I have been searching the forum and have decided to add multifunction buttons to my 07 Cooper-S. The wiring seems to be there and I have already installed the switches, so far so good. Problem is my local Dealer seems clueless on weather they can program it and the 2 hours I am seeing on the other posts seems excessive given all they are doing is changing some settings and flashing the firmware.

Could http://www.minitechinfo.com/ site be an answer? with a J2534 Interface I should be able to program this myself.. Question is which interface.
I have found this one http://tunertools.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DT-M-ISOCAN a Mongoose Passthru which may fit the bill, at a reasonable price esp if I ebay it on after I am done!!. The only question I have is weather the BMW/Mini needs the "Short to Ground pins 1, 9 and 15" nor "VPP +5 Pin 12"
function. Anyone know??

 

So the plan is to enable the buttons on the multifunction steering wheel somehow through the CAN bus? Last I'd looked into it, there's not much in the way of consumer-accessible CAN or MOST bus stuff. IBUS has been around for years and years, and there's still not complete info out there. The MP3Car forum is probably a place to start? Perhaps here in particular; it doesn't get too involved but it may give you a better idea of what you're up against. I don't mean to be a downer, but I think this may be a tougher project than you planned?

Sounds like you've installed the new wheel, but do the switches actually go somewhere? The wiring harnesses get very specific down to the individual options, and the buttons may not end up connected to anything.

Even then, like you said, the software end is probably not installed. Two hours doesn't sound unreasonable to me- in fact, if you're comparing it to rolling your own system through the OBD port, I'd consider it a steal.

I doubt that the system was designed to be modular, and it'd probably mean a complete re-flash. That's assuming that they can figure out how to add it. IIRC, a lot of the software bits are VIN specific. If it wasn't designed to do it from the beginning, you might be out of luck for "official" help.

 

Since I posted I have called another dealer who is definitely clearer on the subject. They are quoting 2 hours, but are warning that the steering angle sensor may also need replacing, adding more cost. The wiring seems to be there and the dealer seems to think it will be OK.

On the programming I cannot say one way or another, the minitechinfo site infers that you can indeed do programming via the J2534 see this http://www.minitechinfo.com/tiscode/...grammingV4.htm but are not specific by model. They of course will not comment on any other J2534 devices than the 3 they have validated (all over $1000)To complicate things there seems to be some kind of optical connection as well but again no clear info on it but It seems (maybe) that it is used for rapid flashing by the dealer. what I am not sure is weather its the exclusive port for programming.


So it seems the Mongoose could possibly programme, I found that short to ground versions are only needed for Honda/ Toyota However no-one knows, including the vendor, what it can or cannot do, aside from reading/resetting codes. It seems with BMW, sometimes yes sometimes no.
Anyway I have 3 friends with Mini's and as all of my future cars are likely to be European I could use in the future so I am considering getting one just to see what can be done, worst comes to worst It will be OK as a code reader.

I am not going to jump all over this at this time, but I will keep posting with any developments....

 

One of the optical devices for reprogramming that you refer to, is in the wiring harness behind the passenger side access panel in the boot.