 Parrot, founded in 1994 and based in
Paris, makes a wide range of electronic products. What makes Parrot's
products different is the use of a wireless technology called BlueTooth.
Parrot's most popular products are their hands free cell phone car kits. We
had the opportunity to try out one of their systems, the Parrot CK3300 GPS
Car Kit. We installed it in a Chevrolet crew cab truck and used a Motorola
Razr cell phone. The Parrot CK3300 is a
system installed in your vehicle that allows you to talk on your cell phone
through the vehicles audio system. It "syncs up" to your cell phone and
allows you to use the Parrot system to view your phone book list and dial
directly from the Parrot system by either the dial on the LCD screen or
through voice recognition.
 BlueTooth technology is
a way for devices to connect to each other without wires. It works the same
way as when devices are connected via a USB cable except there's no cable!
There are many uses for BlueTooth such as transferring data or files from
one device to another. The most popular device is the common wireless cell
phone headsets. 
The Parrot CK3300 system
is both a hands free car kit along with a GPS receiver. Your cell phone must
have BlueTooth technology built in for it to communicate with the Parrot
CK3300. The first step is getting your phone ready, on your cell phone you
need to enable BlueTooth and have it 'find' nearby devices. Once each device
connects, your system is ready to use. We have our cell phone set to
automatically connect each time we get in the truck. The Parrot CK3300
includes the LCD display unit, a control box (mounted in a hidden area of
your vehicle), a microphone, a GPS antenna, and all cables. It is
recommended to have it professionally installed which we had done by San
Diego Car Stereo. We bought an extra wiring harness that made the system
almost plug and play. Due to the fact that our truck has the Bose stereo
system and OnStar (which had been disabled) the extra harness was not quite
plug and play, that?s why we took it to the Pro's! The extra harness was
from
www.installer.com and they offer many harnesses for the Parrot system
with most being plug and play. 
Once installed the system was easy to use. We set-up a few voice commands to
the people we call most. This allows you to dial that person by saying their
name as well as when they call you their name is heard through the audio
system in the truck. To dial with the control knob on the LCD display unit
just rotate the knob. It will automatically mute the vehicles radio and
scroll through the letters in the alphabet. When you are scrolling through
the letters the Parrot system says the letter you?re on through the audio
system. This allows you to scroll though the letters without taking your
eyes off the road. Once you're at the desired letter you press the knob in
to select that letter, then you can scroll through the names in your phone
book that begin with the selected letter. Let's say you?re calling your
friend John, you scroll through the alphabet until you hear the letter ?J?,
press the knob in and scroll until you hear 'John'. This is assuming you
set-up voice names for each person in your phone book. Even if you haven't
it?s easy to see the person?s name on the LCD screen. Another way to dial is
to use your cell phone. You can either, enter in the number on the cell
phone key pad or select a person from your phone book list, press send and
set your phone down. The call is dialed and heard through the vehicle audio
system. Voice dialing is the easiest way to call someone, simply press the
Green call button and say the person?s name.
Some standard features
on the Parrot system are very similar to cell phones such as caller ID,
received and missed calls, echo cancellation and noise reduction, private
conversation mode, and auto answer. We had our microphone mounted in the
upper left corner of the truck near the roof. Even with someone in the back
seat, on the opposite side of the truck, the microphone reception was
amazing, tons better than the OnStar microphone. The Parrot CK3300 also
has a built in GPS receiver. You can connect via BlueTooth, a smart phone, a
PDA or even a laptop to the GPS receiver. This allows hands free navigation.
We connected a laptop, which has built in BlueTooth, and used Microsoft
Streets & Trips 2006 software. While a laptop is rather large to be mounted
in a vehicle, we already had it and didn?t want to buy a new PDA. We used a
Ram-Mount laptop vehicle mounting system (See Ram-mount article) to securely
mount the laptop in the truck. It allows you to swivel the laptop so the
driver can view the directions or allows a passenger to use the laptop for
navigation as well as other applications while on the road. Microsoft
Streets & Trips also has voice navigation. It tells you where and when to
turn! The Parrot CK3300 is a
great addition to any vehicle. It allows hands free use of your cell phone
and is easy to use. This is a much safer way to talk on your cell phone
while driving. Parrot offers other
hands free systems such as easy plug and play, hands free devices (plugs
into your 12 volt cigarette and has a stand alone speaker and microphone) to
use with their color LCD car kit that displays a picture of the person
calling. Parrot also offers wireless speakers for your home stereo and even
a picture frame that can randomly display up to 100 different pictures. www.parrot.biz | 
