UPDATE: Best price I have found on the Parrot 3400 LS-GPS car kit

I was hooked up big time by the in-laws, my sister and her boyfriend when they gave me the Parrot 3400 LS-GPS (the same unit as the 3400 LS, but with GPS receiver) Bluetooth hands free car kit for my birthday. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the whole Parrot brand, but I did some checking on line and there was very little “sucks” stuff written about them so I thought I would give it a whirl.

I found the 3400 LS-GPS on line at Installer.com and they seemed to have good prices as well as harnesses and the know-how to help with my first attempt at installing anything like this. I checked online and then figured it would be best to call to make sure that I ordered the right parts. Not to get into it here, but we had a little misunderstanding and I am going to do a little write up on my experience with Installer.com…I would recommned buying there as I think they are knowledgeable and have just about everything you need to install electronics in your car, just that they might want to change their policies a little bit. Anyway, back to the 3400 LS-GPS.

Installing in a Chevrolet Tahoe

I have a 2001 Chevrolet Tahoe with OnStar and the Bose stereo installed and I wanted to run the Parrot 3400 through the car stereo just like the new cars with Bluetooth handsfree kits in them work. This was not a problem as I received the BT-1858 harness to plug right in between the factory harness and stereo. There are only a few steps involved in installing the 3400 LS-GPS in my Tahoe and here they are:

1. Remove the ash tray
2. Lower the tilt on your wheel to the bottom
3. Set the emergency brake.
4. Put the key in the ignition and put the transmission in 1
5. Remove the dash bezel. Start by popping the bottom right corner (above the ash tray slot) and slowly working around, counter-clockwise, until you have it all removed.
6. Carefully remove the bezel and put it in the back seat.
7. Remove the factory stereo by depressing the quick-release clips on the left and the right of the stereo.
8. Carefully slide out the factory stereo and remove the ~20 pin plug (the bigger one) and plug in the corresponding plug from the harness.
9. Plug the factory harness into the BT-1858 harness.
10. Secure the Parrot 3400 LS-GPS brain under the dash (I placed it towards the windshield under the dash.
11. Test out your setup to make sure everything works. The stereo, the Parrot, etc.
12. Run wires for Parrot to where you want them while the dash is off. Take your time.
13. Arrange the harness wires into the cavities (on top) under the dash so that you can re-install the factory stereo.
14. Re-install the factory stereo.
15. Re-install the dash bezel.
16. Show all of your friends and wife how cool you are.

Mounting the Controller

I was having a tough time figuring out where I was going to mount the 3400 LS-GPS, until I plugged everything in and got it working. At first I thought that I was going to have to mount the “head unit” someplace under the windshield with a clear line-of-sight out of the Tahoe. But, plugging everything in and moving the head unit around before I buttoned everything up allowed me to see that the 3400′s GPS receiver was sync’ing up with satellites in a lot of places that I would never imagine it would. I ended up mounting the head until/GPS receiver to the center of the dash, directly under my OnStar buttons. In the 2001 Tahoe, the OnStar buttons for the OnStar phone, service and emergency are in the center of the dash and not on the mirror. I used the supplied piece of velcro to temporarily mount it up and I may do something a little more permanent in the future if that does not work out.

Pairing with the Cingular 8125

The menus on the Parrot 3400 LS-GPS are very intuitive and I will not get into them other than to say that pairing it with my Cingular 8125 (Windows Mobile 5) phone was a snap. I was quite impressed with the Parrot for working with the supplied harness without any tweaking or need to run power. When it paired with my phone the first time, I was super stoked. No reason that it shouldn’t, but we all know that things rarely go as they should. Heh, as I am writing this, my wife just called from my car (her check engine light came on this morning so she is in the Tahoe) using the Parrot handsfree kit. Of course, she wants to use her Motorola HS820 headset rather than the handsfree kit (sigh), but it sounded great. I didn’t even know she was on the car kit when she called. Nice. BTW, it paired with her Nokia 6682 just as easily…too easily apparently. From what I understand the 3400 supports up to 5 paired devices.

GPS Receiver

I do not have navigation software installed on my Cingular 8125, but I do have Microsoft Pocket Streets, which I believe has some kind of functionality for showing you where you are on a downloaded map if you have a GPS receiver paired up with the 8125…but, I have to check on that. I did have my laptop down in the car to try and update the firmware on the 3400 with while I was putting it in and I paired it up using the Belkin Bluetooth CF adapter I have in there (I have a CF slot in my IBM laptop…schweet). I paired everything up and Microsoft Autoroute 2006 (the European version of Streets and Trips 2006 which I used in Italy) showed that we were in San Francisco…so clearly that was working. I will have to re-install Streets and Trips 2006 on the laptop to test out the GPS functionality on the 3400, but from the screen indications, it is synced up with 5 to 7 satellites most of the time and it is not out in the open where it is mounted. So, we will see how well it works at 80mph.

Pictures of the Installation in the Tahoe

I have to take some pictures of the Tahoe installation, but as I mentioned, the wife is driving it right now down in the Peninsula. So, I will have to get some up here this weekend.

[tags]Bluetooth, Parrot, 3400, Handsfree, Car Kit, Tahoe, Chevrolet, Installation, Electronics, Gadgets[/tags]

I am sure that Deppy is going to agree with me that the Cingular 8125 is pretty much the best phone/PDA out on the market today…that is after you install the most recent ROM update. I have had a large number of people make it by my personal blog to read my reviews of the 8125 as well as ask a hell of a lot of questions, namely because my first two months with the 8125 were not so hot. But, since the updted ROM was installed, it has worked flawlessly. That brings up one point I would like to make. I believe Cingular, and many other tech gadget companies, release the first generation of gadgets like this knowing that there are a lot of issues with it. I think it is only fair for HTC and/or Cingular to let the first round of consumers know this and to compensate them for this in some way. Maybe getting the unit for half of the MSRP…something. Because the hell and BS I went through after shelling out $400 for this thing nearly drove me to go postal. The only thing that really kept me from doing so were the guys that I spoke to at the PDA support group. They Fed/Ex’d me two new 8125s and were super calm and cool on the phone. As someone that I don’t speak to anymore once said, “They killed me with kindness.”

Anyway, the Cingular 8125 is really the bomb when it comes to having a Windows Mobile 5.0 device that can fit into your pocket, transfer data at decent speeds, has a great color screen and works very well as a cell phone. I hope that Deppy and I can put up some super-user tips here for all of the geeks out there. If you have any you would like to share, please let me know.

[tags]Cingular, Cingular 8125, PDA, Mobile, Phone[/tags]