As a follow up to my CIC retrofit post
http://www.xbimmers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=589250
I'll share my experiences of retrofitting the 2012 Combox - Media in a 2009 X5. For those folks that are not familiar with combox, it replaces two ECUs (TCU and MULF) that provided BMW Assist and USB/Aux/old smartphone capabilities. The Combox also improves on the MULF's ipod integration allowing voice search, album art and digital playback of music. It also provides the gateway to BMW apps and can be configured to use two european only capabilities .. BMW Live and Internet Browser.
As I mentioned above, I installed Combox Media. This provides all the services above, apart from BMW Assist services. You can purchase Combox - Telematics, but in my case that would have being a waste of time. Despite what you might read on the forums, the *only* way to enable BMW Assist services in a combox, is from BMW themselves, and theres no way that they would have done that for me, given my car never had the combox in the first place ... along with a retrofit CIC. I just couldn't be bothered to even go there with them.
That said, I was prepared to "give up" BMW Assist. Thats a choice you need to make, if you want to do this retrofit.
As I said in the title, I used Bimmertech again, since they had done such a fantastic job on the CIC retrofit. They provide a full retrofit kit that includes the combox, as well as a retrofit harness. Installation is painless and take about 10 minutes. Simply disconnect the plugs from MULF and the TCU ECUs. Terminate the MOST connector to the MULF with the supplied termination adapter. Connect the supplied retrofit harness to the existing car harness MULF and TCU connectors. Remove the USB and Bluetooth connectors and move them over to the Combox. The remaining Roof antenna and backup antenna connections are not used since there is no BMW Assist telematics.
Once the installation was done, Bimmertech took remote control of my laptop again and programmed / coded the car. It was all very painless and over quickly.
So to summarize, I went for a pretty archaic CCC idrive system to the very latest CIC hardware and software, with the very latest connected drive features.
BMW Live has a lot of potential, and am quite excited about what comes in the future with that.
Note, BMW Live and the internet browser feature require's a phone that can be bluetooth tethered to the car for data. The iPhone can do this, so long as you have a plan that supports this.
The one thing I didn't do is plugin or video. These two items, I'm not bothered about, since I have DVD and a DVD changer !
This retrofit is completely reversible, involves no changes to the existing wiring harness, and can simply put the older TCU and MULF back in the car (along with the CCC too).
I'll answer any questions, but for pricing, speak to bimmertech direct.