peet

I just got a 2010 loaner with realtime traffic and I really love that feature living around Chicago. Is it possible to retrofit this? Perhaps a new satellite receiver and a telematics update?

Anyone do this? What's the parts list and process?

TIA!
Peet

ZephyrAMG

I know I'm not much help because I'm not sure, but I think that there should be a disc (DVD) that updates the navi and system, I'm thinking??

Have you tried calling the dealer or asking them upon trading in the loaner.

peet

The data has to get from the satellite to the head unit somehow, so I imagine there's hardware. I'm trying to get my telematics updated which will show if it's all there already which would be amazing.

e1000

traffic is usually updated via a special FM channel, not satellite

iatacs19

Yes, it's called RDS, but doesn't MB use satellites for their traffic?

peet

Yes, MB uses Serius/XM Traffic data. Well on the loaner I am using it does.

e1000

ah ok, i stand corrected.

rory breaker

Verrrry curious on how this can happen, my gut tells me its a no go.

cyberorth

My GL has this. It shows two Sirius ids when you activate and one is for traffic. So if all the same, it is a hardware difference IMO.

Shellbmb

Isn't the traffic feature a feature of the upgrade that was offerred a while back? I got a postcard in the mail from MB saying my 2009 was eligible for a multimedia upgrade. For around 1500 USD they would upgrade the command unit, place the new multimedia cords in the glovebox and add nav traffic. So the ipod function would be through the comand unit and not our multifunction display.

I checked with my parts guy a while back and it was 1440 plus labor. In my opinion not worth it. My wife has it in her GL and the traffic never seems accurate. It will show little yellow cars when we are driving in the middle of the night and there is nobody on the road.

Ipod upgrade is nice, but I use the PC card adapter so I don't mind.

jvanbrecht

I believe you need teleaid or mbrace to get the traffic updates, in addition the the XM/sirius reciever...

I am not familiar with how MB does it. Most cars that get real time updates get them from either satellite (XM/Sirius), or via a clearchannel FM broadcast, but it is not RDS. RDS is a part of the broadcast stream that is limited to a small amount of data, channel identifier/callsign, song name and title, and it sends it serially (which is annoying and why you see the channel/song data scrolling, some cars store the data [cadilacs I believe] so you see it onscreen the entire time instead of scrolling and only showing 8 to 10 chars at a time).

RDS does not have the bandwidth to supply realtime traffic data.

That said, I was told by the dealer (will find out in Nov when the teleaid contract is up and I can install the mbrace unit.. they say for free.. lets see if they remember...) that real time updates require mbrace, but at the same time, since the car has sat, it would make more sense to use the sat receiver over the use of a cellular data network from a pure cost of the services perspective.

cyberorth

I am amazed by how accurate the traffic display is here in SoCal...

ATL_MB

It is via Sirius/XM - I dropped traffic ($3 / month) when my initial 6 month subscription was done. In my experience, the traffic data was so inaccurate that it seemed to just be happenstance when it was correct.

bli8

Traffic is accurate for me in Socal too.

Jae Duk

I asked this in a post before...is there any thing out there where we can add another sirius id to get live traffic? The 2009s only have 1 sirius id