Yes I've eliminated the immobilser for the time being, just so when I fit it and the engine doesn't start I don't have to wonder if it's the immobilser. I may refit it if after the IVA if it reduces the cost of insurance. As for making a light loom I think it would be more hassle and expense. I separated the engine from the lights just so if/when I go aftermarket ecu I don't end up pulling the whole loom out to do so, Also I don't want any wires running past the hot side of the engine so it's clear for the turbo install at some point in the future.:)

More goodies arrived in the post today, courtesy of tigmatt :D

This cluster arrived from ebay yesterday afternoon:



It's from a 'new' Mini, and I thought it looked rather nice and would suit the Roadster. Plus it was cheap at £16 :D

The only slight issue is that it's controlled entirely from the CAN Bus in the Mini.
I like a challenge, so...

First thing I did was take the back off and see if I could figure out the pinout for the connector.
There's only 7 pins on it, and I quickly found the pins for GND, Battery, CAN-H, CAN-L, and the backlighting. That leaves two pins I don't know the funtion of, but I don't think I need them.

I cracked open my CAN interface and started sending random messages to see if I could get anything out of it. That was less than sucessful, so I did some googling.
Lucky for me some guy had recorded the CAN bus on his Mini, had a go at analysing it, and stuck his findings on the web. He had only identified a couple of the messages, but that was just the kick-start I needed, so I stuck my reverse engineering cap on and got to work.

A few hours later and I can now control the following functions from my laptop:

* Speed
* RPM
* All the tell-tale / warning lights
* Backlight intensity
* Position of the red-line

The only thing I can't do yet is get anything sensible displayed on the two little LCDs, but I'm working on that.

The next stage of this sub-project as it were is to design a box that will sit in the car, monitor various signals, and generate the CAN messages for the cluster. That'll give me something to do in my lunchtimes at work :D

Here's a screen shot of the program I knocked up to talk to the cluster:



And there's a little vid of it in action here (very poor quality I'm afraid).

that is goin to look great I wouldnt have a clue how to go about working all that out, good work

Clever stuff, I'm always amazed how folk can make head or tail of all that lecy wizardry...clocks look smart too:)

So what do you use for the CAN interface?

TT

Thanks guys. To be honest my job often involves playing around with CAN busses, so this is bread and butter stuff for me :)

TT - this is the CAN interface I'm using.

Genius!:cool:

Thought about changing my clocks too but sort of stopped when I realised you needed warning about break fluid, engine temp, oil pressure, and the ecu has a speed sensor which is in the clocks from the manual speedo I think. How do you get round all that!:confused:

Please excuse my ignorance but what are "can busses" I immediately thought of double decker buses and "blakey"... :o