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      02-03-2009, 02:20 PM   #6
coolingmist
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Drives: 2009 135I 2006 Lotus Elise
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Atlanta, GA

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This is alot to read but it will make everything very clear.

When I went out looking for a new car it was because I got tiresome driving my Elise every day. Fun car, but terrible to drive every day. The Navigation was not even something I was looking for. I test drove a car that had the Nav in it that I could not resist.

The 1 series is everything I want in a car. I absolutely love this vehicle. Having said that anything that I design for this vehicle is going to look OEM. I think people would love the idea of having all of the gauges together including a boost gauge..hell even an EGT gauge and other temp gauges.

I dont have everything completely worked out yet but I will For those of you that are interested there will be some things to understand. I am doing this first and formost because I want to do it for myself. If the community likes what my company has done and there is a demand I would be glad to make it for the 135I. Those of you that are budget restricted will need to move on to something else. This is not going to be a simple piece of software you install and does all these cool trickes. There are hardware interface(s) that you need.

For starters you will need a carputer or laptop. Personally I have an acer aspire laptop. It weighs a pound or less. It costs under $300 and has 120 gig h/d. It can fit in the glove box of the car. You will need either a small laptop or a carputer. I will later get a carputer. All of the hardware interfaces I plan to install in the trunk next to the battery. Nice and clean.

After you get your windows based PC (carputer or laptop) you will need a smart controller to get the signals to the computer.

This is the smart controller below. It has 4 0 to 5 volts inputs, 2 frequency inputs, 1 mv input, 1 programmable 0-5V output and 5 on/off outputs.

with this controller you have the ability to read things such as RPM, Maf, tps, egt, map or anything that has a signal that the smart controller can read. You can go into user defined mode to set up any custom sensor. This device as 5 on/off outputs that are programmable. So you can set any of these outputs to turn on/off based on any of the inputs. For example, you can make any of the outputs turn on based on RPM, etc. Customers use it to turn on nitrous, water injection or to turn on a shift light, water fan, ic sprayer or more than 1 device at a time. Its potential is limitless.






Now that you got the carputer/laptop and that you have the smart controller you will now need to get the computer signal to your NAV. I am researching this right now. As of today this one looks good:

http://www.navvideo.com/downloads/Install_NV_BMW356.pdf

It takes your computer monitor signal and converts the RGB for the NAV to use. Its completely plug and play with no wire cutting. When you press the MENU key on the Idrive you can switch to the gauge system.

Lastly you will need our software. The software would come with the smart controller. The software I am developing now will be specific to the 135/335 vehicles.

If your still reading this and I have not lost you good.....It will work with any Idrive, you would just need to get the navconverter for the year BMW you have. Our software will be universal. I may have to make change for the screen resolution, but that would be fairly quick.

I would be open to manufacturing my own PC to NAV converter if there was alot of interest, it would get the cost of the product down however my upfront costs would be tremendous so there would have to be strong demand. Otherwise, for those that dont have budget constraints you will have a very capable system that will do far more than just display your gauges (warning system, failsafe, optional water/meth, etc).

To summarize:

You wire your sensors to the inputs on the smart controller
connect the smart controller to your carputer/laptop
your laptop/carputer is connected to the RGB/nav converter
our software is installed on your laptop.

Thats about it. Technology to do this is here today and I know of atleast one BMW that will have it shortly


EDIT: I forgot to mention it datalogs as well. You can save to file, etc.
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