Coding & heated grip levels

[bsidethecside]

Evening all, seeking some advice / experience from the collective please...

I have bought coding software that covers the car and bike after my old eSys no longer launched (and I didn't have data for the bike). Anyway, I have enabled 3 level grip heating and was wondering what levels anyone else here has used. I know there will be playing around to find my own favourite levels, but to avoid too much recoding I'd be interested to hear of any experiences in setting levels and what has worked. 2020 MY 1250GS (K50)

I want to keep to 3 levels if possible to reduce faff and concentrate on the ride, but if all else fails will do 5 levels at 20% increments.

The old defaults were 1=100% and 2 =60% with the manual recommending dropping to 2 as soon as up to heat.

Once the salt is off the roads, I will try my first stab at levels:
1=90% for current Baltic conditions
2=75% for general winter riding
3=50% for thinner gloves in autumn / summer rain etc.

 

[GSian]

I have mine set at 5 in 20% increments. Seems logical but not yet tried it. I too, don’t do salt.

 

[siddo]

Mines at 5 and 20% increment .In this weather.

 

[TechnoGSA]

Interesting, my 23 GSA TE has only 2 settings. I'm aware heated seats has 5 settings but not the heated grips. I'm assuming this function is either hidden or unabled?

 

[bsidethecside]

Yes, the default is setting 2 (100%) and setting 1 (60%). So, just 1, 2 and Off. Having had bikes with 3 levels, I was finding this a bit restrictive. Also, with the manual saying that you should drop down from 2 as soon as warm, it felt like continual running at 100% may not be ideal, so leaving just one level in the real world?

So, I got coding to give 3 levels that I set myself -you can also set 5. This is the activity of telling the bike's computer how to behave within the constraints of what the system can do. The electrics are fairly standard across the BMW range and the manufacturer can enable / disable / configure according to model, market and trim. Another example is the amber "Cruising lights" that were an £80 option, you can just turn them on and off with coding! Apparently the behaviours of the controversial combined rear lights from 2021 can also be coded.

I read that the Hex GS-911 dongle was beginning to have simple coding and that controlling the lights and grips was on the menu, but at c.£260 for the basic one it was a bit pricey for me and limited in how many VINs you can have. I bought Motoscan to try (c.£35 for software only - I had a dongle already), but that's aligned to servicing, diagnostics and resetting things like shift assist, but not really coding and [from Support] not in the plan either. It's still a useful thing to have on a trip for not too much cash in case the bike throws a fault and you want to know if serious. However, it didn't deliver what I wanted for coding.

I have a BMW car and have coded that in the past with a bent copy of BMW's eSYS [dealer only software], but "support" ended when the party who cracked it stopped updating a few years back. It didn't really have much in the way of config files for bikes, quite apart from being out of date. Anyway,I decided to bite the bullet and pay this time! I got BimmerUtility which supports most recent cars, bikes and Mini for £90. The UI is much better than eSYS, but you still need to tread carefully as you can brick a vehicle, or certainly make a mess for yourself.

In my case I edited the BCO module in the bike to tell it to give more levels and the heat percentages. From a German GS site:


This works in the control unit X_BCO

If you change
hah_PushButton_NumberSteps > 3 or 5
you have more steps. But that's only half the battle because you still have to specify how much power each level should have. To do this you have to adjust these values
hah_HandlerLeft_Step1
hah_HandlerLeft_Step2
hah_HandlerLeft_Step3
hah_HandlerLeft_Step4
hah_HandlerLeft_Step5
hah_HandlerRight_Step1
hah_HandlerRight_Step2
hah_HandlerRight_Step3
hah_HandlerRight_Step4
hah_HandlerRight_Step5
You can choose the specified values Use the drop-down menu or enter your own free values. Attention, all values are hexadecimal!


A bit of a ramble, but hopefully paints a picture for anyone unfamiliar with coding - it's traditionally more a car thing.

 

[Bob Jeffries]

Out of interest - can the heat levels of a 1250GS pillion seat be reconfigured?

 

[bsidethecside]

No idea I'm afraid, I don't have any heated seats. IIRC it does have a rocker switch to the side, but unsure if that controls the heat directly or it reports back via CANBUS what the switch position is and then the energy is delivered and moderated by the bike... I did look for the cheat sheets that assist with this kind of thing, but drew a blank and had the required info from that GS EU group, so never pursued it.

 

[CasaNL]

Maybe...Just read something here on the forum. Let me look up the post. Also the is a guy in the US who does it, online!

BEMRR Wizard

BMW Motorrad TFT Coding & Software Modifications

www.bemrrwizard.com

This is one (but not the one I was looking for): https://www.rs2e.de/en/services-prices/catalog-bmw-motorrad/tft-start-
screen

Still searching...
Found it:

https://emotion-ride.de/bmw-nachruestungen/heizungsmenue/

try contact them

 

[CasaNL]

The link to the video on their site didn't work but found the video on YouTube: