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After reading about newish BT adapters that can plug right into the AMI socket in the glove box, and receive A2DP streamed BT music from any smartphone, I decided to try the "Bovee WMA3000A+ Wireless Bluetooth Music Interface Adaptor for in car iPod Integration (AMI/MDI connector) " available from Amazon (of course) and promising to do two things for me.

1-It will stream BT from the phone. Not a big music issue for me, since I was using a USB stick there before. BUT.
2-This would allow other phones apps, particularly Garble Maps and some traffic and other realtime driving apps to INTERRUPT the music and play clearly over the car stereo. And to me, that integration made looking into the gadget worthwhile.

Success! For $89 it does everything that Audi wanted a couple of grand extra to do from the factory. Funny thing that.

I've only got one issue, and I'm hoping someone here can shed light on it, while I wait for the vendor's thoughts on the same question. There's a blue LED in the gadget that blinks to indicate pairing or power. And after I shut the ignition, shut the radio, even open and close the door, I see the blue LED is still flashing. Not that an LED is a huge power drain, but still...

Does anyone know for sure if the power, ALL THE POWER, to the AMI interface socket is cut off when the car is shut? Or very shortly afterwards? I'm thinking there might be a backup battery in the gadget, or some "residual" power in the AMI interface, but I'd like to know for sure, because I don't want to wrestle with AMI gadgets all the time, and I don't want to leave a vampire connected in the car when I'm not around.

Other than that...Whoopee! I've finally got the integrated radio and phone that lesser carmakers have no problem delivering on.(G)

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"FlashWolves 1100 lumens Extremely Bright CanBus Error 921 912 21 Chipsets LED Bulbs For Backup Reverse Lights, Xenon White 6000K pack of 2 "

For a whole ten bucks including Prime shipping, I took a gamble on these no-name but well reviewed LEDs. Sure enough, the CanBus is oblivious to them and like most everything else, they're brighter than stock. My own odd little purpose was not just to get brighter backups (although that counts) but also because I have the backup lights tapped to sound a backup alarm, and the stock 921 bulbs just don't allow enough power to be available on the circuit. These do, even though they must have the usual power-wasting resistors in them to keep the CanBus happy.

The hardest part is of course, teasing a screwdriver into the socket that you can't ever quite see, to remove the bumper backup light assembly. (The one place where a fancy hex head or other screw head would have been useful, for braille access, and they HAD to use Philips screws??)

Q-Branch

Power remains on for what I think is ~10 minutes after vehicle shutdown and locking, and the system also powers up when you hit the lock/unlock button on the fob. I know this because my car is parked just outside a window and my iPhone is almost always in range of the bluetooth (I too have a hack-y bluetooth AMI adapter). It's actually a really annoying feature, since my parked car hijacks the phone audio for those 10 minutes and forces me to kill Bluetooth on my iPhone in order to listen to anything using my phones speaker while running around the house. On the flip side, the fob activation is nice because I can get everything connected before I even start the car up. I believe the original intent of that was to wake up an iPod's spinning hard disk ahead of time so that the music would start playing immediately on vehicle start.

Long story short, don't worry about it. Been using the Tune2Air adapter (I think Bovee acquired them/rebranded, so we probably have the same thing) for two and a half years and never have had a battery drain issue.

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Thanks, QB.

Actually the AMI itself stole a call from me one day. I had parked maybe 25' away, outside a storefront, and my phone rang while I was in the store. And then promptly was stolen by the car, outside, at what would be really borderline BT range even if I was TRYING to make it.

The phrase "Bad Monkey!" comes to mind.(G)

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I wonder, if the BT gadgets constantly consume power by choice. They boast of instantly resuming the BT connection when you get back in the car--and the simplest way to do that, is to leave the unit turned on, seeking the dropped connection, which couldn't happen as simply if the power actually cycled.

Which means that IF I can change the power to an ACC line...it might require repairing every time the car restarted. Bummer. That's like what happens when my car tells me "There's no phone here Dave, really." Ahuh. No droids you're looking for, either.(sigh)

Redd

In search of a sacrificial cable, I went to my folder of "stuff I'll never need" that came with the car, knowing they gave me "an iPod cable" and I don't habla iPod.

Funny thing, it had a BT adapter on the end of it! Which made all the nice blink lights (red and blue) in the car, and paired with my Android as an "I-Link" (no branding on the device) and then, SNAP. The AMI interface says the device is being initialized, but that never happens. Apparently an I-Link only works with I-stuff version 4, and the AMI interface can't cope with an Android or that device. No big waste, they're only ten bucks online. Now I'm back to cable hacking, I suppose.