How to Connect a Phone to a Car via Bluetooth Adapter (AUX) to Listen to Music in the Car?
Ever wonder how you can connect your phone to your car via Bluetooth through your car stereo? After all, it is much more convenient to listen to your favorite tracks on the road through a good sound system in the car, than through a quiet and low-quality built-in speaker in a smartphone. We always carry our phone with us, which means you can connect it to your car stereo or radio via AUX and play music from Apple Music, Yandex Plus, VK and other online services through large speakers in the car. In this article I will show you how to connect your phone to your car stereo via bluetooth, AUX or USB so you can listen to music in the car, as well as receive incoming calls and talk through your car head unit and regular speakers. The instructions are suitable for any Android smartphone or iPhone, even if the car does not have built-in wireless support.
Bluetooth in a car stereo
Today it is difficult to find a car that would not be equipped with a car stereo with the ability to connect to it a smartphone via Bluetooth, USB or AUX. And the last type of connector is gradually disappearing from practice.
As a rule, a modern car stereo already has many features for managing calls, listening to voice messages, sending SMS, working with the media library, and even playing video or navigation on the screen in the car stereo. In this case, the controls are usually placed on the steering wheel in the form of buttons, which makes it even more convenient and safer to control the phone functions while driving.
I will show you the process of connecting a smartphone to the car stereo as an example of the most popular Hyundai models. Exactly the same way everything happens on KIA cars, so the instruction will be useful for maximum number of readers. If your car radio does not have a built-in bluetooth module, please read our article about connecting your phone to your car via an audio AUX adapter.
How to connect your phone to the car via car stereo via Bluetooth?
So, turn the radio on in your car and press the “Phone” button. The screen will show that there is no active pairing with any phone at the moment. To add a new device you need to press the button “1” on the bottom of the radio.
The monitor will display the name of the head unit of your car
Now take your smartphone, turn it on via Bluetooth and find your boombox by the name shown on the boombox screen.
The code for automatic connection will appear – it must be the same on the screen of your phone and car radio
They are different for me, as it was not possible to take a picture with the first time. Only seconds are allowed for pairing for safety reasons
We press the “Pair” button on the phone. And on the radio button “1”, which corresponds to the selection of “Add”. After that, the smartphone will prompt you to allow the car to access contacts in your address book
Confirm – now with the buttons of the boombox you can navigate through the menu of contacts and make outgoing calls using the head audio system and speakers.
How do I connect my phone to the car stereo via USB cable?
With the connection of a smartphone to the radio in the car via a USB cable is even easier. It’s enough to insert the wire into the USB connector on the bulkhead and select “Phone”, i.e. your phone, as a signal source. It will be detected in the system without any additional settings. You can now select music on it and listen to it through the car’s regular audio system speakers.
Connecting a phone through an AUX adapter for the car
But if you do not have a car infotainment system that supports the Bluetooth wireless standard by default, and you have put in your car the simplest car stereo with one single AUX jack for headphones, you can also use most of the above functions. To do this, you need to connect your phone to the radio via a separate device – a Bluetooth adapter. There are several ways to use it with car speakers for the following purposes:
- Playing media files from your phone through the car’s audio system
- Receive calls on your phone through your car stereo
- Receive audio to any other device that has a 3.5 (Mini Jack) jack
For the second adapter, frankly, not very suitable. Firstly, built-in microphone has low sensitivity and is located far away from the driver’s face, so the sound transmission to the subscriber will be very low-quality. Secondly, the sound from the speakers will be transmitted back into the microphone and create an echo effect, which is also not conducive to adequate communication.
I ordered a Bluetooth audio adapter for the car from the Chinese store AlieXpress. The Spartan kit also came with a short micro USB cable for charging, an adapter for the AUX input and instructions in English.
The audio receiver itself has the following connectors and controls:
- On/off button
- Micro USB connector for charging cable
- Audio 3.5 input
- Microphone
- LED
To connect your phone to the cassette player you must turn on its Bluetooth and activate the “Visibility” of the phone for other devices.
The adapter itself through the adapter plug into the AUX audio jack and press the big power button on the device – the red and blue lights should blink.
After that in the list of available devices on the phone will appear our adapter named DL-Link.
Connect to it. Then we select “MP3-Link” as an audio source on the radio. This is the AUX jack. Then it is possible to play music or video: audio will be transmitted through the car speakers from the Bluetooth phone connected to the car.
Bluetooth over four AUX cables, or how to teach an old car new tricks
In my first review I decided to tell you how you can not just activate AUX for Renault cars (although there are solutions for other brands in the store) of the 2000s, preserving the original head unit, paddles and screen, but also to make so that kolhoza was not the word at all. All interested and sympathizers please go under the hat. The first car, like love, is not perfect, but you are ready to forgive a lot of things, and you try to correct its imperfections with minimal intervention, keeping maximum authenticity. Though owning such simple car as Renault Symbol of the second generation you really begin to understand and penetrate into charm of French engineers and designers, creating really beautiful and at the same time strange cars, and later it is often difficult to get off their design. But in domestic use, some of the problems with ergonomics and missing must-haves can sometimes get tiresome and force you to get handsy and tweak. Thinking about things that really annoy me, three woes came to mind: lack of seat heating, cupholders (normal ones, not stuffed in front of the gear lever and serving mostly as just a pocket/dump) and AUX cable. And if the first problem was easy to deal with, the second can not be solved, then with the third problem I had to dig in my time on the Internet. As it turned out, in many Renault 2000’s cars AUX can be described by the golden quote: For the trick to work we need a similar head unit, the color and design may be slightly different (hello, my stubborn friend): If it looks similar and also has a CD drive, then good luck, check availability programmatically: press the button with the note icon and get into “Expert” mode, start flipping through modes (by the way, you can disable unused radio modes in this mode, adjust the volume increase after speeding at 90 km/h), until we see the coveted three letters (AUX, not what you think, by default naturally turned off): Let’s assume that you don’t trust me (right, I don’t trust myself either) or the stereo, so we can take out the head unit and check for connectors in the back. To do this, insert two or four long screwdriver-type tools (I use bicycle hexes) into the holes around the edges, press the plates inside and slowly pull out. With four tools and a second pair of hands it will take you less than a minute. When you successfully take out the radio and get your hands dirty you can see about the following picture (I didn’t take a picture beforehand unfortunately, that’s why I took it from the drive): The connectors we are interested in are labeled C2 and C3, the other connectors and their “employment” we are not interested. Connector C2 (miniISO 6pin) and is not given us a cable concern Renault (a very strange decision – the car can in AUX, holes in the panel at least I have (through the glove compartment), but no cable). C3 (miniISO 8pin) is designed to connect CD changer, but that someone really use it for its intended purpose, I’ve never seen, it needs highlighted circled contacts: № 15 GND, № 17 12V, color corresponds to the cable. And then the good Chinese come to the rescue, who offer the cable for “mere pennies”: In general, I was satisfied with this solution for 7 years, but my patience snapped when 4-th cable began to die and my father gave me for my birthday a phone mount in the hole for the CD.
It turned out that at the same time using the cable for charging and listening to music is simply impossible, the hole in the bottom mount is literally a millimeter more necessary, so it was decided to finally put already Bluetooth and get rid of constantly dying his (and not his) death cables in the cabin. Universal good(!) solutions did not like neither the price (about 13-15 dollars), nor the fact that power for these solutions are fed separately. I searched not unknown drive and found ideal option for me: low price, good reviews, absence of unnecessary cables in the cabin, and it can be powered from the radio. Isn’t it a dream? Ordered immediately: So excited to find the module, made a fatal mistake – completely forgot to think about how to feed without kolhoza and remembered just 3 days before the arrival of Bluetooth and realized the whole problem (so I put a tag DIY). The thing is that the best way to power it properly is using a CD changer connector. But unfortunately, the authors of the drive either had access to crimping tools, or brazenly soldered to the contacts (one even disassembled the entire head unit and connected from inside the case), or just put on the terminals, or find a chip 8pin connector in advance, it looks live like this: For me, the first option was not possible because of the lack of such tools, the second – the low skill of soldering, the third – because of the coronavirus problem to find the right terminals and as for me the solution is not the most reliable, and the fourth is that to wait for a new order from ali – to lose another month. Separately in Moscow chips also found, but for 850 rubles with delivery to Novosibirsk … my emotions from such sums will not even describe. Suddenly the solution came from where I certainly did not expect it – Lada. It turned out that Lada cars also have this connector, but as I understood it, it is used there to connect the rear view camera. And accordingly was found a store with a minimum price of 150 rubles (cable miniISO – VGA, model ACV AD12-1622): A day later I successfully picked up the cable, but the chip is involved only 2 connectors, and absolutely not what I need, for this I had to arm myself with an earring (needles and thin screwdrivers did not help), then successfully got both connectors, squeezed back “tendrils” and cut to the root of the cable. The next day I picked up the Bluetooth module from the post office, soldered the cables to the terminals at home, and inserted the necessary plugs in the connectors. Everything, I go downstairs, with a girl quickly remove the radio quickly, connect the necessary connectors: Turn on to check the ignition, we hear a surprisingly not disgusting female voice with the message “Wireless mode”, get your smartphone and see: Press connect, not passes and seconds as we hear “Connected!”, include a track and without noticeable delay begins to play music quality is not worse than the cable. Turn off the ignition, clamp the module and put the radio back and see the result of our work: According to the characteristics of the module: Bluetooth V4.
1, connection 6pin miniISO, Power supply 12V For Renault Clio (models 2005-2011) For Renault Espace (models 2005-2011) For Renault Kangoo (models 2005-2011) For Renault Laguna (models 2005-2011) For Renault Megane (models 2005-2011) For Renault Scenic (models 2005-2011) For Renault Trafic (models 2005-2011) For Renault Twingo (models 2005-2011) For Renault Modus (models 2005-2011) For Renault Master (models 2005-2011) Specifications and the list of cars were taken from the product page and understandably, Not everything is listed here. In my case, Symbol is a Clio with the body sedan, here you need to be guided by the head unit.
As a result of testing already more than a month noted the following pros and cons: + No wires in the cabin, nothing gets in the way and looks like it should look. + The functionality of the paddles, screen, stereo is not lost. + The feeling that the sound is of better quality than through a cable, can not get rid of. + Phone can now easily put in a mount and take within a radius of 10-15 meters with you, the connection holds. + Delays are not felt. + The device is cheaper than many analogues.
Without minuses, unfortunately, too, did not do: – There is no built-in battery, this leads to another problem. – The connection is lost during startup / zaminking in the switching of ignition modes (at these moments there is no power), although instantly after the power is restored – you have to press “Play” again. – The volume level of the smartphone everyone puts in the middle, I do not feel comfortable, because I have to raise the volume of the GU to the level where there is noise from the speakers. – If you need to talk when your smartphone is connected – have to switch to the speaker talk mode (there is a similar option and a microphone for the ability to communicate on the phone without hands, I did not put myself, as noise isolation in the car is bad). – The need to solve the problem with the power itself, but recently the manufacturer has guessed that you can sell ready-made solutions and you can find the appropriate lot in the store. – Far from the latest version of Bluetooth, but the operation is not affected. The seller has newer options (and of course more expensive).
