In recent years, the bluetooth market has exploded with all sorts of solutions to pair your phone with your vehicle. The most recognised of these solutions is the Parrot Bluetooth range, offering a comprehensive collection of devices suited to everybody.

Although the Parrot kits are value for money, a rival system is becoming increasingly popular and unless Parrot are careful, the Bury CC9060 may steal the number one top spot on today’s market.

The Bury CC9060 offers the user full voice activated calling, answering and phone book navigation. What this means is that the user does not have to even use the touch screen display available, as all functions can be accessed by spoken voice. With the ability to pair with up to 10 phones and store 1000 contacts on the kits internal memory, the Bury gives the Parrot Mki9200 a run for its money.

For more information and video demonstration please click here.

Parrot have been making bluetooth kits for years, and have gained a reputation that dwarfs all competitors. When most people think of bluetooth they will always think parrot bluetooth.

However, the latest release from the acclaimed manufacturer, has nothing to do with bluetooth technology, but it still does relate to your mobile; well if you have an iPhone at least.

There are speculations circling to why they decided to make their latest product, but all of those aside, we think they just wanted to have some fun, and if it strengthens the brands reputation at the same time, then why not.

What the brainiacs in France decided to do, was create a helicopter that could be controlled from an iPhone, and if that wasn’t cool enough, they fitted forward facing and ground facing cameras that can be viewed from the phones screen. Combined with accelerometer based controls (tilting the iPhone) and a clever autopilot program, the helicopter can be flown with pinpoint accuracy by the most novice of pilots.

The AR Drone, which the helicopter is known by, uses wifi technology to connect to your iPhone, and because of this, it can also connect to an iTouch or iPad. Using a high output Li Poly battery you get up to 15 minutes fly time, which is more than enough time to exhaust your mind keeping the agile “eye in the sky” away from obstacles. The best is still to come however.

So you have a helicopter that flies by wifi from your mobile, how about you send it into battle with another drone controlled by your friend, shooting it down with missiles and other ordinance. Well obviously the average civilian cannot be trusted with real missiles, so its all virtual. Parrot call it augmented reality, as it combines virtual simulation and actual flight, the camera feed on the screen will show simulated target boxes and ordinance projected, along with tracking the enemy using colour recognition. The drone still flies around, so you need to ensure you don’t crash, unless you are out off ammo and feeling a touch suicidal…

Bluetooth Car Kit Direct are giving an AR Drone away in their Christmas competition. Anyone who purchases an integrated bluetooth system from the web site from now until the 20^th of December will automatically be entered into a prize draw. The winner will be picked at random on the 21^st, and the Drone will be delivered in time for Christmas.

For years, Parrot bluetooth kits have dominated the market, building up a brand so strong that anyone looking for a bluetooth kit will automatically think Parrot. Although Parrot do have an excellent product range, their kits use telemute leads that bypass and mute the vehicles radio, which means they have several disadvantages. The main disadvantage being the kit cannot be controlled by the factory fitted stereo so a separate display and controller is required.

For a lot of people, having after market units present in the vehicle is an eye sore, and many seek a solution that works with what is already fitted, especially when steering wheel controls are present.

Dice have always offered the very best in vehicle integration for BMW, their simple connection utilises the BMW pre wired CD changer lead that was fitted as standard to most vehicles (3 and 6 Pin connectors). The interface effectively emulates a CD changer, showing the iPod text as CD MP3 information. Their last kit, the Silverline Pro, allows you to search your iPod from the stereo by album, artist, track and play-list, as well as also giving you the ability to control the iPod from the mp3 player itself.

Dice step up to rival manufacturers by incorporating iPod integration systems with hands free calling with their new Media Bridge MB1500.

The MB1500 is essentially the Dice Silverline kit with and integrated bluetooth chip. The kit can support music playback from iPod, Auxiliary and USB, giving the user a wide range of options to listen to their MP3’s, the kits text display ensures all iPod and USB information is clearly shown on the vehicles display.

In terms of bluetooth, the kit will connect to 99% of phones on the market today, displaying who’s calling, along with all of your phone book contacts. When a call is received, the music playback is muted, and the sound from the call is played through the vehicles speakers. The MB1500 microphone provides the audio input for the call, which is also cable of handling voice dialling, all at the touch of a button.

Dice did have an issue a few years back when Apple changed the way their iPods received charge. Millions of consumers were effected when iPods moved from 12V to 5V charge, and Dice shared some of the issues with their kits. Thankfully this issue has been addressed and all of their kits, including the MB1500, now fully support 5V charging. On the same note, both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4G are fully supported by the Media Bridge.

Currently the MB1500 is only available for BMWs built up to 2006. From 2007 onwards, BMW use the fibreoptic MOST system and you need a Dension Gateway MOST product to connect your devices.

In summary, if you are looking to integrate your iPod and phone into your BMW, the Dice Media Bridge will offer you the most effective solution, with the least amount of fuss and clutter. It takes no more than an hour to fit, and with its competitive price, it easily runs circles around its competitors.

The technology that is Bluetooth has brought about a revolution about how we work using our Bluetooth enabled devices such as phones, computers & MP3 players. The home network using two computers, printer, scanner and mobile phone can be put into existence within minutes either by using the inbuilt facilities in the computers and peripherals or using Bluetooth dongles on the computers. It would just take a few minutes to set up the whole setup to start working. You broad band connection can be shared between two computers using a blue tooth LAN. Earlier every time a new computer or piece of equipment was purchased when had to purchases a connectivity cable with it. As the devices grew the number of cables grew which made cable management hell for the poor home user.  Bluetooth has simply eliminated the need of using cables by going wireless. The older peripherals had all different types of cables for each device but Bluetooth is standardized communication protocol followed by all and sundry devices.

Technology has moved even further to help the way we live our lives than possibly any other technological advance. In terms of safety; it really is up there! It is obviously the main driving force behind hands free calling and bluetooth car kits and continues to grow further. It has created a mass market for products which has certainly helped the economy and a large number of companies who specialize in making bluetooth products such as Bury THD and Parrot. If we believe what is coming from these brands development departments then the technology is also set to improve and new ideas are being thrown around which might just allow it to take even more of the gadget market!

Parrot have just finished the design of three new kits that will be their flagship products. These have been added to their range of Bluetooth Kits with immediate effect. The range includes the top of the range MKi9200,  the MKI9100 and the MKi9000. All models are fully iPod comptible including the new iPods and iPhone 3G.

The entry level MKi9000 doesnt include a screen but the KIi9100 offers a 2-lin Blue LED screen and the MKi9200 offers a cracking 2.4" Full Colour LCD display. All three models have full voice dialing.

The MKi9100 will display your phones status along with your phonebook and a playlist. The MKi9200 will offer the same PLUS a wallpaper that you can design yourself, Caller Pictures and even iPod Track Cover Pictures.

These kits are set to take the market by storm so grab one while you can!

Road Safety has always been an important factor in our day to day lives. In recent years, due to the massive increase of portable communication devices available and used by the general public, the government have looked at many ways to improve road safety.

An ever increasing number of motorists use their mobile phones while driving.  Road Deaths have dramatically increased in recent years as more and more people join this modern trend. In a bid to reduce the number of fatalities caused by using a mobile whilst driving, in 2007 the government increased the maximum fixed penalty for those convicted of using a mobile device whilst driving to £60 and 3 points. In extreme cases where serious injury is caused, the fine can be unlimited, even resulting with imprisonment.

Mobile phone manufacturers and in car entertainment specialists have been looking at suitable ways to allow drivers to communicate safely, as well as keeping them in pocket with a clean licence. Over the last few years, numerous products have appeared on the market, ranging from basic wired hands-free kits that consist of an ear piece and a mic connected to the phone by a thin cable, to devices that wirelessly connect to the phone using Bluetooth.

Bluetooth has quickly become the most popular excepted solution for wireless needs, and products that use Bluetooth have rapidly become available all over the world.

In recent months Bury, a communications company based in Germany, have managed to integrate Bluetooth with state-of-the art voice recognition software, to make the most complete hands-free package available to date, the Bury 9060.

Comprising of a dash-mounted PDA device that directly connects into any vehicle stereo via Drive and Talk Mute leads, it pairs to the Drivers phone via Bluetooth.

Once paired, the driver can use the phone by either touching the PDA screen, navigating through its menus, or go completely hands free and navigate through the device using voice commands. The Voice recognition software is so advance it can recognise anyone’s voice without prior programming.  

If that wasn’t enough, the Bury 9060 pulls the complete phonebook from the phone, and will also allow manual dialling, for example saying “One” will dial the number 1.

The whole system works with the vehicles speakers, so if a call comes in or is made, the Bury 9060 mutes the stereo and the call audio comes through the speakers. One some mobile phones, including Sony Ericsson Models, the Bury will even read out incoming text messages!

As more people join the increasing volume of traffic on our roads, technology will be right behind, offering a safe solution for the hazards that present themselves. Bury have shown everyone the future in mobile phone hands-free, and will undoubtedly continue to lead the way in Bluetooth solutions for years to come.