How's it going everyone?
I'm in the middle of attempting to wire in a MB sirius module into the ring, the problem i'm having is after going through ALL the posted threads i'm unable to find the solution to the ring color coded yellow fiber optic wire, i have located the 2 unconnected orange FO wires and I have also found the connected orange FO wires marked 1&2 in the wire harness connector thats connected to a box (A211 820 62 85).. I have unwrapped/cut the tape that's keeping all the wires together but cannot find the yellow FO wires that all of the posts i've looked at and referred to or are in pics that were posted. I have a supposedly pre wired 04 E55 with the SAT on the command unit but unable to find the yellow FO connections...

ANY ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

Hi there. I think I have the same problem. I haven't resolved it yet.

My car is also a 2004. I have the hook ups for the module on the passenger side.

Mine does NOT have the yellow wires. It has the taped up connection in the back of the black box. I can take some pictures as I still have the trunk prepped for this mod.

I think we need to have something changed in STAR. From my research there appears to be a batch of cars where the cables were ran after the fact. You probably found some taped on label tags on the wiring? And the wiring is all orange? Same thing here.

With the open wires there is only really one way they can go. We two optical cables coming from the module area and you can only realistically plug them in one way. When you do that and turn on the car the head unit will reboot in a loop. I think we have to use STAR set the order in the loop.

I have yet to find anyone with STAR locally and I'm not paying the MB dealer $165/hr (and a 2 hour round trip drive there) so I haven't quite resolved this issue yet. I will document it once I do.

 

Yeah it's a bit weird that not too many other people are having this issue without a resolution... I'm trying to be optimistic.. lol

 

I talked to a tech on the phone briefly and he said that is common for the earlier cars to not automatically pick up new things on the MOST ring.

Just know that, looking at your orange connectors that you found, the disconnected lines are what get plugged into the module.

I assume that you unplug the existing, connected fiber optic line and connect the parts that reach to the empty spots that come from the module. But then something has to be done in STAR that tells the system that a sat radio is now in the ring. That's just my assumption at this point.

Good luck and keep me updated if you figure it out! I'll take some shots of my setup this weekend, including the bracket that I made.

 

Ok, I was thinking that myself about just trying to switch the orange ones around and see what happens. I just wanted to be sure i definitely wasn't going crazy looking for the yellow FO cables that can't be found.

I will keep you posted..

Thanks for your help...

 

When I tried hooking it up to the only fiber optic cables back there, which are orange in my car, when I turned on the car the head unit sounded like it was trying to eject the CD player over and over again. The head unit wouldn't turn on by itself unless I held the power button down for 5+ seconds, and after turning on it would freeze and shut off again.

Replacing the connections puts everything back to normal. If you get a wild hair, see what happens to your car when you connect the fiber cables. Hopefully it's the same thing as mine, so we at least have some consistency.

 

Use STAR to to check the optical ring and reprogram the ring order coded to the AGW

 

Yeah, I'm at STEP 0.

Before Use STAR I have to find STAR.

 

you do need STAR to turn on the additional component via the audio gateway module. now these connections: try this even if you dont have STAR to get this going. the fiber optic wiring should go as such, whether its yellow or orange or blue or whatever, that doesnt matter altho in some mercedes they may be yellow to connect an "additional" component. regardless of color, you have to connect the fiber optic loop like this: there are arrows on each connector going into a component (ie the cd changer, or voice command etc), one arrow will show going into the component and right beside that arrow, another arrow with fiberoptic line coming out of that component, (normally the left fiberoptic line is arrow going into component is signal going in and the right side of that fiberoptic connector is the arrow coming out is the signal coming out of that fiber optic loop). so whenever you connect the lines for an additional module, ie sat radio, nav unit etc etc, you got to make sure you use the fiberoptic line thats leaving one component, this line goes to the "arrow in" of the sat radio module connector and the additional fiberoptic line (whether its yellow or orange) this line will be connected to the other side of the fiberoptic connector with arrow coming out of the sat radio going to the original component that it was going to before you started this journey. this is the whole idea of keeping the "fiber optic loop in a circle). some of you have tried to place the sat radio in and the system turns on and then off, coding is responsible and could be the reason, but also make sure you have the appropiate "loop" and try again. before your coding will work, you have to have the appropiate "loop" together so the signal travels in a complete circle before it will work. take my example here and i am sorry such a lengthy writeup but it took me hours and hours to figure this out on my e55 that had extensive after market audio/subs/amps and fiberoptic wiring cutup in the process. so i personally got a whole audio wiring mess off of ebay for cls/clk/e/s - class etc etc and i bought the whole wiring of audio for about $100 and it sells for about $600 from mercedes. i then studied the wiring just the way it was in the box. i took some time and gathered each oem product, the cd changer/nav unit (trunk)/comand head unit/ and a audio gate module. all of these components were not there, just the fiber optic cables that used to connect to these components were left in its place. after studying how the wiring mess was that i bought from ebay and how the wiring was in the car with all aftermarket crap removed, it made logical sense how i needed to proceed. wasn't easy but i looked over it and looked over it for days to figure it out. so after i got all components, i basically rig up the fiberoptic loop just for these components: took the whole wiring mess, removed the whole fiberoptic orange cable from it (and there was a yellow one in there) and it had black optic connectors also tied in whereby you can bring 2 fiber optic lines together. (keep in mind, these are fiberoptic lines, travel in either direction, its up to you how you want it to travel). and i using those same arrows i wrote about above, wired up the fiberoptic circular set outside the car. keeping in mind, 2 sets of fiberoptic had to be very long to reach the front of the car for the head unit and cd changer and the other 2 being that i was, in my mind, starting from the trunk, wasn't too long for the nav and agw modules. when all done, the unit powered up and that how it plays now. when i tried to use the "existing" wiring from factory, it would never work due to fiberoptic wiring was cut in one spot and after i fixed it, still no good so there must have been a bad component due to the voice/telematics was still there connected. instead of getting a star to figure out which component was bad, i devised my own fiber optic loop for the components i wanted to run. if i wanted to install a sat radio, i would take the fiber optic wiring thats going to the navigation unit's fiberoptic wiring thats coming into the nav unit (arrow coming in) and place that fiber optic wiring to the sat radio fiberoptic line connector coming into the sat radio, and the other side of sat radio will be the fiber optic cable going out (arrow leaving the unit on connector) to the nav unit fiber optic cable going into the unit (arrow coming in on the connector). thats it!! the reason you guys may see a "yellow" fiber optic cable, is because it was easy and accessible for mercedes to get the "yellow" fiberoptic cable as an additional line to do quick installs without chopping up the more expensive, longer "orange" line of fiber optic cables. thats why you will see the "yellow" when a component is "added" or installed later or even from factory sometimes. sorry for the long explanation and i hoped its helpful! sorry i didnt take any pics but i do have some wiring left over to possibly show if this is very confusing. take care and good luck!!

 

Thanks for the write up, it sheds a bit of light for me, I have a few questions, I'm assuming this install was on an 04 E55, I wonder where you found the yellow connector, it seems that would be the easier way to add components to the ring, it almost seems like the yellow FO is there (on some not most vehicles) as a way to add a component, almost like a splice into the FO ring.
If i remove the 2 presently connected (into the box A211 820 62 85) orange FO cables and replace the 2 unconnected orange FO cables coming from the sirius module into the corresponding spots, won't those newly unconnected FO cables need to be plugged into the ring somewhere?

 

sorry man, i work nights, my apology for the late response. yes i too have a 2004 e55. i got my wiring from that audio wiring set i got from ebay that was the total audio wiring for the whole car. i just removed the FO for what i needed to do to make my system work. now back to your question: i am not familiar with the sat radio connections. with that said, i dont know why there is 2 sets of cables going into the unit and 2 sets coming out of the unit???? most of the time, only 1 fiber optic cable goes into and 1 FO cable comes out to make the loop???? could you post any pics of the setup as is now?? is this a sat radio from mercedes directly? i too will see if i can dig up some examples how the sat radio install is done. i thought only 2 cable total is needed, i see the dilemma you are having when in fact 2 FO cables are still not connected to anything??? and yes, this will indeed cause the whole system to shut off because the "loop" is not complete. will do some research on that sat radio unit hookup.

 

after doing some research, that part you have listed: A211 820 62 85, thats called the voice control module and it only has 1 connector that has the 2 FO cable (going in and coming out). if there is another connector with the 2 FO cable, then that may have to be connected to another component in the back there, either the telematics, phone etc etc that sits back there on the floor of the trunk inside that black tray. tomorrow will try and dig up an example of the voice control module and other components and try and show how its all connected back there. i will also see if i have an "extra" fiber optic cable in my stack of wires from my previous fix. working all night and get off at 10am. thanks!