My 221 currently does not have voice control. I would be able to purchase the voice control module very cheap and thought I would ask some guidance.

This is from a German car but I assume the software can be updated and changed to English language, is this correct?

I had a quick look at the wiring and it seems that at least some are part of the main harness which makes buying wiring harness less straightforward. It would be great if someone has experience about this retrofit and would have suggestions for some appropriate wiring harness and fibre part numbers. I think I can find the connector part numbers and would be able to build the harness but I would prefer to avoid that if possible.

Anything else to take into account? I have Star at home and can use my dealer for any tasks that need on-line access (but I'm travelling at the moment and could not check how this looks from DAS).

TIA

I had a look at Star now, the language selection does appear there although I did not figure out if off-line programming and configuration would work.

I also found the MOST fibre parts that are different with voice control (likely some redundancy there but the price was reasonable). The wiring harness issue is still open, and any other comments are still welcome.

There are different voice recognition modules for different languages, so I think they are not changeable... (well, the german and swiss/german one seem to be the same) but all others are different.

Assuming (and I havent checked the wiring diagrams) it is similar to the rest of the range, you need to move the microphone wires from the normal phone controller to the linguatronic controller, and power and wakeup (piggy back from phone system if retrofitting) and insert it in the fibre loop before the phone controller.
- That is why there are 2 variants of phone wiring harnesses - one with linguatronic and one without.

Theres a thread on mbguru about W211 (or was it W220) retrofit where i suggest buying a W203 linguatronic harness and using that as a base for your retrofit. It has the part nr of the harness you could use.

Richard

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Thank you for this advice. I've now looked at Star and there is a menu for VCM language change, I still assume that the physical parts are the same but they just come with a different SW loaded and a German language part could be changed to talk English. I'd be happy if this was not proven to be a wrong assumption.

I had seen the W203 part referred somewhere but only now I realised it really has the same connector parts as those I can find from the 221 parts diagram. I was aware of the microphone wiring change but I was not aware of this 203 harness, this should be useful for a clean(er) installation.

Thanks again.

I've not been able to absolutely confirm that the connector parts are identical, but assuming you purchase the module, post a photo and I can confirm

R

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All MOST VCS modules are identical except for the language.

I checked the part number of the connector and it was the same as all other cars.

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I thought I'd come shortly back to this topic. It took me some time to purchase the wiring harness and the MOST fibre parts. I ordered these parts from MBenzNL mainly because I didn't want to pay ridiculous price our local dealers ask for spare parts and also because I was not sure about the best MOST fibre parts. The 221 without VCM has the fibre without connectors down to the amplifier at the trunk while a VCM car would have an extension connector at the rear fender area.

I bought the W203 wiring harness, pulled microphone connectors off, equally from the original telephone control unit connector and moved microphone wires to the new connector.

I would have had enough fibre to install the VCM as from the factory to the bracket at the trunk. That would have been the VCM connector facing backwards in the car. Instead I turned the VCM 180 degrees to make the connector face forward. This way I was able to plug the fibre that used to go to the phone connector module directly to the VCM without an extension cable (one fibre connector less in the loop).

I was able to code the phone control unit for "microphones not present" and the MOST ring configuration as present after the VCM installation and everything started working properly. One more task remaining though, I have to have the VCM language changed, my German skills are sufficient to test the different functions, navigation, phone, radio etc. but I really have to have the language changed to English for (more) fluent use. This can only be done with SDS on-line.

While swapping microphone wires from one connector to the other I observed a deviation from the WIS wiring diagram. I wonder if anyone has any experience if it makes any real difference but for some reason microphones 2 and 3 were swapped at the phone connector. My parts supplier told me that they have seen other cars with similar mismatch between WIS diagrams and the actual wiring at the car.

I had done quite a lot of homework and would probably have finished the task on my own but big thanks still go for this forum and MBenzNL, it is a lot easier to work at the car when experts confirm your assumptions and give further guidance.

The WIS variation can only relate to the ordering of the microphones power. The microphone ground and shield are fixed in all cars with this module. Only the actuation of the microphones can be variable.

I recently installed VCS in a early edition W169 and used the W203 wiring diagram with total success. This simply indicates the module is the same in all cars.

The UHI module auto detects the presence of the VCS Module so long as the optical connection goes to the VCS first and then to the phone second.

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Interesting because the W221 MOST diagram has the VCM input connected to the phone control unit output. Why not the opposite order if it helps auto detection?

PS. I did assume that swapping microphones would not matter (much?) but I still find it odd that the wiring at the car as from the factory did not match that from WIS. I followed the WIS diagram when connecting mic wires to the VCM plug,

Comparing the W203 and W221 wiring diagrams, microphones are swapped like 1, 2, 3, 4 on one to 4, 3, 2, 1 on the other. This still keeps them in an array while my car had microphones in the sequence 1, 3, 2, 4, which I believe might affect the noise cancellation algorithms.

The only way to know for sure is to see a car from factory.

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