[HN Gopher] BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part One: Failures
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BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part One: Failures
Author : zdw
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-06-26 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.projectgus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.projectgus.com)
| Unklejoe wrote:
| There's a BMW factory level diagnostic program called Tool32 that
| might help when trying to reverse engineer stuff like this. I
| don't think there's a way to legitimately get ahold of this
| software though...
|
| Anyway, it has a bunch of test operations you can perform. For
| example, you can set the individual gauges in the gauge cluster
| to specific values, etc.
|
| Perhaps there are some tests for the shifter and you can sniff
| the bus as they're performed?
|
| These are all done over the OBD port so it shouldn't be that
| hard.
| kiwidrew wrote:
| There's a good chance that all of the components in the car
| have similar/identical command sets for test/debug operations,
| even if the individual components have been produced by
| different OEMs.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I think one of the e-sys or related ISTA etc tools can move the
| gear selector. Because the hardware is able to move itself for
| example from the M/S mode (tilted left) back to center when it
| goes into park. And I've seen that done via diagnostics, but
| I'm not sure it was a function of the selector or whether the
| selector responds to some kind of "engine shutting off" message
| that it gets from another module.
| halifaxbeard wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The depth of BMW diagnosis tools is impressive.
|
| Even more impressive has been the work of scapy around the
| debug and diagnosis protocols BMW uses.
|
| Check it out: https://github.com/secdev/scapy/blob/master/sca
| py/contrib/au...
| natch wrote:
| Is anyone going to tell him that EVs only have one gear?
|
| Good ones, anyway...
|
| I guess there is always reverse and neutral though.
| speedgoose wrote:
| The author explains it in the beginning of the article.
|
| And the Porsche Taycan has two gears and it is considered good.
| Though it may be better with only one fixed gear, I heard that
| you can feel the gearshift.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That massive board for what is essentially a fancy D-Pad sounds
| like extreme overkill. Is it actually more reliable than an
| analog circuit?
| chinabot wrote:
| Over complex control systems are the reason I have stuck to
| cars from the last century for conversions, my 1990 hilux had
| exactly 1 microcontroller in the ECU which went straight in the
| bin when the electric motor went in. I also stuck with a manual
| gearbox even though it rarely gets out of 3rd. My other 1996
| BMW 528i conversion has been on going for 3 years due to over-
| complex engineering, I ended up throwing out the automatic
| transmission and am now using a manual transmission fixed in
| 3rd gear, basically using the auto selector to select R or D
| only, the digital logic to get a 1996 528i auto transmission
| selector working is just a few diodes and resistors.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| I read like halfway through the article and felt like this
| hardware was, in classic German car fashion, very over-engineered
| for the relatively simple purpose of sending one of 5-6 signals
| to a transmission controller.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| On one hand, you really do not want this part to fail. On the
| other, why is it this complicated in the first place?
|
| These overcomplicated shift levers that you need to watch a
| video to understand seem to be an industry fad -- one of them
| in a Chrysler product (IIRC) killed a Star Trek actor a few
| years ago.
| amluto wrote:
| Tactile feedback (like something that actually locks into a
| park position when it's in park) is genuinely useful.
|
| Tesla uses a little lever with four possible momentary
| positions. There is no way to feel whether you have actually
| selected the correct mode. You're choices are to either look
| at the instrument cluster and read the gear status or to
| actually try driving the car.
|
| This is made worse by the fact that, on level ground with
| creep off, park and drive behave identically unless someone
| presses the accelerator or tries pushing the car.
|
| On the flip side, I've driven a BMW with a really amazing 2D
| joystick with software controlled detents corresponding to
| buttons on the infotainment screen. I'm not convinced it's a
| good idea, but the engineering is awesome.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I don't like a lot of the UI/UX decisions in modern cars.
|
| Every manual transmission I've ever driven has given an
| incredible amount of tactile feedback when you get it
| wrong.
|
| You know you're parked because you've pulled a (relatively)
| big lever.
|
| A little knob or momentary buttons make me uncomfortable.
| I'd be waiting for feedback but never receiving it.
|
| Another example of waiting for something to happen, then
| nothing happens is start/stop engines. My foot goes down,
| nothing happens, I give more fuel, still nothing, engine
| starts and we're really going. I'm sure I'd get used to it,
| but I don't like it. Just do what you're told, car.
| lttlrck wrote:
| start/stop isn't triggered by the accelerator. The engine
| starts immediately when the brake is released. For most
| drivers it is unnoticeable.
|
| I don't like it but that's because there is little
| intelligence deciding when it should stop in the first
| place, though you can kind of regulate it by being
| extremely light on the pedal.
| elvis70 wrote:
| Yes, it was a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/death-star-trek-
| actor...
| izacus wrote:
| It truly is bizarre - I've driven a lot of cars lately and
| this exact BMW shifter took the cake of the most unintutitive
| and annoying to use by far. (And it's not even the most
| dumbass UX decision in that BMW by far.)
| wrycoder wrote:
| Yeah, you push it forward to go backwards, and pull it
| backwards to go forwards.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I don't get it. All these joystick gear selectors work the
| same. Push and hold a button and move it to the setting you
| want. What is unintuitive and annoying about this?
| izacus wrote:
| Ah sorry, the 1 series I just drove also had an "unlock"
| button on the left side so you had to hold it in a rather
| unnatural way to get it to move around. And the separate
| "P" button is also something that kept throwing me off.
|
| In comparison, Mazda I drove had much much simpler
| approach - grab the stick, push it all the way forward
| for Park, push it all the way back for Drive. That's it.
| The "unlock" button was under the index finger so you
| just grabbed it naturally.
|
| (In general, Mazda felt much better thought out inside
| than VWs, BMWs and MBs I drove.)
| gonesilent wrote:
| Chrysler's attempt at a reimagined shifter killed Star
| Trek's Chekov. Couldn't tell when it was in park...
| sgt wrote:
| This type of technology has to work even when you have a
| "weak" moment of lapse in judgement. Everyone has those,
| at the very least a few in your adult lifetime.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Exact opposite experience for me, I can use this thing
| without looking and it does exactly what's expected. It
| also does manual shifting the right way around, pull to
| shift up, push to shift down. That's how every sequential
| racing gearbox works. But somehow a lot of non-sports
| brands do their manual control the wrong way around.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Same. I used to have a BMW with this shifter. It was the
| most intuitive car to drive of all that I had driven.
| It's like the controls melted away around you and you
| could just focus on the drive. That car died a bad death
| when someone else drove it into a telephone pole and I
| still miss it.
|
| I know different people have different expectations for
| UX but for me that BMW had few of none UX flaws.
| wil421 wrote:
| The shifter was a Bosch part IIRC and was very similar to
| Audi shifters. Since then if you open your door and depress
| the brake it will automatically go into park. They also
| changed the shifter in 2016. 2014/15 model Grand Cherokees
| have it and many people complained about it.
| [deleted]
| techwiz137 wrote:
| It is very sad that a lot of older automatics needed actual
| mechanical linkages instead of entirely digital signals. It
| would've allowed some pretty custom gear selectors that would've
| enabled even more mods by freeing up space in the car interior.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| There were push button automatics in the 50's. But for the life
| of me I've never seen the problem with a column shifter which
| was normal when I learned to drive a car in the late 90's.
| tadfisher wrote:
| The push buttons were also mechanically linked! At least
| Chrysler selectors such as the one used in the Plymouth
| Valiant, they actuated cables to open/close fluid paths in
| the transmission.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Yeah, I'm aware that old auto transmissions had what -
| valve bodies? - analog computers to apply logic on when to
| shift; they'd have to have something. I just don't think
| the linkage was all that important a feature - mechanical
| or electronic seem to both be flexible enough to do the
| job. I mostly drive manuals, but the column shifter for
| autos seems the most utterly logical way to put
| transmission control right at your hands. It seems like
| putting it on top of where a transmission hump might go
| (but probably doesn't in a modern car with a transverse
| engine) is just pretending to be something it isn't.
| bri3d wrote:
| The debug protocols for XC2xxx are documented and you can
| interface with the device using an Infineon MiniWiggler. Unless
| the core or flash protection has been enabled, which is not
| likely on an "auxiliary" control unit like this, you can
| read/write flash and possibly also step-debug. You should be able
| to use the bootstrap loader startup mode and Infineon MemTool to
| read and write the device.
|
| The core IP is called C166S V2 and IDA does an OK job
| disassembling it. Unfortunately the instruction set is quite
| nasty anyway so it's not pleasant to reverse engineer even when
| the tooling works. I agree that coming from the "outside in"
| might be easier than coming from the "inside out," especially if
| you are able to acquire the internal BMW powertrain-CAN
| documentation which will make this project very easy.
|
| Infineon do the best job of producing documentation of any major
| automotive CPU vendor, IMO. Their toolchains and user manuals are
| both available and much easier to understand than for example
| Renesas or Freescale.
| overcast wrote:
| Thanks, I'll stick with my battle hardened manual gearbox, until
| I ride this car into the ground. Maybe I'm turning into a grumpy
| old man, but I want nothing to do with the lack of physical
| buttons, giant touchscreens, and fly by wire EVERYTHING in these
| cars.
| saxonww wrote:
| Would it be so bad if you actually get the specifications for
| this stuff? I assume/hope it's so hard because of all the
| safety regulations applied to cars; the amount of effort this
| person already has had to put into figuring out how a _gear
| shifter_ works is sad.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| Agreed. It seems, from the instructional video on that website,
| that a driver must touch the control in a certain spot to put
| the car into park. I wonder whether it makes a sound, or gives
| some other indication, when you touch it correctly? Surely, a
| driver isn't forced to look for that little yellow "park" icon,
| to see whether the car is in park.
|
| It seems that the old ways are receding into history, but the
| future is not especially appealing to everybody. Double-
| clutching, rev-matching, etc., are all part of the fun. The
| more cars get "easier", the harder it is to want to drive.
| buran77 wrote:
| I wouldn't put automatic transmission in the same bucket as
| touchscreen buttons and whatnot. The former makes the life
| more convenient for the driver. The latter makes the life
| more convenient for the manufacturer and less convenient to
| the point of danger for the driver.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| The car will auto go to park when you switch off the engine.
| I almost never select park manually. But its a regular
| button.
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| On my car, there's no park button at all. It's not even a
| symbol lighted either, it plainly doesn't exist. Maybe
| because it's a robotic shifter and a not an automatic one -
| I don't know. I can only put it in neutral, and if I want a
| true park, well, I have to shut down the engine and use the
| handbrake (still manual strangely).
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| I also have a manual handbrake, because how else do you
| want to make a hand-brake turn (insert smiling Clarkson
| here).
| forgingahead wrote:
| Wish I could upvote you 1000 times - rented a car last week and
| couldn't figure out how to control the damn AC in it. Gear
| shift was a turning knob like I was tuning my radio, not to
| mention the iPad staring me in the face while I tried to drive.
|
| Like TVs, I think there is a decent sized market for "dumb
| cars" - will any company step up to make them though?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Those are user interface design failures, not a direct
| consequence of the switch to electronics & automation. There
| are modern cars that are very pleasant to use (Hyundai Ioniq
| / Kona are my favorites), while others that have the exact
| same feature set are terrible (BMW i3, Nissan Leaf).
| isatty wrote:
| Let me guess, one of the new Ford SUVs? Happened to me too,
| wtf was ford thinking with the circular gear selector and AC
| controlled by a damn screen?
| newsclues wrote:
| The aftermarket for adding switches, buttons and knobs to
| supplement or replace the terrible touch user interface is
| going to be a massive market
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This is cool! I'm currently trying to update the CAN (early Ibus)
| setup I have connected to E36's CD changer port.
|
| I'm able to receive messages just fine on an Arduino via MCP2025
| using ian332isport's IBus library but I can't _send_ messages.
| Just tried using the apparently better Melexis TH3122.4 instead
| of the MCP but other than sending Vreg power it doesn't seem to
| work (and instantly heats up to dangerous temperatures).
|
| If anyone happens to be working on something similar hit me up!
| llamajams wrote:
| Are you using the right transceiver? Looks like MCP202 is for
| the LIN bus which is a completely different physical standard.
| There are also multiple different can standards, and I don't
| think Arduino can support the higher speed versions.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's not a 'CAN' can.
|
| https://maakbaas.com/bluetooth-cd-changer-
| emulator/logs/from...
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Frankly I am not sure! My car's bus is only between radio &
| CD, it seems a little bit less standard and most of the
| discussions I see are about the next generation (E46) that
| have loads of other components connected.
| llamajams wrote:
| Got a diagram of your setup?
| gumby wrote:
| Why do cars with automatic transmission have shifter rods at all?
| A button would be sufficient.
| fosk wrote:
| Sports cars like Ferrari 488 don't have one. You press a button
| to go in reverse, and use the F1 paddle shift behind the
| steering wheel to go in drive mode (one push of the up gear
| lever) or neutral (simultaneous push of both levers).
| dagmx wrote:
| For familiarity, especially since many automatic shifters have
| a pseudo-manual mode to shift up and down.
|
| also in case the manufacturer shares the center console part
| with models that have fully manual transmission.
| hangonhn wrote:
| I don't know if the shifter is strictly necessary but I am glad
| it takes two actions to shift, especially for reverse and
| forward. It's also really nice having the shifter because it's
| this relatively big control surface I can grab and control
| without looking down. I have that exact model of BMW and I
| often use the shifter to quickly put the car into sports mode
| for overtaking. They have another button to do something
| similar but there is no way I can do that while overtaking. The
| move shifter left maneuver is easy to do while keeping my eyes
| on the road.
| juiiiced wrote:
| Yes I prefer the larger control surface even if it is easier
| to bump than a button.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Exactly. Pressing the mode selector switch a few times to get
| it to sport/sport+ takes much more looking down compared to
| pushing the gear selector left while you keep eyes on the
| road to think about a quick overtake. And this is for cars
| that aren't 90% touch-screen controlled like some recent
| models from other brands.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _pushing the gear selector left_
|
| Pushing the gear selector left is actually terrible because
| (at least in the old BMW shifter) the cables inside the
| selector are way too tight and they will wear down as you
| move the shifter.
|
| https://www.e90post.com/forums/showpost.php?s=9c79f1c5ddd4c
| e...
| hatsunearu wrote:
| a lot of cars these days come with something other than a
| shifter knob to control the transmission. buttons, dials, you
| name it
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's really nice to be able to shift the car into neutral when
| it isn't working. An electronic system that can't be shifted
| out of park if it's broken is a nuisance. One of my Hondas
| lacks a mechanical neutral control in the cabin, but there is a
| shaft you can turn on the side of the transmission under the
| hood to force it into neutral if you need to push it out of a
| garage or something like that.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Don't forget Toyota's "unintended acceleration" fiasco. One
| way out of that situation is to shift to neutral and old-
| school shifters usually let you do that without engaging the
| button by just pushing the shifter up.
|
| I recently drove a car with a shifting "dial", and if I had
| to shift to neutral in an emergency there would be a lot of
| fumbling.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Any car maker that uses a BMW transmission uses the same exact
| gear selector.
|
| Your Alfa Romeos, Morgans, Toyota Supras are all BMWs and there's
| a gear selector to remind you of it every single day.
|
| I'd love some insight as to why - was it contractual? Are car
| makers lazy?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| https://www.bmw.de/de/shop/ls/dp/physical-goods/12556 explains
| what GWS is...as mentioned in the article
| closewith wrote:
| To save a click, GWS is Gangwahlschalter or _gear selector
| switch_.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| "Gear Which Switch"?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| wa"hlen is to choose. which is welche. perhaps cognates
| post_break wrote:
| Not sure what vehicle this is going into but wouldn't a push
| button selector be better? Ever since getting my Accord gear
| shifters look so old hat.
| techwiz137 wrote:
| Which year?
| post_break wrote:
| 2021 https://imgur.com/a/svq7rfR
| spaceywilly wrote:
| Eek. It seems like there's a risk that you could push N
| instead of D when trying to shift from reverse into drive.
| This could be very dangerous in certain situations, like if
| you're backing out of a parking spot onto a busy road.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Personal preference, maybe. I, for one, love those old style
| shifters. The new Audi A3 just has a small knob and to me it
| looks like you'd turn on an RC car you'd got for 10$ in a cheap
| knock-off store, not something from the entry-level luxury
| segment.
| tyingq wrote:
| Push button gear selection was available for many cars between
| roughly 1956-1964 also.
|
| https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/the-motor-citys-push-but...
| woobar wrote:
| This one provides manu-matic mode, which you can operate
| without looking at buttons. Not sure if this is a requirement
| for a new car though.
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