Cabooshy's Musings

This tutorial assumes you either know how to update the car's I-Level with E-Sys/ISTA, and have updated the car to a recent I-Level, or have had the car updated at a dealer, I will not be covering that side of this here as i do not have access to E-Sys. This will only be covering the Bimmercode part of this process.

THIS TUTORIAL IS AIMED AT LCI1 (First Facelift) F SERIES MINI'S and should work on all F chassis cars that do not have the "Radio Boost" (Radio only) or "Visual Boost" Headunit (Display and Headunit are one piece, does not have Nav, also known as the BIS headunit)

This is the "fun" part, Officially, the 6.5in display is no longer made, as from the LCI2 facelift, all MINI's got the 8.8in screen as standard but for the LCI1 Facelift, the Radio options are as follows:

• Radio Boost: The super basic Radio-only headunit.
• (BIS) Visual Boost: This is the basic 6.5in non-touchscreen unit used for the super basic Mini Connected Setups, it can't be tinkered with, does not have Navigation available to it, at all, No Carplay, and due to having a different connector, is also a pain to retrofit a NBT/EVO system into, the Headunit and Display are all one piece.
• Mini Connected 6.5in w/ Navigation: the touchscreen 6.5in Headunit, the headunit and display are seperate, have way more customisability, have Carplay available to them, Navigation is also available to these headunits, if the car was specced with Carplay, you will have this headunit.
• Mini Connected XL 8.8in w/ Navigation: This is the same as the above headunit in terms of features and such, but with the 8.8in touchscreen display, everything available to the smaller screen is available here, this headunit will also have the best compatability with ID6_Light, as IDrive 6 proper on the LCI2 cars is 8.8in only.

So, if your MINI headunit has 6/7 options (Carplay shows as an option on the main menu when connected to a supported iPhone), similar to the below:

This is the Look that IDrive 5 had from 2018 with the LCI1

And Depending on when it was built, nearer the end of the LCI1 cycle, there was also the "Modern" layout, i believe this was used close to the Switchover to the LCI2 cars.

If your headunit has a layout close to either of these with 6/7 Options: Mini Connected, My Mini, Navigation, Carplay (if car was specced with Carplay and iPhone is connected), Notifications, Communication, Media/Radio, You will be able to do this.

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!

MEGA DISCLAIMER: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WHATSOEVER IF YOUR CAR IS NOT ON AN I-LEVEL AT 21-03 OR HIGHER, YOU WILL DAMAGE YOUR HEADUNIT.

To Get Started, open up the car's details in bimmercode (the little car option in the top right on android, not too sure on iOS) and scroll down to I-Level, this will tell you your car's Current, Last and Shipment I Levels (Current is what its on now, Last is the last version it was updated to, Shipment is what the car came with when it rolled off the assembly line after being built), if "Current" and "Last" are below 21-03, you will need to get the car's I-Level updated to 21-03 or higher (not covered here), if "Current" and "Last" are 21-03 or higher, then you can continue.

Now we can go into the Headunit, DISCLAIMER: We will be going into expert mode for this, BE VERY CAREFUL, press on the Expert Mode toggle, Read the warning, and press OK. press on the Search button, and search for HMI_ID_VERSION, click on that option, and select id6_light, and save, DO NOT CHOOSE ID6!, Choosing ID6 will essentially brick your headunit as it will now look for the actual ID6 files, and not just the ID6 theme for ID5 (which is what ID6_Light is, its essentially the ID6 look and feel, but using ID5 as a base) next, to get access to the "themes" that ID6 adds, we need to go back to our search box, and search for HMI_MAIN_MENU_VERSION, go into that, select Modern, and save. now we can press code.

Now Bimmercode will code in the new parameters to the headunit, restart it and clear any error codes, and if all goes well, you will now have the IDrive 6 look and feel on your (in my opinion better looking, Physical buttons are the best.) IDrive 5 headunit, Enjoy!

If you Ever want to go back, Bimmercode will have a backup of the original settings, if this is the first time accessing the headunit, meaning you can restore back to factory defaults should you want to, if you have customisations already, then in Expert mode, Revert "HMI_MAIN_MENU_VERSION" and "HMI_ID_VERSION" back to what they were before, i can't remember what the other option for the Menu version is but for HMI_ID_VERSION you want to choose id5_plus_plus.

Back ->