Upgrading 2008 C4 Picasso with Hands Free Kit to RD45

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antonioprm
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Upgrading 2008 C4 Picasso with Hands Free Kit to RD45

Post by antonioprm »

Hello. This is a long read, but I imagine it may be reasonably interesting. And maybe some of you will be able to give me some answers.

As has been discussed elsewhere, I have a 2008 C4 Picasso with Hands Free Kit and an RD4. That means it has calls-only Bluetooth.

There's a Phone button in the lower left block of the steering wheel that opens the Phonebook / Recent Calls menu, from which calls can be started by choosing an entry using the lower right block wheel and OK button. Calls can also be answered using that OK button, or rejected using some other. It's also posible to use the Phone button during an ongoing call to open a menu with options, such as ending the call. During a call, the RD4 will only play the call's audio, and when ending it will resume whatever it was playing before. I'm quite interested in keeping this working more or less as it is, and that's why I haven't pursued some aftermarket solution.

The RD4 has only the quadlock and antenna going into it. The quadlock has wires going into only the A and B blocks, C is unused (I think it's for a CD changer). B has only 3 wires going into it, a beige one into position 4 and two yellow ones into 10 and 11. According to the pin out diagram, those are Aux1 R, Aux1 L, and Aux1 ground. Those 3 wires come inside a black sheath, which in turns comes inside a larger black sheath, in which there are 13 other wires going into the A block.

Now, from this setup, it's not clear to me how the Hands Free Kit works. It must get canbus data from somewhere, because it responds to the steering wheel and the RD4 buttons, and it must also send data back to the car, because the screen shows the menus and call lists and cell connection state. But it can't be one of those 3 wires... I suppose? Those 3 should be only for the call incoming audio. I have no idea where a microphone should be plugged into the RD4/RD45.

The A block has:

Code: Select all

1 yellow     5 green       9 -         13 yellow
2 yellow     6 blue       10 green     14 -
3 yellow     7 green      11 -         15 brown
4 yellow     8 beige      12 brown     16 green/yellow

Interestingly, 14 isn't connected. All the diagrams I've found say it's 15 that is unused, but I think that may be an error.

What happens when I swap the RD4 with an RD45?

First off, my original MFD is too old as mentioned elsewhere, and pairing doesn't work (it works with the RD4, the process is slightly different). I did find a 2010 MFD, SW 9.5, which I think will work, but I don't know the mileage in it and I don't want to risk connecting it unless strictly needed. But I did manage to pair the RD45 to my phone by connecting it to another Citroen, so the pairing part of the problem got solved (I almost only pair the phone when I get a new phone, so I'm good with that).

When connecting the pre-paired RD45 to the C4 Picasso,

- Someone had probably configured the RD45 for parking sensors, because those work just like they did with the RD4.

- Aux1 appears in the sources, but I haven't found a way to use it. There is a 4-pin to USB cable plugged into the 4-pin connector in the back of the RD4, but I don't think it's doing anything.

- The Source button cycles between Radio, Aux1, and the phone.

- The RD45 plays music from the phone alright. The sound quality is not stellar, but there's no obvious faults either. The next and previous buttons work as intended, as does play/pause. The MFD shows blank when the music source is the phone, but I'd sort of expected that.

- The phone auto-connects to the RD45 when I turn the RD45 on, although it takes a few seconds and the RD45 will start with the Radio source. I have to press Source after the phone connects in order to get back to streaming.

- The phone also auto-connects to the Hands Free Kit, as it always did, and then the Phone button in the steering whell will work as usual. But when making calls (which are through the Hands Free Kit, not the RD45) the speakers will only play the call audio for some seconds, and then cut it off.

- If I disconnect the phone from the Hands Free Kit, pressing the Phone button will simply say 'No phone connected', although it keeps available for music streaming. If I start a call using the phone, it will not show the RD45 as an option (it does show the RD45 when it's connected to the Hands Free Kit).

So to sum it all up, I think I need to do the following:

1. Unplug the B connector with the 3 wires going into the quadlock
2. Get a microphone and plug it... where?
3. Program something on the car to recognise the phone's connection to the RD45 as something that can be used for calls, and possibly disable the Hands Free Kit
4. Program something on the car to recognise the USB cable?

I'm not sure that steps 3 and 4 can be done, as I know nothing of how Lexia works. I do intend to get one.
At any rate, I have little use for USB. Maybe I could disable Aux1 as well, since it doesn't seem to match any actual port.

Am I off the mark?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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Re: Upgrading 2008 C4 Picasso with Hands Free Kit to RD45

Post by GiveMeABreak »

If you have the hands free module it will be hidden in the dashboard or the right of the driver's side footwell side trim (depending on vehicle and type of hands free kit as there were 2 possibilities) and is connected to the Multi Function Screen and the RD4 Head unit via the vehicle CAN network. The microphone is also directly connected to the Hands free kit module in the first instance and from there to the RD4.

So the system is interlinked. As the RD45 has the Bluetooth module integrated into it, this has done away with the hands free kit. However the wiring, connections and configuration will still be there. If you add the RD45, you can't use the built in microphone as it is buried in the vehicle's harness and ends up at the Hands Free Module. So you would need to add your own microphone.
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Re: Upgrading 2008 C4 Picasso with Hands Free Kit to RD45

Post by xantia_v6 »

You probably need to find the existing hands-free interface to disconnect it, and that will give you access to the microphone wires. You can also buy microphone cables from Ali Express. The microphone gets wired to the quadlock, there are details in some of the other RD45 topics around here. I think that aux1 is the analogue input and aux2 the USB player, it seems that your RD45 may need reprogramming to enable that. The input source never defaults to Bluetooth at switch on, which is annoying.
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