Adding steering wheel audio controls for $50

Hey, I’ve got that. Heh.

 

I have a question... the white interface box with the 4 wires, what do they do. I am thinking that if there is a low voltage out of them I could use this box to control a relay or 2 and then I could turn my driving lights / off road lights on and off and not have to find a place to install a toggle switch(s).

 

I'm going to go with this one instead

https://www.amazon.com/YOUNGFLY-Ste...P8F6HKCRY7S&psc=1&refRID=231TMRJHDP8F6HKCRY7S

Is it still compatible with the PAC interface?

 

@trdracing5, I installed the same steering wheel controls a couple of months ago and have noticed lately that the head unit doesn't always pick up on the track+/track- clicks. Have you had any issues with responsiveness?

How did you position the antenna? I'm thinking this may be causing my issues as it seems to be more consistent when the wheel is in certain orientations.

 

Quick follow-up on my last post. I ended up moving the receiving unit so it was more in-line with the steering wheel (can just see it peeking through the e-brake hole). This helped but I still had issues with responsiveness and also noticed that the buttons would only light up when the volume keys were pressed and even that was intermittent. I reached out to the seller to resolve and they sent me another unit. I've only had it in a few days but it's been working flawlessly.

 

How does the bluetooth for the phone work? Meaning does it work well?

 

This particular item doesn't have anything to do with Bluetooth and/or hands-free calling. It merely gives you a means of controlling a stereo that's compatible with steering wheel controls.

 

ok. great.

I have these items now, but want to be clear.


The pac unit has 2 red/white wires - use both and connect as mentioned in earlier post?
only connect the blue/yellow to stereo?
do not connect anything to the sw1 and sw2 of stereo?

 

my bad on the red/white - white red. but the other 2 questions loking to verify before connecting.

 

It's been a while so I would need to go back and review the instructions to answer with any confidence. I *believe* that both SWx wires get connected and if there's only one input they get twisted together. Again, this is from memory and I need to verify, don't install based on this paragraph

 

So essentially, logically, connect sw1 and switch respectively from pac to stereo switches and sw2.
I may have misunderstood the other post as maybe they only had 1 sw wire from their unit

 

For my stereo I did not need the PAC unit, I was able to connect directly to the stereo so I can't really comment on the PAC <--> stereo connection.

 

Ok. Thx!

 

Soooo..for what it is worth..I did not need the PAC unit at all. Maybe I was confused on the post..But anyway, I simply bought the controller in post #1, connected the power, ground, sw1, sw2 to the respective wires on the axerra unit and then programmed..now have all buttons working on the universal controller now happily mounted to the steering wheel. Including the Bluetooth phone. Took 10 mibs to connect. Hope it helps someone in the future.!!

 

Awesome, enjoy!

 

Posting a follow up here with some learnings from this thread after I've successfully done this install, in case it's helpful to anyone:

- 2003 Taco
- JVC KW-M780BT radio
- While the original ALLOMN Amazon link no longer works, I found the same product under a different amazon listing

$31 Universal Car DVD GPS Player Wireless Remote Controller, Steering Wheel Remote Control Button for Car Navigation DVD / 2 din Radio Steering Control

here. One thing to note is that it seems like everyone's product in this thread came with a remote receiver that has 4 wires, a red power, black ground, white key 1, gray key 2, but mine only came with 3 wires, red, black, and white. I'm not entirely sure why, but just good to note.
- I bought the PAC SWI-RC-1, original

$40 PAC SWI-RC Steering Wheel Control Interface Designed for All Major Radio Brands, Universal Interface SWI-RC1

amazon link still works.

Install

• The JVC unit I have has the blue/yellow steering wheel input wire, and after some comments in this thread that people didn't need the additional PAC unit, I tried wiring the steering wheel remote receiver directly to my radio. I connected black to black, red to red accessory power, and my white key 1 wire to the blue/yellow steering wheel wire on the JVC. This did not work as I ultimately had no way to program the remote. This JVC unit does not have any built in programming interface, and without being 100% certain, I think that if your radio doesn't have a built in menu item specifically for steering wheel programming, then you will need the PAC unit. Here is an example of what built in steering wheel remote programming would look like.
• After disconnecting that, I mostly followed Rix's instructions for the RC-1 unit, so for the steering wheel remote receiver -> black to radio black, red to radio red accessory power, white key 1 to PAC solid white. For the PAC unit, I did black to radio black (something important to note here is that the PAC unit had two solid black wires, and according to their website, one is just "ground" and the other is "SWC ground." I didn't really know how to interpret this, or which one should be used, so I just T-tapped both PAC blacks into the radio black), red to radio red accessory power, blue/yellow to radio blue/yellow, and solid white to remote receiver solid white (as mentioned above, same connection). There are a lot of wires on the PAC unit that will not be used.
• After making these connections, I was able to get this to program correctly to the remote. I'll say I found the programming instructions a bit challenging to follow, but only took me about 20-30 mins in the end. If you follow the steps that Rix linked here, you should be successful.

In the end I don't love the look of the aftermarket remote, but I HATED the touch screen volume and skip control, and I was taking my eyes off of the road way too much, and am happy to have this installed. Eventually I'd love to do the steering wheel swap. One other important thing to note is that this will NOT work with CarPlay, the remote will only control BlueTooth functions. From my research, I don't think there is any current option to allow carplay controls, but definitely could be wrong there.

 

Thank you so much for this write up. I’ll probably give this a try. I was thinking having radio controls would be nice. Last weekend i was pretty close on hitting someone because i was lowering the volume. I thought to my self wow that was close all because of the radio placement.