Technical Stereo upgrade for 2013 Panda, upgrading from Blue and Me

[minisandfiats]

Well as per the previous buying advice thread, we’ve bought a 2013 Panda Trekking. It’s fantastic, the TwinAir engine is a hoot!
The Blue and Me doesn’t appear to be working at all, the steering wheel controls don’t do anything and nothing shows up to connect my phone to in the Bluetooth menu. From what I can see on the Blue and Me forum it’s not a great system anyway, and if you can’t stream music from your phone it’s a bit useless anyway.

So what I’d like to know is has anyone upgraded their Panda to a better Bluetooth enabled stereo with a system you can use with the steering remotes?

 

[Eltezz]

Well as per the previous buying advice thread, we’ve bought a 2013 Panda Trekking. It’s fantastic, the TwinAir engine is a hoot!
The Blue and Me doesn’t appear to be working at all, the steering wheel controls don’t do anything and nothing shows up to connect my phone to in the Bluetooth menu. From what I can see on the Blue and Me forum it’s not a great system anyway, and if you can’t stream music from your phone it’s a bit useless anyway.

So what I’d like to know is has anyone upgraded their Panda to a better Bluetooth enabled stereo with a system you can use with the steering remotes?

Try this one?

https://www.fiatforum.com/threads/w...tall-panda-cross-4x4-2020.494664/post-4641128

 

[minisandfiats]

Ah! Thanks, will check that out.

 

[minisandfiats]

Intelligent Android All-in-one Car Radio For Fiat Panda 2013 - 2020 Multimedia Wireless Carplay Android Auto RDS FM Audio Stereo - AliExpress 34

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www.aliexpress.com

I’ve just bought this, hopefully will be as good as it appears. Will keep you posted when I’ve fitted it.

 

[The Panda Nut]

A recent post said you can get the 2020+ radio with better connectivity and car play and just plug and play into earlier cars. This might be worth investiagating further.

 

[minisandfiats]

Yeah I thought that but I think you need a functioning Blue and Me unit for that to work. This has been disconnected on my car, when I tried reconnecting it lots of weird stuff happened!

 

[euroben]

Yeah I thought that but I think you need a functioning Blue and Me unit for that to work. This has been disconnected on my car, when I tried reconnecting it lots of weird stuff happened!

No you don’t need the old blue and me system. The newer uconnect system has Bluetooth built in and has Apple car play/android auto via usb.

 

[The Panda Nut]

No you don’t need the old blue and me system. The newer uconnect system has Bluetooth built in and has Apple car play/android auto via usb.

If you have no B&M how difficult would it be to get the phone kit working do you think. I suppose I would need a steering wheel and controls plus a microphone.

 

[euroben]

If you have no B&M how difficult would it be to get the phone kit working do you think. I suppose I would need a steering wheel and controls plus a microphone.

You would need to install a microphone if you don’t already have one. You can pick one up for a few quid on eBay. The one for the 500 is the same and easier to find in eBay. You don’t need steering wheel controls. In the newer pandas with the Apple car play uconnect, they came with and without steering wheel controls.

 

[minisandfiats]

This arrived today, planning on fitting it tomorrow (along with oil change!), will post how it goes!

 

[minisandfiats]

Fitted it today. Went straight in nice and easy, found a useful YouTube guide too.

Looks and sounds good, CarPlay seems to work fine too as per pix.

However I have put the original back in for now as despite coming with a plethora of cables and adapters, it didn’t have the radio adaptor.

Apparently it’s a Fakra one, have ordered it from Amazon so hopefully that should sort that.

 

[minisandfiats]

Right! I’ve fitted it properly, connected the aerial, positioned GPS antenna and wired USB power under the dash to where the phone mount is. In terms of CarPlay, it’s bloody fantastic. Delighted with how that works, very slick and smooth. Inbuilt GPS works but it’s much better using Google Maps on CarPlay.
Yet the steering wheel controls still don’t work. They didn’t work before with factory stereo but I assumed this was the BlueandMe module, which has been disconnected. Reconnecting it makes no difference, so maybe the controls themselves don’t work, I can’t figure out how I could test them.