway), and my portable headset doesn't need for my phone to be in discoverable mode either. This isn't so bad for me, since the discoverable mode on my phone (Mpx220) lasts until you turn it off. But on phones like the RAZR, the discoverable mode only lasts 60 seconds after you manually tell it to do it from the phone. I'm sure there's some justification for this reasoning, but I can't find it. Hopefully they fix this in a firmware upgrade or something.

And yes, I did answer my own question (again).

dtkw

Shouldn't it once paired, it should automatically pair when you get into the car? Is the bluetooth setup is set on ON in your phone?

jedcred

Apparently not, according to Pioneer! That is the regular behavior of most Bluetooth pairings. It may actually work that way for some phones and this device. However, for this particular device and my two phones (Mpx220 and RAZR), that's the way it auto connects every single time.

rage2

Thanks for answering your own question, because it ended my quest to automatically connect my RAZR to my 980BT in my E55.

I've also found if you do a phonebook entry transfer, the Pionner deck will "notice" you're in range and initiate a connection after the phonebook entry transfer as well. Useless, but trying to find clues to nail down the behavior since the manual just says "it may or may not work depending on phones".

Kind of silly that the deck, which is powered by the car battery, doesn't continuously try to make a manual connection in the background and instead just listens for a discoverable broadcast. Doesn't use up phone power, and would work pretty well.

Are there firmware updates to this deck?