Though [Arkandas] disclaims any curiosity in being a ‘automobile man’, that is considerably ironic in mild of the sheer quantity of modding he has carried out on a spread of automobiles through the years, a latest misadventure involving a BMW Mini F56’s infotainment system alternative and a few mild ECU reprogramming included. What occurred precisely is lined in an in depth breakdown in a weblog submit.
One of many features that [Arkandas] disliked about this automobile was its iDrive infotainment system, itself a stripped-down model of the full-fat infotainment system in ‘actual’ BMW automobiles, with a small display and awkward UX. The thought was to switch this with a extra full-featured trendy system.
Because the infotainment system does hook into the automobile’s CAN buses and different methods it must be suitable, in fact. This took some analysis earlier than finally a elaborate €700 aftermarket alternative was ordered from a Chinese language vendor.
Lengthy story quick, the gadget was principally suitable other than a connector wired wrongly and creating a brief. This was mounted, however then the loosely fitted show toppled off throughout a check drive and broke, so a alternative display was ordered. This display arrived with out requisite manufacturing unit programming, so [Arkandas] launched into an extended reverse-engineering session.
Earlier than he was capable of extract firmware from the damaged show and flash it onto the brand new show he was provided a brand-new alternative for the entire gadget, which he accepted in return for sending the outdated unit again. Though this nonetheless left him with a spread of questions, not less than the brand new infotainment appears fairly spiffy.
The worst half about the entire expertise was simply how a lot ready and agonizing over poor after-sale help was concerned, together with all of the issues that may go mistaken and switch a enjoyable afternoon of becoming shiny new elements right into a months-long ordeal. Since trendy automobiles are principally only a stack of computer systems on wheels, this ensures that even ‘not automobile guys’ will probably be doing much more of such enjoyable automobile modding.
