Evening All,

My 2003 Disco has the genuine radio and cd player under the seat. Now is there a way of playing music through my phone onto the D2 speakers without replacing the entire unit ?

 

Yes. The unit from GROM Audio is recommended. I've had this in my Rover for many, many years and it works very well.

To install it, you remove the factory radio from the dash, unplug the connector for the CD changer, and plug in the connector for the GROM in its place. There is plenty of room behind the radio to stuff the GROM unit. It's then up to you to route the included microphone to a location you prefer to make and receive phone calls.

https://gromaudio.com/store/bt3_adap...interface.html

 

I’ve never used the Grom unit, but as mln01 said, it’s thought of highly. I may actually think about it when I start in on the Giverny.

Otherwise, I’ve put in a Pioneer unit that has worked really well in 3 different Discos (with and without the Harmon Kardon action). Of note, getting the steering wheel controls to work with the aftermarket unit can be hit or miss, and you can’t at all if you have the OEM Nav head unit as I did in my HSE.

 

When I bought my truck, the PO left a cassette adapter in it. I added an inductive charging phone mount. It isn't lovely with the wire dangling out of the cassette slot, but it works fine, and gives about 60-70% of the CarPlay functionality without killing the CD player. This is how I plan to run until my ToDo list works to the very low priority position where "New stereo" sits.

 

I am building a plug n play BT connection (cheap BT board and other parts) for under passenger seat replacing the old CD player in my Disco...this way you don't have to remove the radio or mess with wiring. I'll post updates when done......

 

Speaking my language. I looked at GROM and it is a slick and nicely integrated unit. But it is $180 for about $3 worth of components.

I have looked at the cheap boards on Amazon...Looks like you can get a 5 pack fro $10 if you don't care about microphone integration, just music. If you backprobe this into the cd changer plug, you could then burn a no audio-audio CD to select as the CD-source when you want to listen to music from your phone and still have actual CD support for the rest of the CD spots in the changer. Or you could get a matching plug to the CD changer and wire this into that plug and just replace the changer with BT audio, though I am not sure about how the head would deal with no feedback communication over the control channels.

I think were I stopped (life got busy) was looking for a board that also supported microphone input. I think they should be out there but I have not located one that I feel like is ideal. But at the same time I don't think it is a deal breaker so I should just order the 5 pack and get on with it.

Edit: Found one: https://www.tinyosshop.com/index.php...product_id=973 Pro: has mic input. Cons, only seems to have USB power options, where the others appear to accept anything from 5-24 vdc as power.

 

Not hijacking, adding info to this thread, will put rest of build on my thread.

Agree SQL! so it should be super easy to cut into the L and R audio channels in the CD harness under the seat. Being i-Bus system, the CD player and head unit talk to each other Tx Rx, which is how the unit displays CD Disc 1 track 1 etc.... or NO DISC. so I suspect that if you leave the CD player installed with a CD in it, and just wire in a 3$ BT 5.0 breakout to L and R channels, you will be good to go.....

I might go a bit fancier by trying to read the data stream, I think it's in 9 hex bits, and LIKELY based on the BMW iBus of same era. Tons of hacks for that system, but the hex code is probably just a touch different. All I need is to send to the head unit ON/LOADED/PLAYING or similar.....a little READ WRITE arduino program should do it....but easier said than done....

The actual 10 pin plugs are easily sourced as well.....


edit: Saw your BT board. not bad. I think there are 5v traces next to the USB port so you could hardwire it to 5v regulator. I just want an ALWAYS ON unit to sit under seat, no button pressing....

edit: Hex packet length varies! Start and stop bits and chksum will bookend/check packets/source/destination...etc. 25$ in parts if I can get the arduino to send a 'CD playing' packet to radio via iBus line at CD plug......coding time???? hmmmm, and that's if the LR packets match BMW..unless I can find the LR code library.....GROM BT3 starting to sound nice....