Kenwood receiver and bluetooth

[Mr.Allthat]

I have a Kenwood x994 cd/usb receiver in my truck and with the Samsung Omnia and Moto Droid the phones would connect through bluetooth no problem. Now that I have the HTC Incredible I get error 68 every time which is a problem with communication to the phone. Does anyone else by chance have this radio and has found a solution. Alternatively are there any updates for the phones hardware to resolve this issue? It appears that there are no bluetooth firmware updates for the x994 from kenwood.

I really enjoyed the hands free calling and wireless audio transfer from the car dock of the phone. One tip for anyone who has this radio is that you have to go into the menu while on the bluetooth audio source and find the setting for which speakers audio comes out of. If you don't have it set for all then you won't get your rear speakers or subwoofer (if you have one).

 

[Noubourne]

I have the Droid Incredible and the KDC X993. I connected it successfully today (finally!), and the bt audio worked just fine for me. Calls as well.

No errors at all.

Getting it hooked up in the first place was a pain though. I kept getting success messages for pairing - but then the phone would say "bluetooth stereo headset disconnected". I could not figure out what was wrong.

Finally today, before doing ANYTHING else on the head unit - I just went into the Droid Incredible menu and hit the Kenwood Stereo item on the Bluetooth screen - and it immediately connected and downloaded my phone book (somewhat sluggishly).

The first thing I did after that was start up the HTC music application - and when I changed the 993 to BT Audio - it was coming right through.

Good luck.

 

[Mr.Allthat]

I found that if you go into the special device settings in the bluetooth section of the radio you can turn off automatic downloading of your phonebook. This allows me to not get the error 68. Still haven't tried making a call but Prequel to the Sequel by BTBAM sounded great! dancedroid

 

[Dream]

Bump this!

I just picked up the X994 and I can get the audio to connect fine, but as soon as I disconnect and want to connect again, I have to go into the Incredible's bluetooth setting and manually connect it. It says it paired, just not connected. What am I doing wrong here?

 

[Mr.Allthat]

I seem to remember pairing it manually by going into bluetooth settings and clicking on the "paired but not connected". Then it would fully pair up and send audio. Again the phone book downloaded needs to be turned off or the radio gets stuck and throws an error.

 

[droidabus]

I just purchased the KDC-X994 because I was excited about the bluetooth connectivity. The hands free calls are great and streaming music from my Droid is awesome. I have two concerns I'm hoping somebody can validate:

1. The phonebook only ever pulls in one contact name. For example, "ABC Cleaning". This is the second entry in my phone book and no matter what letter I click on in the contact list, it only ever shows this contact. Any ideas?

2. When streaming music from the Droid to the car stereo via bluetooth, the sound is good but the track info (artist, title, album) doesn't come through. The installer said, "the technologies not quite there yet" - but I highly doubt it. Is anybody else able to view track info when streaming music from their phone?

Thanks all!

 

[luv2byte]

I know I have Sprint but since its a Droid phone thought I would jump in...
We just had this unit installed in our 2001 BMW Z3 Roadster - hate the glare of the screen but otherwise it looks good. My only issue is it will say it is downloading my address book from my Sprint Evo phone but when I look at address book it only has a few entries, some are blank while others have the name listed. It doesn't seem to be downloading it correctly. So far, of what I've had time to play with, it's working great. Any suggestions on the phonebook?

 

[SirBlakesmore]

I've been looking everywhere for a solution to the hf error 68 and this is what I found on the Sprint forums:

Quote:
Don't know if anyone is still having this issue, but here is how I was able to fix it with My Evo and KDC-BT954U.

My Evo has the latest updates, and I was having this issue as well. However I went to Kenwoods website support for this unit, found the Bluetooth firmware updat 3.12.0 and followed the instruction there to apply it. Now I am able to pair and get my phonebook without issues. Hope this helps someone else.Go here.
Bluetooth Compatibility List | Kenwood Corporation

Select the radio model KDC-B>KDC-BT945U

Select the phone model (I used the HTC Hero) HTC>Hero

It will come up with a bunch of details on the Hero, but what you really want is the PDF with the upgrade instructions and the Bluetooth Upgrade for the reciever.

If you click on the "Download is Firmware Version 3.12.0" it will take you to a page that has the instructions, the updater program, and the firmware file. Hope this helps, let me know if you need anymore info. Good Luck!


Thanks to dkpaladin2


I have the KDC-X994 and the Samsung Epic 4G. Now they both work beautifully togather as originally intended.



Original post:
HTC EVO 4G:Bluetooth Connection Problem

 

[theholidayboy]

Kenwood x994

I am aving the same problem as described in most of this topic. My question is where or how does one locate "Special Device Settings"? I can locate special devices but there are no settings. I can enter detailed settings but noe for special devices.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[sbergdor]

I was told by my installer the phone book issue is because the contacts are not actually stored in the phone but on Verizons servers. This has been an issue for any phone without a SIM card.
I copied my contacts to the SD card and it is now working fine.
I cannot, however, get music to stream via bluetooth.
Been fighting this for a week now......

 

[BigG422]

I found that if you go into the special device settings in the bluetooth section of the radio you can turn off automatic downloading of your phonebook. This allows me to not get the error 68. Still haven't tried making a call but Prequel to the Sequel by BTBAM sounded great! dancedroid

Where is that setting exactly, I have looked and looked and still cant find that anywhere. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mr.Allthat]

Where is that setting exactly, I have looked and looked and still cant find that anywhere. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I know im a few months late replying to your question. I just went out tonight and checked again. Im not sure what I meant a year ago when I mentioned the special settings menu. I did go into special devices and selected the disable automatic option. This stopped it from trying to download my phonebook and offered a "good enough" solution for me. Prior to this I was getting the error 68 after resetting my radio at some point.

As of now I don't really use my phone to play music. I bought a 32 GB USB drive and I use winamp to load the tracks in a certain format for them to all play correctly. You have to have no more than 255 items folder including the root folder. I load them as mp3s/wmas inside of the folder with the title of the artist. This allows you to have 255 artists and 255 songs per artist. Good enough for me.

What was fun was playing Pandora on my phone while cruising...besides when you drop 3g

 

[TyrantII]

I've been looking everywhere for a solution to the hf error 68 and this is what I found on the Sprint forums:

Quote:
Don't know if anyone is still having this issue, but here is how I was able to fix it with My Evo and KDC-BT954U.

My Evo has the latest updates, and I was having this issue as well. However I went to Kenwoods website support for this unit, found the Bluetooth firmware updat 3.12.0 and followed the instruction there to apply it. Now I am able to pair and get my phonebook without issues. Hope this helps someone else.Go here.
Bluetooth Compatibility List | Kenwood Corporation

Select the radio model KDC-B>KDC-BT945U

Select the phone model (I used the HTC Hero) HTC>Hero

It will come up with a bunch of details on the Hero, but what you really want is the PDF with the upgrade instructions and the Bluetooth Upgrade for the reciever.

If you click on the "Download is Firmware Version 3.12.0" it will take you to a page that has the instructions, the updater program, and the firmware file. Hope this helps, let me know if you need anymore info. Good Luck!


Thanks to dkpaladin2


I have the KDC-X994 and the Samsung Epic 4G. Now they both work beautifully togather as originally intended.



Original post:
HTC EVO 4G:Bluetooth Connection Problem

Thanks! Was having problems with my X994 and this post helped a TON after having problems with my Droid3.

I'd add that I wouldn't bother downloading and using their crappy "BT software update" program. Damn thing didn't find the BT Radio on my laptop and just didn't work. Once you have the deck paired and pick the option to update firmware, simply find the update file on your computer, right click and "Send over Bluetooth". Works the same.