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For the past few months, I have been struggling with an affordable way to get decent DAB into the XK, and to allow me to hook up my phone so that I can stream music. The lack of an 'Aux In' socket was becoming a bit of a handicap.
I finally settled on giving the Alpine Ezi-Dab a go. I realised (very quickly) that it wold not fit the XK's radio. Connections were not at all compatible, and the professional fitter very quickly waved the white flag. Fortunately, as I was within the 'distance selling' timescales, I returned the product for a full refund, and it was back to the drawing board.
At face value, the £500 dealer option was beinging to look like the only way forward.
That was until I stumbled across the Roidmi 2S Music Bluetooth Car Charger
This was the route that I really wanted to avoid like the plague - I was really determined not to have to rely on an FM Modulator, as I had tried these in the past and was realy unimpressed by the quality.
Anyway, with few options, I splashed out my £20 on Ebay, and the gizmo arrived today. After spending a couple of hours driving around with it up and running, I have to say that I am rather impressed. Once connected by bluetooth to the phone (in my case, an iPhone7), you can download an app which sets the thing up onto an unused radio frequency. After that, anything that you play on the phone (music, streaming services (e.g. Spotify) or Digital Radio) all get broadcast to the Roidmi and played through the relevant radio channel.
The device is also supposed to act as a handsfree phone kit ..... but I'm not so sure about that !
So far :
+ Sound quality is great - no interference experienced (yet)
+ The iPhone will pair to the Roidmi for music, and still also pair to the car's handsfree setup for phone calls
+ The device will monitor the status of your battery and will sound an alarm if it drops below a threshold that you set
+ It fits out of the way in the glove box accessory socket - so not visible in the car
+ It has 2 x USB sockets built in for charging
+ Can be moved from vehicle to vehicle
- Handsfree use is rather poor - I would avoid that.
So, if you have a similar setup to me and you are looking for a cheap option for music streaming and/or DAB, you might want to try this out. I have to say that I am really very pleasantly surprised.
The manufacturer's site is :www.roidmi.com/en/, and the device is readily available from all good Ebay retailers now !!
Sounds like you found an inexpensive solution that makes you happy!
What version car do you have, 4.2 or 5.0 liter? For the older XK you could have installed the ACM to get aux input. The 5.0 you can use a WMA1000 and the ipod adapter cable. Both cost way more than your modulator.
My previous xk wouldn't work with WMA so I used an old fm modulator paired with a leftover Bluetooth receiver to do the same thing as you. I was moderately happy with that fix.
I have the 4.2l. I looked very hard at the ACM - had a quote from the main dealer for the install and the software update - that would have cost me £500+. The ACM itself was around £250-300 + the cost of the software update.
As you say - a lot more costly than the £20 gizmo :-)
It is possible to retrofit the Portable Audio Interface from the 2009MY cars into the 2006-2008MY, i'll be doing this upgrade in a couple of months time. With a WMA1000 plugged in you get Bluetooth Audio streaming, controlled via the Touchscreen as an iPod.
And you can also retrofit the factory DAB/DAB+ Digital Radio system as well, so it's completely controlled via the touchscreen. I'll also be doing this shortly.
But yeah, it's not cheap, costs a bit more than 20 quid lol
For the past few months, I have been struggling with an affordable way to get decent DAB into the XK, and to allow me to hook up my phone so that I can stream music. The lack of an 'Aux In' socket was becoming a bit of a handicap.
I finally settled on giving the Alpine Ezi-Dab a go. I realised (very quickly) that it wold not fit the XK's radio. Connections were not at all compatible, and the professional fitter very quickly waved the white flag. Fortunately, as I was within the 'distance selling' timescales, I returned the product for a full refund, and it was back to the drawing board.
At face value, the £500 dealer option was beinging to look like the only way forward.
That was until I stumbled across the Roidmi 2S Music Bluetooth Car Charger
This was the route that I really wanted to avoid like the plague - I was really determined not to have to rely on an FM Modulator, as I had tried these in the past and was realy unimpressed by the quality.
Anyway, with few options, I splashed out my £20 on Ebay, and the gizmo arrived today. After spending a couple of hours driving around with it up and running, I have to say that I am rather impressed. Once connected by bluetooth to the phone (in my case, an iPhone7), you can download an app which sets the thing up onto an unused radio frequency. After that, anything that you play on the phone (music, streaming services (e.g. Spotify) or Digital Radio) all get broadcast to the Roidmi and played through the relevant radio channel.
The device is also supposed to act as a handsfree phone kit ..... but I'm not so sure about that !
So far :
+ Sound quality is great - no interference experienced (yet)
+ The iPhone will pair to the Roidmi for music, and still also pair to the car's handsfree setup for phone calls
+ The device will monitor the status of your battery and will sound an alarm if it drops below a threshold that you set
+ It fits out of the way in the glove box accessory socket - so not visible in the car
+ It has 2 x USB sockets built in for charging
+ Can be moved from vehicle to vehicle
- Handsfree use is rather poor - I would avoid that.
So, if you have a similar setup to me and you are looking for a cheap option for music streaming and/or DAB, you might want to try this out. I have to say that I am really very pleasantly surprised.
The manufacturer's site is :????, and the device is readily available from all good Ebay retailers now !!
Cheers
Geoff
Sounds great (no pun intended)
When ever I have used a similar device to play music via a flash drive the spare frequency is great so that area but I have found if driving in a different area then that frequency may not be free so a retune is required.
I have bought really cheap devices in the past for previous cars and the sound quality is pretty good but have fallen apart after a while. If you don't use the radio can you get a device that outputs in Co.ax direct to the radio . I don't know if a device exists .
I can't wait to give this a try (????). I have been using a small FM transmitter with an iPod shuffle taped to it. I use a charger in the glove box to keep the FM transmitter charged as its battery dies after a couple of hours, while the iPod shuffle can hold its charge for a long time. This has worked fairly well, but I have so many more songs on my phone.
Thanks for the great idea. The only think better than driving my XKR with the roof down, is doing it with music blasting out!
That was until I stumbled across the Roidmi 2S Music Bluetooth Car Charger )
Ordered one on Friday - be interesting to see if it works[/QUOTE]
Apart from they sent it to an Address the other side of the Cointry (Perth) and the Ap is not user friendly and no instructions are included, the device is excellent in the quality of sound no difference to a CD. Well worth the money.
I note the phone needs to be close to the device to work as in less than 2ft
DAB and Streaming music in my X150
