number_one_c55

Hello everyone. After countless hours of reading about iPod integration and AUX inputs I figured why not do it myself but with wireless audio all while keeping the head unit stock.


What I did was take an old pair of headphones and cut the ear pieces off. Strip back the wire and you should have 3 wires. One for Left Audio, one for Right Audio and a ground wire.


Next you need to remove the radio from the car with the proper radio removal tools. Remove radio and get unit apart so you can see the back of the circuit board.


Locate the 3 soldering points L / R Audio and ground - See photo for this!


Solder in connections and route wire out the back of the head unit.


To access the AUX input you will need to press the tape feature on your head unit and you will need to dissect an old tape in order to fool the mechanism in the head unit to allow music to play through the unit.


Next, I went out and purchased an airport express. Not the base station with the flip out plug the NEWEST available airport express. Setup the airport express at home first and verify that it works! Setup a wireless name for and password for the airport express.


Now you can power it one of two ways. One you can dissect the airport express and remove the power source this is very easy to do and only about 6 screws to remove the circuit board from inside.


First way to power it is with a voltage regulator. 3.3V is what the airport express needs to power up. I had problems with my voltage regulator because mine was putting out 3.6V before airport express powered on but 3.2V when load was applied to the regulator. Anything less than 3.3V the unit will not power on or will have problems with the boot up procedure.


So when I discovered that the voltage regulator I waited a week for wasn't going to work I didn't have the patience to figure out how to make the voltage regulator work so I put the airport express power unit back in and I went to Walmart and found the smallest single plug in 12V power inverter I could find. I cut the cigar lighter end off and wired the power and ground wires to the back of the cigar lighter in the center console. This requires removal of the climate control unit, stereo, center console dash storage and ash tray.


Okay now once the power inverter is spliced into a SWITCHED 12V power source you can plug in your airport express to the power inverter and plug in the AUX input you wired into the head unit into the airport express. Before cleaning everything up make sure it all works.


If all works tie everything up neatly in the dash and put everything back together. There is enough room behind the storage compartment / radio and ash tray to have a small inverter and airport express back there without doing any modifications to the sound deadening behind the center console.


The second video shows me in the back room, iPhone on the desk and music playing through the car. The range is very very good.








Please feel free to ask me any questions!!

cm60k

WaaaaW, Excellent,

very IMPRESSIVE...

ZAYED,,

JoeNobody

Nice. I did the same for my W211 E55, except i used an adjustable voltage regulator.

If you configure the dhcp settings correctly, then you can still use cellular for internet while connected to airport.

see here: http://forums.mightycarmods.com/show...l=1#post532949

Scott Simoncic

You have to have wifi on for this to work though, yes? So it should be known that will kill off any pandora / spotify or any other streaming based audio capabilities, unfortunately Cool mod though.

number_one_c55

Not quite. You can change the DHCP settings of the wifi so you can in fact still stream wireless music over the airport express.

Scott Simoncic

What? That doesn't really make sense. The DHCP server, is this case, would be the airport express, which creates a WiFi bubble basically around your car. The airport has to have a bridge to the internet (Broadband Modem), which would then NAT the public IP address to your internal network you're creating with the airport. Once you turn the WiFi on for your phone, it automatically ignores the CDMA/GSM/UMTS/LTE yadda yadda and does not create a bridge between the WiFi and the 3G/4G data service of your phone... Now, you could tether the phone, use the same channel, ssid, and ip scheme of the tethering service of the phone, and hope the WiFi of the router picks it up as a client, but that's a long shot and performance would be iffy... For giggles I have an airport express sitting in my trunk and I'm going to test that theory. But again, an airport express by itself is just a WiFi router, it doesn't provide internet service required for streaming. But if I'm missing something, I'd love details, they can be complex, as I am a network administrator so I will understand, and appreciate them very much.

number_one_c55

Yes.......okay..

number_one_c55

Here is how to make this work. You need to download Airport Utilities for me I have windows 8.

Plug in a ethernet cable to the local port on the airport express and one into your ethernet jack on your computer.

Open the program and wait until the airport utilities recognises the airport express.

Next go into the Advanced tab and change the IPv6 to Link - Local only.

Click update at the bottom and that part is done.

Next on your iPhone go to Settings and into Wi-Fi

Make sure you are connected to the airport express wireless signal in the car.

Press the i symbol beside the wireless network and go to the Static tab.

Change the IP address to 10.0.1.4 and subnet mask to 255.255.0.0

Go back to wifi and thats it! Your now able to use 3G & 4G while Airplaying music in your car.

Scott Simoncic

Dude, very nice.... I see what's actually happening, it's exploiting a loophole, but hell, it works! So, it's not actually seeing it as being connected to WiFi, because the lack of gateway and incorrect subnet mask, but it's making layer 1&2 allowing mDNS (Bonjour) which doesn't actually even need an ip address, just a mac address to register, so the phone ignores the WiFi for TCP/IP processes, but allows AirPlay over the "link-local" portion of the connection to the airport express. You can even put in a loopback address 127.0.0.1 and it still works because if you look at your status of the airport express the client doesn't even register....... Good Stuff Man!

number_one_c55

BOOM! Just got real! Scott you should be driving a CL65 not a CLK430. You clearly dont get paid enough

mranderson_e55

Any chance anyone has pictures or could direct me towards a youtube video showing how to do this and everything that would be needed? I just got the chance to purchase an 01 e55 and would love to get this system put in - on another note, has anyone heard of anyone being able to utilize the existing phone harness for an iPhone or any other current phone?


Thanks