Welcome 

I don't know of anyone that has done it but you never know someone might spring up and say they have. 

Thanks for the welcome, I recently put a deposit down on an 09/09 A500, I collect it on Friday.

It never occurred to me that a car less than 5 years old would not have an AUX in socket. 

As I understand it the Blue&Me system connects to the head unit using a standard iso connector. So all you need to do should be get to that line level cable and piggy back a line in socket to it.

Tackling it from the head unit end, you could run a cable from the stereo down the back of the fascia and out of the ashtray perhaps. Does anyone know how you might remove enough of the fascia to run the cable?

Alternatively, does anyone know where the Blue&Me decoder hardware sits? It might be easier to run a cable from there.

In case you are wondering why I am not happy to use the Blue&Me interface, I listen to audio books on my ipod a lot. The ipod has a “skip back 30s” button which is invaluable for audio books. I don’t think that function will be operable if connected through Blue&Me.

Luke

I think this will give me access to the pins I need without cutting wire:
fitcaraudio.co.uk / fiat-500-bravo-doblo-ducato-parrot-sot-interface-lead-cellular-mute-lead-for-parrot-kits-p-1934

Now I just need somewhere to run the cable to!

Luke

Ahh, that is very encouraging news. Any idea which dealer? I might give them a call, it would be nice to talk to someone who's actually done the work.

Luke

I will of course report on how things go. I have two lines of attack at the moment:

The first it to ask a fiat garage if the can replace the system with the newer one. I have spoken to a garage but they can’t give a cost until I have the chassis number when I pick up the car tomorrow. (Where is the chassis number found by the way?) This option may be prohibitively expensive because it may require a new fiat head unit which won’t be cheap.

The second option is to piggy back on the existing system. From what I have learnt Blue&Me uses an analog input to the head unit and controls when that input is turned on using the digital interface. I will try connecting a 3.5mm jack to the same input in parallel to the Blue&Me input. Keeping the AUX active will require looping a silent mp3 on a usb stick, but that shouldn’t be too arduous. The Bluetooth hands free will still work but it won’t mute the aux input automatically. The only bit I am nervous about is being able to find a way to route the new aux cable from the back of the head unit to somewhere convenient without having to disassemble the whole dash.

It'll be a couple of weeks before I look at it because stupid old me arranged to pick up a new car 2 days before I go skiing!

The glove box would be great. IMO a flying lead in the glove box is more convienient than a socket on the floor next to the hand brake. The thing is I wonder how much of a pain in the a**e it will be to run the cable into the glove box. I would like to avoid disassembly and cutting holes in the plastic.

Use the holes that are there for the fusebox.

Don't know if the a500 is the same but there are loads of holes through that way in the AGP