sj3

I've now finally decided, after two weeks of break-in period bliss, that iDrive combined with voice control is infinitely easier and faster than dashboard buttons and dials. One voice command can almost always take you to the exact screen and then a press or two gets you want you want with no hassle and no taking your eyes off the road. Soon, I think, I won't even need to look at the screen at all to: change radio stations, change bands, go to a certain cd or track, cancel nav guidance, and any of a number of other things I'm sure I haven't yet thought of. It does not look like there is a voice command, though, to take you to weather band. The auto press, in my sometimes humble opinion, is just flat-out wrong about this. I can see now that the day-to-day operation of the E60 is much safer than dashboard controls.

P.S. News item: I took my car in this morning for it's first service appointment. I decided to wait around a bit instead of driving off in whatever 3'er loaner I was singed up for. BMW Assist was getting an error sending the car data so I couldn't do my first aquaintance call. Well, apparently the car new where it was going and decided to work perfectly for the service tech. Anyway, I saw an olive green/beige 545i that was just off the truck. Only options were cwp and nav...nothing else. Anyway, if you're in northern jersey (Denville) awaiting your 545i, it's here! Call you CA!

Sam

Doctor Diesel

Sam,

I think that change is like a supertanker, it takes ages to change direction

When BMW pioneered voice control I thought hey, that might be a real saftey plus!...I think you will find most other mass-market manufacturers will go the same way but might take 5 years or more to do so.

If auto journalists stopped complaining and got on with using I-drive and Voice control, we'd get a more truthful report


Only thing that pains me about voice control is my car won't have it until september at least as BMW cannot get it to work with our whacky english (scottish) accents.....roll on software version 12 (fingers crossed!)

khl

Sam,

Please do let me know your experience; I mean what efforts and
how much time your dealer took to fix your BMW Assist.

After two months of very pleasant ownership of my 530i, I sent in my car yesterday for the first time for non-working BMW Assist (It always
directed to 911). The service agent told me it would take them
only 30 minutes to decide what to do. Guess what, I have not got my
car back yet after 24 hrs (it's now 1:50pm PDT). The agent said it took them four
hours to download the software and the task was aborted for unknown
reason. Now they are downloading for another 4 hours to get the software
job done. IMO as a Ph.D. EE, the system may just need a reconfiguration
or a simple reset instead of reloading of all software. My biggest
fear now is how the update would affect my used-to-be-normal functions.
I really wish I could be with those technicians to help them!

Honestly, I am feeling that all BMW dealers should hire one or two software/computer applicaiton engineers to help maintain sophisticated cars like E60. Or alternatively, BMW should allow sophisticated customers to download and upgrade software from their cars. (It's like the computer business, you get software, drivers, firmware updates from Internet, not from the less sophisticated service technicians/agents). This might save a lot of cost for BMW and a lot of precious time for us! Note that I have no question about the quality of BMW certified mechanics, but it's just too difficult to train mechanical technicians to successful software AEs.

Rudy

Right on the money khl!

I know that a certain 800 number needs to be programmed into iDrive for BMW Assist to call the correct number. I can't believe they have to download the whole package just to update that setting!

Also, what the heck are they using a 300baud serial connection? Okay, 2400baud? You'd think they could've engineered a high-speed interface to the car. I mean even a 10Mbs link couldn't possibly take that long. If it did, there'd have to be a whole bunch of flash memory somewhere under the dash! I think this is a clear case of mechanical engineers not working with EE's.

The idea of internet delivered software upgrades is something I'm sure will come one of these days. It's only a matter of time. It makes way too much sense to not do it. Just think, you could use a WiFi connection in your garage (or some public garage/kiosk in a town or city) to download the latest upgrade while you sleep or while you're at work. If the download doesn't complete, it can resume the download the next time it is associated to a new access point or plugged into an ethernet port. That process can continue for days if needed until the entire download is complete. After the update is received, it could be loaded into a secondary (redundant) memory space. Once it's loaded into memory, a flag could be set in the primary memory space instructing the car to "boot" from the secondary the next time the car is turned on. This will provide a level of "fallback" in case something goes wrong and you need to revert back to the old version (which is now flagged as the secondary memory space).

Sounds pretty doable with currently off-the-shelf technology and standards, doesn't it?

crabman

Unfortunately they have set up the programming so it is an all or nothing process. The entire car is reprogrammed every time you make a change to any subsystem. If it is interrupted during the process it must start over from the beginning. My wife had her active steering go out on her first 530 and we learned a few things about this particular SNAFU. It was in the shop for 3 weeks before we got the second car and I had several discussions with the tech doing the programming. I have to tell you that these folks are not "unsophisticated". They have done a lot of schooling and have extensive and in depth knowledge as is required to work on these cars. People have gotten doctorates in less classroom time. Even then of course there is no substitute for real world experience. There is a reason top techs bring in 6 figure paychecks. The real problem IMO is that the design is fatally flawed as conceived. Your should be able to program modules separately. Its as simple as that.

sj3

khl: The dealer didn't have to do anything to fix my bmw assist. They just pushed the button and the car transmitted fine. I then did the first, aquaintance call from their parking lot.

Sam

sg530

going back on topic....
I'd like to see the voice recognition operate without having to 'accept' the conditions for idrive. I should have control, at the least, of all non-graphic functions so the warning need not apply.
Secondly, as advice to bmw, to please more owners, offer voice recognition as an option without nav or better yet, offer it as standard with idrive. This way the novices with idrive can't complain about how difficult it is to use.
Voice recog is soooo useful with idrive as a symbiotic pair.

sj3

sg530: Your last sentence was exactly the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately, the people/writers complaining about iDrive will not be swayed by reality! They don't want such a change to how cars are operated. Now all we need is the "go 10mph faster" voice command, or the "speed 120mph" voice command. Or voice command over cruise control. Or "lock all doors", "unlock all doors".

I agree with you that the lawyer ack. shouldn't be necessary to operate voice but I can see how the system designers could have done it so it was needed. Not too major of a hassle because I always try to ack before driving off. I can't wait until that device comes out that will eliminate the ack-requirement...shouldn't be long now.

Sam

MaTRiX

sj3 you are so right about the voice commands, it had just been 10 minutes that i sat in the car, and i had absolutley no problem working with idrive/voice control. Most of the commands that i said were recognized which was truly amazing. Was trying to input destination in the Nav via voice control but didnt have success there, so will wait to get the owners manual on monday and then chcekout how to perform other tasks with voice command.

sj3

Our (US) manuals have next to nothing on voice control. I'm not sure it's possible to do anything other than say "new destination". I don't think you can actually set an address by voice. That would be wildly cool if I was wrong and woudl hope that someone would explain how.

Sam