Cabooshy's Musings

Bimmercode – Enabling the Acoustical Lock/Unlock Tone

Some Preface

This can work on the R56's if yours has the Alarm system, but Bimmercode has limited support for the R series cars, so you may need something like the Autel MaxiSys line of products to enable them.

THIS TUTORIAL IS AIMED AT THE 3RD GENERATION F SERIES MINI'S and should work on the F54,F55,F56,F57,and F60

As a disclaimer, coding your car can potentially be dangerous if done without care. so please, take care when doing any form of coding. Bimmercode has made it very safe to do so from the "basic" screen, but playing around with Expert mode without knowing what you are doing can seriously damage the car's ECUs, which is a very expensive fix.

THIS WILL ONLY WORK IF YOUR CAR HAS THE FACTORY ALARM SYSTEM!

Tutorial

Step 1: What you'll need

before we go out to the car, we need to make sure we have the correct gear to be able to connect to the car. so we will need:

  • a compatible OBDII Adapter, you can find a list of supported adapters Here.
  • an Android or iOS device running Android 5.0 or higher, or iOS 9.3 or higher.
  • The Bimmercode app, it is a paid for application but you can download it for free to see what is available for your car, the full version is around £40 via an in app purchase.

Step 2: connecting to the car

The steps differ slightly depending on the OBD adapter you purchased and whether you have an iPhone/iPad or Android device, but i can give the basic outlines here:

  1. Plug the OBDII Adapter into the Port located in the footwell on the driver's side of the car, there is a little door in the footwell that says OBD on it.
  2. Ensure the car is in Park if its an Automatic, or Neutral if its a Manual, and the Handbrake is on.
  3. Set phone to airplane mode and turn bluetooth/wifi back on.
  4. Pair with/connect to the OBD adapter via bluetooth/wifi (depending on your adapter)
  5. Disconnect your phone from the headunit (bluetooth connection), if it is connected.
  6. Open Bimmercode, go into settings, as select your OBDII Adapter from the list.
  7. Press Connect, Bimmercode will now start the connection to the car, and will ask you what car its connecting to, select MINI.
  8. Bimmercode Connected!

Step 3: Coding

(AFTER EACH CODING OF AN ECU, I RECOMMEND YOU SHUT OFF THE IGNITION, OPEN AND CLOSE THE DRIVER'S DOOR, AND THEN TURN THE IGNITION ON)

To enable the lock/unlock beeps, we first need to go into the "Roof Function Center" and make sure "Acoustical Lock/Unlock Confirmation" is set to active, if it is not, select the value, change it to active, then press code. this will now code in the active state for the lock/unlock beeps, don't be alarmed (heh, get it? because the beeps use the alarm system?, i'll show myself out) if you see any errors pop up on the head unit, this is normal, as part of the coding process is to restart the ECU you coded to apply the changes, Bimmercode will automatically clear these errors after its restarted.

Then, we need to go into the Headunit, once the headunit has loaded (it can take a while to read the HU) the first option "Checkbox Acoustical Lock Confirmation" is the one we want, select this, and change the value from "Not Active" to "Active". you will also see a note in this menu along the lines of "Please note the car needs to be equipped with an alarm system". as far as i know, since the 2nd gen MINI (R56) all UK Mini's have an alarm system as standard, so your mileage may vary for US/EU Spec cars. then, we press code, this will now code the new checkbox into the headunit to allow us to turn on/off the lock/unlock beeps whenever we want.

We are now done with the coding, we can disconnect from the Adapter, and close bimmercode.

Step 4: Enabling the Beeps

Now, the easy part, in the Headunit, we want to go to "My Mini" then under Doors/Key, there will be a new option called "Acoustical Lock/Unlock Confirmation", simply enable that option and you're done!

now you can get out the car to test. make sure all doors are closed and press the lock button, then unlock the car, you should hear Beeps for confirmation the car is Locked/Unlocked. 1 Beep for Locked, 2 Beeps for Unlocked. if you do not, then unfortunately your car was not equipped with an alarm system from factory, and i recommend you follow these steps in reverse to disable the function.