Bluetooth Interaction with Acura Handsfree Link (Johnson)

[ssnacks]

My Acura TL has a Bluetooth phone interface made by Johnson Controls. With my Palm-based Treo, the phone would attempt to route a call to the car, but would fail and revert the call back to the handset. The second call would work fine with the car. I would generally just place a call to my voicemail, hang-up, and the next call would work fine.

With the PPC-6700, it always tries to route a call to the car, fails, and then allows me to select "Turn Hands-free On" manually to get it to work. Unfortunately, it requires me selecting it for every call, rather than just having a problem with the first call like my Treo did.

I suspect that the problem is related timing of how the Bluetooth interface operates when trying to connect to the car. Does anyone know what registry keys affect the Bluetooth headset timing?

Another workaround would be to have a "Turn Hands-free On" button on the dialer screen. Does anyone know how to accomplish this? I would be happy to buy a third-party dialer if it would offer this feature.

[?GotJazz?]

ssnacks -

I think you are not providing enough information to us. Are you attempting to dial the phone manually, and have it automatically go to the Acura HFL? Or are you using the Acura HFL to dial the phone, but it falls back to the phone?

I have had a Treo 700p, Treo 700w, and an XV6700 (my current phone).

While I do see occasional problems with the Acura HFL (described below), I'm not sure what you are describing.

If you are trying to dial your phone manually, but have it automatically go to the HFL on connection, that is not a well supported feature of the HFL profile. As you mentioned, even your Palm-based Treo didn't handle it well. I have seen very spotty support for this functionality, and suspect that it is not a standard HFL feature. It may even be a bug in the JCI HFL software.

If you are trying to do send a call over to your phone, I would just recommend using the normal Acura built-in feature of pressing the HFL command button on the steering column and saying "TRANSFER" to the HFL system after your call has connected. That usually works pretty well for me.

That said, I have had really rotten luck with maintaining a bluetooth connection after the call has started. Over 50% of the time, I will have one of the following occur:

• 1) The call drops back to the handset (unannounced),
  2) The Bluetooth connection is lost (announced, and dropped back to the handset),
  3) The Bluetooth connection is not available when I start the car,
  4) A call won't connect until I press the power button on the phone, or
  5) The call initiates from the HFL, but drops immediately to the phone once the call is connected.

Do you see these issues? What year is your TL? I have a 2004.

¿GotJazz?

[SportbikeRiderXX]

A buddy of mine had issues with Bluetooth integration with his '07 TL. Not sure if it was the same issue you're having, but a program from www.jetwaremobile.com worked for him. He's not using an Apache though. He's using the HTC StarTrek (Cingular 3125). Might be worth looking into.

[pachock]

I have had a pretty good luck maintaining the connection after I've started plugging ppc6700 into car charger. I have disable power managment completely when the power source is plugged in. Also, I make sure that I manually bring the phone out of standby after it is plugged in. when I remember to do all of the steps above, I get 100% reliability in maintaining connection.