Like some Honda Ridgeline owners I am interested in adding Bluetooth to my 2008 Honda Ridgeline RTL w/NAVI. It appears that Scosche Industries have solved our problem. Instead of having to go out and purchase a Parrot or Alpine Bluetooth unit Scosche has created Blue Fusion which syncs with your Factory NAVI system. Here is the site:
I contacted the company and told them I have a 2008 Ridgeline and got this email back a few minutes ago.
Scott,
Currently we do not have a BlueFusion item for this vehicle. We are expecting to have a Honda module available by the end of this year. Please check back with us in about 60 days or so. If you have any questions please let me know.
"Thank you for your email. The BlueFusion is compatible with your 2006
Honda Ridgeline. However, the BlueFusion for Honda will not be
available until January of 2009."
I have been in contact with the manufacturer of this unit and it is now available. I have ordered one and the ridgeline harness cable and it should be here tomorrow.
Hopefully this weekend I will get to put it in.
I like how you can control things from your steering column and it displays the caller ID info on the NAV. I also like that I can stream audio from my iPhone to my sound system over bluetooth (now that the iPhone supports Bluetooth audio)
Took about 20 minutes to install it and installation was easy. Had a little trouble finding the steering wheel control wire but found it and spliced into it.
Call quality was good, when I was done installing it my wife happened to call just as I was about to test it. She had no idea I was on a speaker phone.
There are some issues with it and I am going to contact SCOSHE about it.
Issue one is nothing displays on the nav screen when on a call or getting a call. The caller ID does display on the radio faceplate below the nav.
There are two places you can connect it to the radio (and it does not tell it which one to use) one is in the radio unit on the bottom, the second is on top back of the nav where the CD trey is. I tried them both and again nothing from the Bluetooth on the nav screen only on the radio screen below.
Second is after a call is one it does not switch me back to satellite radio. To get satellite radio back I have to press and hold the 6 button on the radio and then it will say "Sat Tuner On" then the XM starts.
Third is I can stream audio from my iPhone but the volume is too high so the music is distorted. I can't turn the volume down on the phone to get rid of this distortion. However with that said I have the Sirius XM app on my iPhone and the audio from the iPhone (and stereo seperation) is WAY better coming from the iPhone then I get directly from the factory installed XM unit!
The steering wheel control work fine, its easy to hang up.
To make a call though you need to dial on the phone itself, this could be a limit of the iPhone though and not of the Bluetooth unit.
Glad to hear you got it working. I went out and ordered one Friday after reading your post.
From what I have read, Apple is aware of the distortion level problem. Lets hope they will have it fixed in 3.1. I have read that disabling WIFI and the EQ can help.
I placed the mic inside the dashboard in the center where the speedometer is. Its off to the right and can't be seen unless you look for it and it blocks none of the instruments or alerts.
Any comments on the call sound quality? People think you are stuck in a can? I am looking to do something like this but cant decide on a parrot unit or this. parrot seems to have good reviews on call quality. They have the mki9000 series with iphone intergration. I saw another review of the scosche bluefusion on a gm forum and they had the same comment on sound quality of music. I have a blackberry stereo bluetooth gateway plugged into my aux input right now and the sounds quality is excellent. I am using a blackberry storm though.