[rezadue]

My 2013 F30 was unfortunately built with CIC navigation as opposed to NBT, and I have been looking at upgrading it for quite a while. While the CIC navigation in my car was functional, it was slow and I did not have "all options" on it. My car did not come with BMW apps, or extended bluetooth or XM Sirius or Office integration.

I managed to code Office and extended bluetooth, but still found the unit to be choppy. And I wanted BMW apps and Sirius unlocked. After looking at retrofit companies, it seemed like I would have to pay close to $700 USD just for that, while still retaining my CIC.

So I started looking at options. NBT EVO retrofits seems expensive and in reality I did not feel that I needed to have ID4 or ID5, so I turned my attention to NBT touch. I started looking online at wrecker inventories (North American online database), and settled on a headunit from a 2015 328 with had NBT touch and Navigation and Sirius already enabled. I purchased the headunit, touch controller (They gave me the trim piece as well), and the touch controller (They threw in the shortcut buttons) for $500 CAD ($388 USD).

Before purchase I began to talk to Steve at www.codemybimmer.ca about doing the upgrade and asked many question. Steve was always prompt and informative and helped to guide me on this upgrade.

I shipped the unit to Toronto to have him program it. He did all the programming remotely while he was out of the country and basically flashed the headunit to my VIN and enabled all possible options.

Once the unit was programmed, I took a Saturday and drove down to Markahm Ontario where his business partner Vince took care of the install. The installation went smoothly and I now have an NBT unit in my car. Steve took care of all the cables I would need for the retrofit ahead of time which included:

Replacement Mic Cable
Replacement USB cable
Replacement Bluetooth Antenna
Connecting line for NBT to 8.8” Display

Three items worth noting:

1) CIC has one connector for both AM and FM antennas. NBT only has one connector which means if you could lose either AM or FM, and the existing cable connector will need to be modified to get it to plug in. To combat that, I have bought, which should allow me to retain both AM and FM and not need to modify the connector:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Radio-aerial...72.m2749.l2649

2) Steve advised against splicing into the existing wiring, so at the moment we have not installed the touch wheel or controller. For that I have purchased :

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1-1-Most-Qua...72.m2749.l2649

Once that is in, I will send it to Steve for wiring modification so that I can plug the touch wheel and controller in.

3) Coding (FDL and VO) becomes a little more complicated as KOMBI and HU_NBT have been modified for my car.

From start of my conversation about the upgrade with Steve, until today we have exchanged over 100+ emails and Steve has been patient and answered all my questions and been extremely helpful. I would highly recommend them.

Onto the actual upgrade:

1) GUI is faster and more smooth in transitions
2) Map refreshes are no longer choppy
3) When navigating to an address an overview of the route is first displayed and the map then zooms in .
3)More detailed view of junctions are displayed both in the Nav screen and on my HUD.
4) BMW Apps are great, but Spotify integration is really meant for iphones.
5) With an iphone, When connected wirelessly I can see album art work. When connected via USB, album art work and playlists in Spotify all show up.
6) When connected with my Samsung Galaxy note 8, there are no albumarts either wired, or wirelessly. Also no Spotify app showing up in the list, and therefore no playlist.
7) Calendar is now integrated and shows up nicely.
8) I can send voice memos now
9) Reading of email begins with body of email, not the sender and receivers addresses
10) Because the owner of the salvage car I bought the parts from had Sirius, I have a running subscription of Sirius just now with all the channels wide open
11) Siri and Google now integration via long press on the steering wheel
12) Voice sounds less like an automaton
13) USB activation for video playback

All and all, a worthy upgrade which I am glad I did.

P.S. 8.8" CIC and NBT screens are the same. Just need a different cable for NBT.

[stelian75]

can u plz pm ling for the na databse of the wreck cars?

[rezadue]

Here is what you can use to search inventories: http://car-part.com/

It takes a bit of time to get used to it and in some cases pictures of said parts exist and in some, pictures do not exist.

I made sure to select the donor vehicle where pictures existed.

Of note, by using a North American unit, I managed to hang on to Sirius and HD Radio. A disadvanatge of buying a European unit would be that you would lose both of those in North America.

[steve@codemybimmer]

Excellent writeup Reza and thanks for the positive review!

The website is www.codemybimmer.ca by the way

[rezadue]

As an update, the new antenna splitter cable did not solve my problem of almost no radio reception. I found this post which said:

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1138665

The problem is that NBT does not put out a 'radio on' signal on pin 13, like CCC, and CIC do. The radio on signal is used by cars without NBT to power the amplifier, and diversity antenna. If you are retrofitting NBT, and you prior headunit was putting out a radio on signal on pin 13, you need to send power on pin 13 on the car side. The easiest way is to connect pin 13 on the harness/car side to pin 15. Pin 15 is powered with the ignition, so your amplifier, and diversity antenna will be powered whenever the ignition is on.

So I connected the wires coming out of pins 13 and 15 together on the Quadlock, and now both AM and FM work great, with full reception

[IK6SPEED]

Originally Posted by rezadue

As an update, the new antenna splitter cable did not solve my problem of almost no radio reception. I found this post which said:

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1138665

The problem is that NBT does not put out a 'radio on' signal on pin 13, like CCC, and CIC do. The radio on signal is used by cars without NBT to power the amplifier, and diversity antenna. If you are retrofitting NBT, and you prior headunit was putting out a radio on signal on pin 13, you need to send power on pin 13 on the car side. The easiest way is to connect pin 13 on the harness/car side to pin 15. Pin 15 is powered with the ignition, so your amplifier, and diversity antenna will be powered whenever the ignition is on.

So I connected the wires coming out of pins 13 and 15 together on the Quadlock, and now both AM and FM work great, with full reception

The splitter will drop your signal strength by 50%.

For strong signals, you might not notice, but in area of multipath and weaker signals (especially AM and HD Radio) you will most likely lose some.

As usual, steve@codemybimmer comes through again with great customer service.

[cfm56d7b]

Very detailed and helpful overview. Thank you.

[rezadue]

Update 2:

I got all the necessary parts to put the touch controller in place. When I went to use the quadlock extension, I noticed the optical cables needed to be moved from the original factory quadlock to the harness extension I had purchased. Since I am dumb, and could not figure out how to do this, I ended up doing all the work on the factory harness which I found to be easier than what I had read on here.

I believe you have a number of options here. What I needed to consider was that the touch controller uses a different CAN bus and needed its own signal. To that, what I needed going to the touch idrive wheel was the following:

Pin Action Quadlock
1 +12V Pin 15
2 GND Pin 12
3 Can Hi Pin 11
4 Can Lo Pin 9

Options are:

1) Leave factory CIC harness alone and pull 4 wires from the quadlock to the idrive location <- This is what I did
2) Use factory CIC cable, and open the connector and pull out pins 3 and 4 and pull 2 wires from the quadlock, terminate them with pins and insert into factory connector

In order to ease the splicing I used snap connectors ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotch-Lock.../dp/B00B4QFNT2 )which helped with the work and kept it clean and safe.

Upon wiring everything up, at first the touch controller didn't work. Not only that, but it the buttons would not even illuminate when the headlights were turned on.

I began to wonder if I had a dead controller. But after touching base with Steve he mentioned that the controller would likely not light up if the CAN signals did not get to it.

I retraced my wiring and noted that I had the CAN HIGH and LO wires mixed up, so I re-pinned my connector and voila! Everything is now working just fine.


Thanks again to Steve at www.codemybimmer.ca for all the help.

[Kailec]

Originally Posted by rezadue

My 2013 F30 was unfortunately built with CIC navigation as opposed to NBT, and I have been looking at upgrading it for quite a while. While the CIC navigation in my car was functional, it was slow and I did not have "all options" on it. My car did not come with BMW apps, or extended bluetooth or XM Sirius or Office integration.

I managed to code Office and extended bluetooth, but still found the unit to be choppy. And I wanted BMW apps and Sirius unlocked. After looking at retrofit companies, it seemed like I would have to pay close to $700 USD just for that, while still retaining my CIC.

So I started looking at options. NBT EVO retrofits seems expensive and in reality I did not feel that I needed to have ID4 or ID5, so I turned my attention to NBT touch. I started looking online at wrecker inventories (North American online database), and settled on a headunit from a 2015 328 with had NBT touch and Navigation and Sirius already enabled. I purchased the headunit, touch controller (They gave me the trim piece as well), and the touch controller (They threw in the shortcut buttons) for $500 CAD ($388 USD).

Before purchase I began to talk to Steve at www.codemybimmer.ca about doing the upgrade and asked many question. Steve was always prompt and informative and helped to guide me on this upgrade.

I shipped the unit to Toronto to have him program it. He did all the programming remotely while he was out of the country and basically flashed the headunit to my VIN and enabled all possible options.

Once the unit was programmed, I took a Saturday and drove down to Markahm Ontario where his business partner Vince took care of the install. The installation went smoothly and I now have an NBT unit in my car. Steve took care of all the cables I would need for the retrofit ahead of time which included:

Replacement Mic Cable
Replacement USB cable
Replacement Bluetooth Antenna
Connecting line for NBT to 8.8” Display

Three items worth noting:

1) CIC has one connector for both AM and FM antennas. NBT only has one connector which means if you could lose either AM or FM, and the existing cable connector will need to be modified to get it to plug in. To combat that, I have bought, which should allow me to retain both AM and FM and not need to modify the connector:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Radio-aerial...72.m2749.l2649

2) Steve advised against splicing into the existing wiring, so at the moment we have not installed the touch wheel or controller. For that I have purchased :

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1-1-Most-Qua...72.m2749.l2649

Once that is in, I will send it to Steve for wiring modification so that I can plug the touch wheel and controller in.

3) Coding (FDL and VO) becomes a little more complicated as KOMBI and HU_NBT have been modified for my car.

From start of my conversation about the upgrade with Steve, until today we have exchanged over 100+ emails and Steve has been patient and answered all my questions and been extremely helpful. I would highly recommend them.

Onto the actual upgrade:

1) GUI is faster and more smooth in transitions
2) Map refreshes are no longer choppy
3) When navigating to an address an overview of the route is first displayed and the map then zooms in .
3)More detailed view of junctions are displayed both in the Nav screen and on my HUD.
4) BMW Apps are great, but Spotify integration is really meant for iphones.
5) With an iphone, When connected wirelessly I can see album art work. When connected via USB, album art work and playlists in Spotify all show up.
6) When connected with my Samsung Galaxy note 8, there are no albumarts either wired, or wirelessly. Also no Spotify app showing up in the list, and therefore no playlist.
7) Calendar is now integrated and shows up nicely.
8) I can send voice memos now
9) Reading of email begins with body of email, not the sender and receivers addresses
10) Because the owner of the salvage car I bought the parts from had Sirius, I have a running subscription of Sirius just now with all the channels wide open
11) Siri and Google now integration via long press on the steering wheel
12) Voice sounds less like an automaton
13) USB activation for video playback

All and all, a worthy upgrade which I am glad I did.

P.S. 8.8" CIC and NBT screens are the same. Just need a different cable for NBT.

What's the site for the database?

[rezadue]

http://car-parts.com/

Originally Posted by Kailec

What's the site for the database?

[AGONXF30]

Great write up. I have CIC with all the apps so I am not sure what I will gain other than a tad faster map, but still would be nice to have a nicer unit.

Does thinks like connected drive and bmw assist work? Or are these gone with the upgrade?

[steve@codemybimmer]

Originally Posted by AGONXF30

Great write up. I have CIC with all the apps so I am not sure what I will gain other than a tad faster map, but still would be nice to have a nicer unit.

Does thinks like connected drive and bmw assist work? Or are these gone with the upgrade?

You will lose services as the combox is not compatible with NBT. OP has a Canadian vehicle without on board telematics so he did not have to worry about losing that.

[AGONXF30]

Thanks Steve! I have a 4G LTE combox (BMW Retrofit) and my CIC as far as looks is not much more behind NBT, so I am not sure it's worth a slightly faster map and slightly better traffic and the expense of my connected drive items.

[Nick080122]

Hi I'm after a bit of advice ,I have a e91 touring 09/10 that need a firmware update in order to update my maps ,my question is I have a cic ,head unit .If I buy a double din nbt unit ,bar some coding I'm sure would the head unit wrk with I drive switch and screen ,thanks

[F30NEEDS]

I need this