In my latest addition to my HCHII, I wanted to better integrate the garage door remote control into the car. All of my other cars have built-in Homelink transmitters, and I know that Honda also offers integrated transmitters on other model cars. I did a search of eBay, and found a used homelink/maplight module available from a 2006 Odyssey , and I bought it for $50.



The maplight modules have several different variants depending on the car, etc., but the way that they are put together is essentially the same. The center module with the Homelink transmitter just pops out of the Odyssey module, and into the HCHII module. I would have liked to put the entire Odyssey maplight module straight into the HCHII, but the surface contours of the HCHII headliner did not match up with the Odyssey module, so I had to move just the Homelink piece.



Because there are so many variants, I had to do a little modification to the Odyssey Homelink module to make it completely compatible with the HCHII. The main modifications were:
1. Replacing the yellow "ambient light" LED with a blue one that was more in tune with the HCHII lighting. I got an off the shelf LED for $1.25, and replaced the yellow one. This LED illuminates the center console with a nice soft blue light.
2. Since my HCHII has the navigation system, I also had to move the microphone from the HCHII maplight to the new Homelink piece.





I won't bore you with the details of this operation, but essentially I had to make a interface pigtail for the microphone to the Homelink main connector. All of the circuit wiring traces were on the Homelink module, they were just not connected to anything. There was even a mounting clip for the microphone in the new module. Ideally, if you can find a used homelink module from a car that had navigation, this step would be unnecessary.

Wiring the new module into the car was easy since the map lights have a unswitched 12v line, I simply tapped into that for the Homelink module. Honda wires the Homelink module to a switched power line which I find annoying that you have to turn on the car to operate Homelink. It is much more convenient to be able to use Homelink whenever you want.

I wired the ambient light module to a low-bean headlight fuse with an "Add a Circuit" fuse tap. This way the ambient light LED comes on when the headlights are on.




All in all this was a nice day project that was moderately complicated, but which adds real value and convenience to my HCHII.