aurorabluea8

Hi All, I have recently bought a late 53 plate (UK) 4.2 A8 and would very much like to add paddle shift and voice control. On the latter I have GSM phone integration so I feel fairly sure it would only be a case of software to implement the voice command system. Anybody know anything or done this?

Kind regards

Aurorabluea8

TheBrit

Not only would you have to replace the steering wheel, but there may not be any wiring from there to the right place to hook up to the up/downshift control lines on the gearbox, plus you'd probably have to upgrade (replace?) the transmission control unit.

Voice command might be possible, it might involve adding a hardware module, upgrading MMI and recoding the system to enable it.

What phone system do you have? There's a guy based in Manchester who does upgrades to replace the GSM car phone (with a SIM holder under the armrest) with the mobile phone prep kit (plug your mobile in) or the new Bluetooth SAP kit, and he can also upgrade MMI for new features. You can usually find him via the A8 or Electronics/ICE forum on Tyresmoke.

Cheers,

Chris

aurorabluea8

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the post.
1. I assumed, as my steering wheel has the cut outs for the paddle shifts that it would be a case of removing the wheel and adding the paddles. Most manufacturers use a common harnness as this is cheaper than many different versions. So plug in and go I simplistically thought as the gear lever based tiptronic controls would have to be in parallel with the paddles (you can use either or).
2. For voice command I agree this should be easier, I have dual band GSM Audi phone which has both mic and speaker connections so again should (?) be easy.

I will check out the guy in Manchester, thanks for that.

Best regards

Aurorabluea8

TheBrit

As my D3 experiences go from very early ones before paddle shift was available, to later ones with paddle shift.

As a commited paddle user, I can see why you'd want them!

geordie

Cutouts or otherwise, I understand that adding paddles to a non-paddle car is a no go

BBC

Piece of cake. Repalce the steering wheel with paddle shifter unit and recode steering column electronics. The shift signal is all sent throught the existing CAN and Lin busses. Did one about a month ago,took 10 min. SDS (Speach Dialogue System) is a module which plugs into the Radio Tuner much like an Atari cartridge. Not very cheap, and it must be activated at the dealer.