[Frankly30]

I wanted to bring attention to these chinese aftermarket digital clusters, what are your thoughts on these and if you have one what's your experience with these?


From what I read they have the following side-effects:
- You cannot change the RPM range.
- Lots of spelling mistakes.
- Not compatible with OEM HUD.
- Other than adaptive cruise it doesn't support any other vehicle assistance the F30 can be equipped with.
- In manual cars you'll see a massive P.
- No navigation pointers, or speed limit signs or anything like that.
- Apparently in older firmwares it was possible to navigate radio/media and telephone contacts through the interface, but supposedly they rolled that level of integration out in later firmwares due to "instability issues".
- Service intervals are usually stored in the cluster, by replacing your entire cluster means you'd need to manually reenter the remaining service intervals. One seller claims you cannot see them from your iDrive anymore. Service history stays untouched.

They are several videos on youtube showcasing the software:

[fe7565]

Good info and thanks for noting the potential concerns. It looks good. But the good probably stops right there (for now).

Not knowing anything about them, but knowing about MMIs...this is what I see as problems:

The Chinese do a half-ass job putting something on the market (in order to start making money on it) before it's even properly tested and all the bugs worked out.

Then, once on the market and being sold, they are slow and unresponsive to fixing issues that the customers find. Sending it back (as the Chinese usually demand if you want a refund) is cost prohibitive.

Updates will be painstaking as they will demand proof of purchase. So if you buy second hand...forget it. You will be at the mercy of others willing to share updates.

They are not very good at innovation, only copying existing technology. So will be hard to see any new features.

Jealously guarding their little product from other Chinese sellers, beusse of the predatory and cut-throat environment.

As a consequence, the customer suffers as you get stuck with a half-baked product with lacking customer service, language barriers, and an alien (non-Western) customer service environment.

Should make the firmware open-source, as thousands of interested/invested people can fix problems and create new features faster and more efficiently than three Chinese programmers sitting in a sweatshop who commute to work with a bicycle.

The fact that a product that supposed to reach a worldwide audience of "elite" BMW users but still has numerous spelling errors, shows the lack of devotion/professionalism of the developers and sellers. Cannot pay an 18 year old native English-speaker a one time $100 to review the verbiage?

With that said...would I buy one, if it has at least the same functions as the real digital cluster? Yes, but only if it's does not contain language errors made by a 5 year old child... as anyone sitting in my BMW will laugh their ass off at my "sophisticated" DIY cluster displaying in Ching-lish... And if the price is right. Under $200.

Of course one has to think about the odometer and legality issues too. The cluster is one of two places in the factory BMW cluster where the odometer value is stored. So one must be sure that this cluster-replacement does not constitute as tempering...i.e. make sure it does interface with the car in a legal way as far as odometer reading recording/storage.

[triax37]

Originally Posted by Frankly30

From what I read they have the following side-effects:
- You cannot change the RPM range.
- Lots of spelling mistakes.
- Not compatible with OEM HUD.
- Other than adaptive cruise it doesn't support any other vehicle assistance the F30 can be equipped with.
- In manual cars you'll see a massive P.
- No navigation pointers, or speed limit signs or anything like that.
- Apparently in older firmwares it was possible to navigate radio/media and telephone contacts through the interface, but supposedly they rolled that level of integration out in later firmwares due to "instability issues".
- Service intervals are usually stored in the cluster, by replacing your entire cluster means you'd need to manually reenter the remaining service intervals. One seller claims you cannot see them from your iDrive anymore. Service history stays untouched.

Thanks for making this summary!

[moskito99]

We discuss this on Discord for e60....and there it is a nice add-on...also new versions came out, with much much better lag and other smaller updates...Also this is Linux and open source? Is there some scene/community around it like for the Android HU? Can the USB connection be used for anything else than updates from supplier? Maybe in a perfect world sending/receiving data from Android HU?

[moskito99]

I saw more people using these recently and I also use one for some 2 weeks now. It does have its downsides. I am on e60.

Main downside is that ODO is just in cluster, it is for e60 not transmitted to the car. Some ECU show 100km (my car 220k km) and some show a "frozen" odo from OEM cluster when it was removed. My car is 20 years old and I do not care too much about it, but still it would be nice of course not to have that issue. odo of course is totally off in error codes via INPA und ISTA.

However I do like having a digital cluster whichb shows me voltage, water temp and oil temp and personally I like it...Service intervalls are transmitted from cluster to my CIC, I just had to enter them manually after putting it in. The different trip datas etc are nice and give more options than OEM. Since I use Android, I do not need to go back to my CIC to check service intervalls, but I can check in the cluster.

I saw one or two updates on the firmware, but they are hard to find. I found them in youtube comments of a guy called DX Tuning (he pretends to be the producer....but I think he is just a reseller)....

[matt531]

I saw a Bavmod digi cluster on bimmerdirect while looking at carplay/android auto options. What I'd really like to do is get as close to a G20 live cockpit pro cluster into my 2017 340i but I know a direct swap isn't possible.

anyone able to chime in with an update on this somewhat older thread?

[moskito99]

Originally Posted by moskito99

I saw more people using these recently and I also use one for some 2 weeks now. It does have its downsides. I am on e60.

Main downside is that ODO is just in cluster, it is for e60 not transmitted to the car. Some ECU show 100km (my car 220k km) and some show a "frozen" odo from OEM cluster when it was removed. My car is 20 years old and I do not care too much about it, but still it would be nice of course not to have that issue. odo of course is totally off in error codes via INPA und ISTA.

.....

Good news....my seller "Navifly Strongnavi Store" provided a very small update file which I used and now...(E60 2004)
- Cluster is in INPA/ISTA without any error codes about cluster in general
- Mileage is correct for all error codes, for battery registration and all other mileage fields inside of ISTA/INPA

So except for some transalations (German in my case) all is very good with the cluster now. Service intervals were anyways working fine between cluster and my CIC.

I put that into a ZIP file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrM...usp=drive_link

[mrcshbs]

By the way, I have this cluster installed on my f30 BMW 328I 2013 and it has several issues. the settings do not save, the date reverts back to 2020, it causes my idrive to switch to KM and Celsius, my diagnostics no longer work on the idrive, etc.

I have reached out to the manufacturer to see if these issues can get corrected, if not, I will remove it and return it.

If they provide me with an updated firmware file, I will share with the group.

[ItzBunnY]

Originally Posted by moskito99

Good news....my seller "Navifly Strongnavi Store" provided a very small update file which I used and now...(E60 2004)
- Cluster is in INPA/ISTA without any error codes about cluster in general
- Mileage is correct for all error codes, for battery registration and all other mileage fields inside of ISTA/INPA

So except for some transalations (German in my case) all is very good with the cluster now. Service intervals were anyways working fine between cluster and my CIC.

I put that into a ZIP file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrMeSQK0Wn2V-mNEQm22tb8Hj4RIVD6M/view?usp=drive_link

By any chance do you know if the file is compatible with an e90 cluster or if you have an e90 file somehow?

[moskito99]

Originally Posted by ItzBunnY

By any chance do you know if the file is compatible with an e90 cluster or if you have an e90 file somehow?

I dont know my friend :-( Try to get in touch with your supplier..