[eni16]

Hello,

My name is Eni. I just created the account so I'm new here. Also I'm new in the world of BMW and BMW coding.

A little information:

Recently I bought my first BMW. I love it! It's a F10 535xi, it has been imported from US so it's US style. It has professional navigation system but It doesn't work here in my country because is US style and doesn't have European maps. But the problem I'm facing the most is that US works on odd radio frequencies and the most radio stations here are on even frequencies. For example: 100.00, 100.40 etc. I asked at the BMW dealer here and they told me that in order to change the radio system from US to European it cost at least 1000 Euro (1158 USD), but it can be higher. I don't want to pay 1000 Euro for that so I started searching if there was any option on my car. Than I found about this term "coding". I'm a software developer so I know very good what coding/programming means. But I guess it's not the same as my everyday work.

Now the question;

can someone help me to get in the world of BMW coding? What should I know? How can I learn that? Where can I get resources? I really want to get started with it. I already know some low level programming languages like C++ and C and I can work with these, or do I need to go deeper and learn some more low level languages like Assembly(I have done a little when I was in university)? I work on a Linux environment. Is this ok? Do I need to get a windows machine?

I think my car has been coded before because it has Video in Motion active, which I guess it's not active by default.

Thanks for any help/support/advice!

[jonobro]

use VMWARE!

[eni16]

Yep, I can create a windows VM on my Linux machine.
Do you know any resource for learning how to code bmw? For example books or tutorials.

Thanks

[TLK]

Coding and programming for bmws does not mean what those words mean in software engineering.

Coding here means changing configuration parameters stored in non-volatile memory on the various control modules scattered throughout the car. It does not mean authoring/modifying software source code.

Programming here means flashing new firmware to control modules in the car. These firmware files are crypto encoded and signed and as far as I know, so custom firmware hacking seems to be either nonexistent or pretty rare. People are mainly upgrading factory firmware versions to try to get newer features in certain cases.

[eni16]

Ok, I got it. Thank you. Now it's much clearer.

But still I'm confused how to get started with bmw coding. Do you have any architecture diagram for these firmwares? Or maybe an overview of the overall bmw architecture stuff.