E46 M3 CAN bus setup

petik · Post by **petik** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 9:29 pm

Hoping someone that's got the track logger running on an e46 can chime in. I'm trying to get set set up on an 04 E46 M3 but seem to be failing.

I wired up an ethernet cable per instructions here: https://wiki.autosportlabs.com/BMW_E46_CAN I used positaps to hook everything up.

The unit powers up fine but doesn't seem to pull any CAN channels. I used the CAN channel setup for the car from this post by Mustangkev. viewtopic.php?t=5438 Even though that setup was on RCP, I think it would be just the same on this.

Based on this I wired CAN high from pin2 (orange) on the Ethernet cable to Yellow/Red in the e46 harness and CAN low from pin3 (green/white) on the Ethernet cable to Yellow/Brown in the harness.

I then programmed the RC with the config in the above post which seemed to take, but the dashboard shows all of the PIDs at zero.

Lastly, is there any explanation on what the LED colors mean? I get a frequent flashing green with a less frequent flashing blue when the car is running. Not sure if that is good or not and I can't find any mention of LED colors in the instruction wiki.

Appreciate any thoughts on this...

petik · Post by **petik** » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:52 am

Success! The issue ended up being that there are two twisted pair wires in the ECU wiring bundle that are color coded exactly the same. Only one of them is correct though.

In the attached photo, the positaps on the right are correct, while the disconnected positaps on the left are the wrong pair.

petik · Post by **petik** » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:53 am

Just for point of interest, I am using an aftermarket android deck in my e46 which is able to run the racecapture app. Makes the integration really clean - no phone or tablet necessary.

Post by **brentp** » Wed Jan 10, 2018 5:58 pm

thank you, that looks really clean! Can you point to the link for your deck?

Does it run the app with reasonably good performance?

petik · Post by **petik** » Wed Jan 10, 2018 7:44 pm

This is the deck: https://www.eonon.com/Android-Car-GPS/V ... layer.html except i have one generation older (only runs android 6)

It seems to run ok, but I haven't had it out to the track yet. I'll take a video with the gauges up and post back in a bit.

petik · Post by **petik** » Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:39 am

Here's a video of the gauge view
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goBiHH911vw

The response is about as good as it is on my tablet. The menu navigation is more sluggish, but definitely usable.

I did notice that some of the PIDs don't work so i'll have to mess with that.
Clutch and brake don't register at all
Wheel speed is completely off - but it does change when driving so i think it's probably a scaling issue.

The rest seem pretty good.

Post by **brentp** » Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:39 pm

Nice video!

Check the scaling option for wheel speed, there's a tab where you can do conversion from KPH to MPH.