This-Rex

Hey!

I need som help with programming the mr12volt to my cic retrofit e61 again.

I can’t get the next and previous button on the steering wheel to work.

It did work before i reprogrammed in the cic. But now I can’t get it to work again.

Any tips?

Thanks!

kd7iwp

What did you do to "reprogram" the CIC? I've not heard of steering wheel buttons not working with these systems other than issues with the built in voice control and Siri via the speech button on the steering wheel. Have you default-coded your CIC to see if that helps? I've done quite a bit of coding of my CIC and other modules as well, but never have encountered this. I would hope that your Mr12Volt is actually connected to the bus but I presume it is otherwise you would say your iDrive knob doesn't work with it. Do the volume buttons work?

This-Rex

Hi kd7iwp,
Thanks for reply.

I can tell you the whole story.
I got a local guy to code and install Mr12volt and cic retrofit for me for about 2 months ago. When he did it, everything works as it should expect the original nav. Because of the licence did not match with VIN. (This I did not know when I reprogrammed the cic myself later)

For about 2 weeks ago I tried to get the nav to work, and i thought it was because the cic was not programmed (I don't know much about programming, and am pretty new to this) so I tried to reprogramd myself. This was when i started getting problems.

i took contact with the guy that did this for me the first time, but we was not very helpful and he gave me a small guide so that I could program it right again. I got the mr12volt to work again. But the next and previous button on the steering wheel did not work now. Everything else works fine. Like Siri and volume. I tried to contact mr12volt.com, but they were also not very helpful.

I think if I programmed the cic and mr12volt how it would be done for the first time it was installed it will work again. Because the next and previous button works on the radio, just not on mr12volt.

Could you maybe give me a guide on what you would do?
Or I could pay you to remote code it for me?

This is realty frustrating for me, and I want it to work again

Thanks for the help!

kd7iwp

I follow some of what you did but need clarity on other parts.

It is true that if you retrofit CIC it can be a pain in the butt to get original nav to work, it took me a whole lot of tinkering around with different apps and tools to finally get it to work (and not that I’ll ever use it, I just like features to work). Some people get these little boxes installed that prevent the CIC from retrieving the VIN from your vehicle and that tricks navigation into working but I didn’t want to go that route, and I’m assuming you haven’t gone that route either. So what did you do to enable built-in nav? Did you have to mess around with FSC codes and such, as I did?

When you use the words “program” and “reprogram” can you describe what that means? When I use those terms I describe using NCS Expert to access various modules on the car to modify with the modules’ internal configuration settings.

I must say that I’m curious how volume works for your steering wheel but not track selection. If you’re listening to the radio will the track selection buttons work to change the station? If so, we at least know your buttons are successfully communicating with the CIC. It doesn’t take much to install the Mr12Volt and you shouldn’t ever have to program or configure anything at all except for two circumstances that I can think of:

1. Your car has built-in voice control and you want to deactivate it to repurpose the steering wheel speech button for Siri inside CarPlay
2. Your car did NOT come with a cd changer and so you have to program it to think it is there

kd7iwp

Sorry, kids needed help so I didn’t finish that.

I also see you verified already that volume and Siri buttons work.

I am unaware of any configuration in the CIC that would prevent track selection buttons from working. Do the track selection buttons on the CIC unit itself work? If you are in the CIC menus does the CD changer show up and Mr12Volt is listed as the 1st CD? I don’t see how programming the CIC could break this. What changes do you believe you made to the CIC? Is it on the latest firmware? Did you do a factory reset on it?

kd7iwp

I just looked at a few things on my car and verified the track selection buttons on the steering wheel and on the CIC unit both change tracks in CarPlay for me. Here is the firmware version I’m running on Mr12Volt.



Did your car originally come with CCC (navigation) or MASK (small screen, no nav)

This-Rex

I was not able to get the original navigation to work because I need to FSC codes and update the cic to CA1 to be able to do that, and I don't have an ICOM right now, so I can't do it.

I thought I only needed to "re-program the cic in NCS to get it to work, but I was wrong after I watched a bunch of YouTube videos until I realized I needed to get the FSC code.

When I tried to program the CIC myself in NCS, I think I reset something or did something wrong with the programming because suddenly Mr12volt did not show in CD.
After watching a couple of videos on how to get it to work again and asking the guy that programmed and retrofitted the CIC for me in the first place, he told me to do this in NCS to get it to work again.Choose CAS. And then write in FA: delete old #0808 and write: #0909 $672 and +KMP3 and the i did work again, but not that track buttons on the steering wheel.


When I tried getting help from Mr12volts website, they told me the steering wheel buttons should not work on Mr12Volt, and they did not tell me why. But I don't think they are telling the truth because it did work in the beginning.

I have tried factory resetting the Mr12volt, but it did not work. I think the fault is in the CIC unit.
My car came with CCC Navigation Original.

I think I have to completely reset the CIC unit and program it to work with MR12Volt again, and not messing up this time.
Could you help me with that?
And how do I deactivate the original BMW Siri?

kd7iwp

In my opinion it is not worth doing this unless it's something you think you'll use or lot, or because you enjoy tinkering with things. I did it for the latter reason and am happy I figured it out, but it took me far much more time than I would have liked. I probably wouldn't have done it if the CIC I bought didn't already have CA1 on it. You don't just need an FSC, you have to modify internal certificates and all sorts of things. I also upgraded my HDD to a SSD because I work in IT and these things are fun for me.

Did your car originally come with a CD changer? I'm guessing not and hence restoring the CIC to defaults removed the CD changer option and Mr12Volt was no longer seen.

The CAS and another module (I forget which at the moment, might be the FRM) as a backup store the VO (Vehicle Order) or sometimes called the FA. You should write it in both places because when you reset a module to defaults I am unsure which other module it pulls the VO from.

For an idea, here's my own VO: Obviously it's useless for you to copy this because we will have different options on our cars but at least you can know that you shouldn't need anything more than this for it to work since it works in my car. For example, I don't have 0909 (which I believe is a build date) as I seem to recall when I did my CIC retrofit that some people said you had to change your build date in the VO. I did NOT change it and everything works. I also don't have "+KMP3". I'm not trying to say you don't need those, just that it should work without.
I track all changes that I make when coding my vehicle in Github. Here you can see all the changes I've made to my VO over time.

I've reached out a few times and I agree they have been less than helpful. For example, they said that since I have a manual transmission there is no way that the Mr12Volt unit can detect when I'm in reverse to turn on the rear camera so it has to be tied into the PDC button. Well I used to have a different MMI box and it did that just fine without using the PDC button.

That's quite likely. I can't remember if you said whether you tried the track skip buttons that are on the front of the CIC unit. It won't hurt to upgrade the firmware on your Mr12Volt but it also shouldn't be the problem. When I tried upgrading my firmware with a 64GB memory card it wouldn't work so I borrowed a 1GB card from a friend and that worked.

Assuming you have your VO set correctly, you should be able to program the CIC with a blank FSW_PSW file. Normally when you read from a module in NCS Expert it will grab all the data and throw it in that file. Just open the file in a text editor and delete everything in it, save, and write it back. When any module gets written to with a blank file it looks at the VO to know which other modules the car has and sets itself to defaults. Here is the change log for things I've done to my CIC on Github.

I'm actually stuck here... I thought I did what others said to do but the speech button currently triggers both Siri as well as BMW voice control at the same time and it's annoying. This page (the last 2 posts at the end) provides instructions (can skip the combox part as I don't have that and I'm assuming you don't either since it was never a factory option on E60s). I think I've tried these before without success, so should probably try again.

This-Rex

Hi! I am traveling now for a few weeks now, so I can't try this out for a while. But thank you so much for the help, I really appreciate it. I will update you as soon as I know more.