I dropped off my car at the dealer today (04 E500). The service writer was telling me that Mercedes has discontinued "turned off" the Teleaid feature. I have the cradle with the bluetooth puck adapter in my car. He was saying that since the puck links with the Teleaid thingie, the bluetooth linked to my phone will stop working. Mercedes is suppose to turn it off in "blocks." He also showed me a brochure that said that it will stop as of Dec 31, 2007. I didn't really read through the whole thing so I'm not sure exactly what he was showing me.

Does anyone know if this is true? Will my bluetooth puck stop working with my phone? I just bought that puck thing and would hate to think I only got about 2 weeks use out of it.

Any thoughts?

 

The car's phone system, which your puck is plugged in to, and the Teleaid system are two different things. Your phone should work fine when Teleaid is turned off (and indeed most phone users aren't even subscribed to Teleaid and never have been, I bet).

I think your service guy is incorrect.

- Frank

 

I'm really not familiar with the US set-up but the puck with tail is using Tele-Aid circuitry, now if you "turn off" Tele-Aid, is that done by version coding Tele-Aid "not present" and if so, does it kill the microphone path to the BT device???

Tele-Aid subscription cannot have anything to do with the BT puck operation but could the deactivation actually make a difference?

 

I am running puck bluetooth in a 2004 E320 wagon. It has analog teleaid, so that means no teleaid as of Jan 1, 2008 (though I have not tested). The bluetooth phone connection has continued to work just fine.

 

Your car has a cell phone unit combined with Tele-Aid in its PSE (portable support electronics) module - the '03 and '04 E-Class both had that setup. Most other models had separate boxes for the two features.

The fact that analog tele-aid service was discontinued by MB in January, and analog cell service will disappear entirely in the U.S. in February 2008, does not mean that the digital portion of your phone system will not work. The cell phone portion of the system supported both the analog and digital frequency bands (the V60s phone your car would originally have used had both analog and digital capability).

The Tele-Aid portion of your PSE, on the other hand, was a built-in module that used analog frequencies only between the car and the tele-Aid network. Those frequencies have gone away. That's why your tele-aid won't work now.

With your car's original setup, it was entirely possible to have tele-aid feature activated, and the handsfree "cell phone" feature deactivated, with the STAR computer. My bet is that the reverse is also true.

If you get a Tele-Aid warning light, it can be turned off by deactivating Tele-Aid equipment in your car. But they should not have to deactivate your cell phone feature to do it. And whatever you do, don't let them disconnect or disable your PSE entirely. What they have to do is done entirely through the STAR computer.

Your Bluetooth puck should continue to work. All it does is provide voice input received from the phone over the Bluetooth frequencies to the PSE, and back to the phone - the same PSE you have used successfully. The PSE then integrates the phone into the rest of the audio system, just as it always did. It will continue to do so. The change that has occurred does not affect the Bluetooth frequencies or the puck operation at all. It only affects frequencies used between your cell phone and the cell network - and the digital frequencies are still there.

You can find out more at http://www.mbusa.com/care/client-care/teleaid.do

 

There is now available an adapter for 03 and 04 E calss cars without a phone installed to use the teleaid PSE to provide a BT phone connection!
Yes even my dealer didn't know about it!

John

 

As I said in my first sentence in the post immediately preceding yours, the '03 and '04 E-Class (and also the '03 and '04 S-Class) use a combination unit that contains both the cell phone PSE and the tele-aid unit. It is called the CP-211. If the car has tele-aid equipment installed, all that has to be done is to program the fiber optic controller to recognize the cell portion of the equipment, and add a V60s cradle and "puck with tail." This was discussed at post #4 in the sticky at https://mbworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=188818.

No "adapter" is necessary for this. All that is necessary is adding the proper cradle and Bluetooth puck, and then enabling the already-existing equipment using the STAR diagnostics computer.

If for some reason the car has no CP-211 at all, installing the new digital tele-aid upgrade kit would allow the same result.

I'm not surprised that some dealers would not know about this. They just need to get into their service information and do a little homework. Further, the techs know a lot more than the sales staffs do, usually - and often more than the service writers. It helps to talk directly to the tech.

 

Skylaw I've been watching the posts and missed this info too.

That new info to me. I thought I would have to purchase the upgrade Teleaid kit. I didn't know just adding the puck would work on a 2004 S600.

Thanks

 

Letsjet,

Although the '03 and '04 E and S-Class Tele-Aid stages of the CP-211 were analog-only, the V60 phones they would have been supplied with were dual-band (digital and analog both). The cell phone stage would have been also, in order to support the digital band. In the U.S., it is only the analog band that has been taken out of service. After February '08, all cell phones will operate only on the digital frequencies.

So, if you don't need Tele-Aid, you should still be able to activate your older CP-211's cell phone feature and use the digital band.

If you need Tele-Aid, you would need the digital upgrade replacement for the CP-211.

 

That's what I thought before reading your post. I misunderstood and thought that with a SW switch the Tele-aid would use the puck. I understand now....

 

Hi,

I have an 04 S430. a few months ago I had the teleaid upgrade from analog to digital. My question is if the bluetooth puck with tail will work with our recent TeleAid digital upgrade I paid for and will I still be able to use teleaid while the bluetooth puck is plugged into the teleaid 10 pin connector?

thanks!

Ben

 

oh, to answer my own question... Yes, the bluetooth puck with tail WILL work perfectly with even the Digital Teleaid upgrade. And the TeleAid still works perfectly too.
Very pleased with it.


Thanks,

Ben