Fenix1

I implemented the free BMW Assist package yesterday. Data in the vehicle (including car licence registration number, car colour) was updated wirelessly. This took about 3 mins and even included a progress bar on screen.

Rudy

The system could check warranty status before allowing any downloads...problem solved.

Think about how much money BMW would save not paying warranty claims to the dealers for performing upgrades to fix nagging problems...

amigo525

IDRIVE
Menu
CHECk UPDATE
UPDATE yy.yy availble
<OK if you want to accept>
---> [OK]
(Idrive replies) -- please allows 2-3 hrs to complete do not use the car while updating.
'ACCEPT'
--> [OK]

--- downloading.......... ..<connection failed>

<that is okay...some one mentioned that it will be loading to the spare/unused image>

I think it will work..my current/bootable image was untouched--

[I can retry later]

Member545

Verizon has 1.5Mb/s wireless that covers a large part of the country. Downloads would be fast with that system. Who knows, in a few years it may be cheap enough.

Rudy

Yeah but they could do it now with "hotspots" that support 802.11 b/g. My car could update itself sitting in my own garage. Urban parking garages could install access points and could provide that service to it's customers, etc.

It's really not that difficult to design something that would work. Again, I think they'd need to setup some sort of partition so that you could continue to boot from the old system until the download is complete or if the update didn't apply properly.

The Mars rovers from JPL probably have systems that are similar and I'll bet they did it on a budget way less that what BMW has to spend. What do you think, cobradav? Am I right?

Member545

Yeah but they could do it now with "hotspots" that support 802.11 b/g. My car could update itself sitting in my own garage. Urban parking garages could install access points and could provide that service to it's customers, etc.

It's really not that difficult to design something that would work. Again, I think they'd need to setup some sort of partition so that you could continue to boot from the old system until the download is complete or if the update didn't apply properly.

The Mars rovers from JPL probably have systems that are similar and I'll bet they did it on a budget way less that what BMW has to spend. What do you think, cobradav? Am I right?
[/quote]

According to Verizon, they cover 140 Million right now.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobileo...overagearea.jsp

I would venture a guess that most BMWs are in urban areas, there are 4 BMW dealers around Boston and only one in the rural western part of the state.

You are correct about needing another segment of memory to store the new code, newer servers have that for BIOS upgrades so you can fall back to the previous release if there is an issue. Memory is cheap, I can't image the code for the idrive is much more than a 100MB. Anyone know the size of a CIP release? I saw a USB drive for sale today that was 8GB for $500.

I would like to see a way to backup my Nav address book and have it restored each time there is a CIP upgrade, I have lost it three times already.

cobradav

Here is the link to the current CIP upgrade procedure document. It contains information that we should all be aware of when we take our cars in for CIP upgrades or when electrical devices are replaced. I can tell u from reading most of our member posts after being subjected to an upgrade that many BMW service departments are not following this procedure, otherwise we would have nearly all our initial settings back as they were when we went in.

In another reading and probably also stated elsewhere by E60SPEED I do know that the CIPs get to the dealers in one of two ways, either on CD or downloaded via their internal network. I believe I may have another document on that process as well. I need to look for it.

Probably good to put in our reference library.

http://www.bmwtis.com/tsb/attachment...ProgCoding.pdf

Rudy

Thanks for the coding bulletin Dave. I'll add it to the Technical reference library that I started in the Gallery. (Hopefully the new .pdf bug in the gallery can be fixed so it will work like it used to...)

edit: Well the .pdf viewing bug is fixed in the gallery but now I can't upload a .pdf file. (I get a message saying "The image upload failed, please contact the system administrator.") Lomag, help! Could it be that it only allows .jpg images now?


As far as the size of the download for CIP updates I can say that it is up to 1GB which is significantly more than the speculated 100MB but still something that's doable...