Can't play audio from external bluetooth transmitter

[dbsb3233]

I'm trying to play audio from an earphone jack on a separate device to the car's speakers. I connected a little (Taotronics) bluetooth transmitter to the device, and was able to pair it with the car as a new bluetooth device. However when I try to select it in the car's bluetooth device list, it's grayed out. When I touch it, it gives me a message saying "Headsets for the driver are not available". Which doesn't make any sense to me because (1) it's not a headset, and (2) I though this list was bluetooth INPUTS, not OUTPUTS. Confused. ???

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[dbsb3233]

I gave up. Going old school. Ordered a cheap FM transmitter to bypass bluetooth. Feels like 1985. Whatever works, I suppose. Everything else is pretty new school... Starlink Mini, Superbox for TV streaming, and portable monitor. We do a lot of 8-12 hour day road trips so live TV for the passenger will help pass the time (if I can get it all set up and working).

 

[SandyHaus]

No insult intended but. . .
Some external Bluetooth transmitters have a Send/Receive switch. Possible yours was in the receive mode?

 

[dbsb3233]

No insult intended but. . .
Some external Bluetooth transmitters have a Send/Receive switch. Possible yours was in the receive mode?

I don't think so. It's just a very basic BT transmitter that only does one thing... takes input from a 3.5mm jack and transmits it as a bluetooth signal.

I know there are some that do both (transmit or receive), but this one is just a very basic single-function.

 

[SandyHaus]

 

[dbsb3233]

Another update. I figured out a way around the "Headsets not available for the driver" message. We have the passenger screen in ours. I tried it there and (usually) don't get that message. (Although oddly, it still appeared a couple of times. Buggy-ass software.) But I still couldn't get the BT transmitter to configure. It would pair with the car, but would never connect right. Might just be the old, cheap BT transmitter I was trying.

Gave up on that, and got a cheap FM transmitter. But that has it's own problems. I couldn't find a way to manually tune the car's FM to a specific FM frequency. It's gotta be there somewhere, but all I see is a list of frequencies it seemed to scan and pre-load. I just set the transmitter to one of those and it worked... except there's like a 2 second delay. Since we're using it to watch video, that ain't gonna work. Seems like I need a wired USB input direct to the car's sound system, but this car doesn't seem to have a way to do that (unless I'm just missing it). Bummer.

So I gave up on that too. I think I'm just gonna have to plug in some computer speakers and bypass the car's sound system completely.

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