BOSS Audio BE9ACP.X and Axxess AXSWC steering wheel controls

This past weekend I installed a BOSS Audio BE9ACP.X stereo in one of my kids cars. It was replacing a Boss BE9ACP that crapped out. I had installed the old unit along with a steering wheel control interface, the Axxess AXSWC-2. I thought this was going to be a quick job since the stereos were very similar but it didn't turn out that way.

The BE9ACP.X is a nicer unit than the BE9ACP. Most of the specs are the same but the BE9ACP.X adds these features

• 13-band EQ + DSP
• Adjustable crossover settings
• Time alignment
• FLAC playback
• SiriusXM tuner compatibility
• Front USB-C in addition to rear USB-A
• Set clock from phone (nice!)
• Physical buttons (including new navigation button that jumps to the map in CarPlay)

BE9ACP and BE9ACP.X screens.

The BE9ACP.X also added noise filtering choke to the power wires in the wiring harness.

and one other feature that is the whole point of writing this blog post and the thing that caused me such difficulty...  Steering Wheel Control settings.

The fix!

It took me many, many hours to figure this out. I tried so many different settings in the Axxess configuration tool. Here is the magic combination that finally worked.

In the Axxess configuration tool, force the stereo type to 'Metra OE'. Select Metra OE from the drop down and then write that setting to the SWC module.

Disconnect the USB cable and then turn the car off and back on. The SWC unit will do its auto detection routine trying to figure out the vehicle type. At this point the steering wheel controls did 'something'. The buttons on the steering worked but weren't mapped to the correct function on the stereo. For example 'next track' button was volume up, Volume up changed the source, etc. 

The next thing I did was on the stereo, I turned off the 'SWC Fixed Settings'. Toggle that setting to off and the 'SWC Learning Setup' option will enable. 

In the Learning menu. Touch 'Reset' to start the programming of the functions.

Then you just touch the function you want to program and press the matching button on the steering wheel. Program each function you have buttons for on the steering wheel and then touch 'Confirm' to finish.

Pictures of the install

This is after removing the old unit and half way through installing the new wiring harness. I switched all the connections to nicer heat shrink, glue lined crimp connectors

and here is the finished installation. I tweaked the equalizer settings a bit and it sounds a lot better than the old unit.