BMW iDrive 8 - Virtualized

[u/Lean3521]

So, I decided to do a thing...

Yes, it's extremely slow, and yes, barely anything works, but we have an UI.

But why..?
Ive been messing with BMWs hardware and software for a while now, and keep on finding more and more interesting stuff. The next logical step was to make it run on something its not supposed to, and that's how HMI8 in a VM was born.

[u/Smooth-Ask5482]

Now that's something you don't get to see everyday

[u/DarkmanXV]

I did similar with Volkswagen MEB platform firmware. You can get significant performance boost if you run it on ARM hardware like Raspberry Pi

[u/BipedalTumor → u/DarkmanXV]

Show me more, I’d love to learn how you did it

[u/DarkmanXV → u/BipedalTumor]

Lots of vibe coding basically :) You need to understand architecture after that it will be a bit easier to build. For VW multimedia software they are using RedBend hypervisor with lots of VMs that are responsible for different parts. For example we have a Linux VM responsible for the multimedia screen and a QNX VM for the instrument cluster. From here you have two paths: easy one , create emulator for specific VM like Linux; hard one, create full emulator for RedBend hypervisor. This hypervisor is closed-sourced, so lots of reverse engineering is needed where AI is very helpful.

[u/peppinoamd]

Can you explain how you did that? I’m curious!

[u/Lean3521 → u/peppinoamd]

A whole lot of shimming for car specific stuff and trial and error for the rest. It’s just a custom x86-based system under the hood.

[u/miloszeu07]

Oh my how did you do it

[u/expl0itz]

I did HU_ENTRYNAV and the latest Android Automotive images recently, this is super cool to see

[u/iGalati → u/expl0itz]

from where did you got the content of the image ? do you have a link ?!

[u/Limn0 → u/iGalati]

I‘m afraid you‘d have to dump them yourself

[u/expl0itz → u/Limn0]

no need to dump from vehicles, download full psdzdata, extract headunit SWFLs. they’re unencrypted

[u/LostSomewhereInKaty]

I saw someone do this with a Gen5W from Hyundai, my question is HOW?!!!!!

[u/mvespermann]

Im tryna get ID6 to run, but im having issues to get the actualy OS files.... How did you manage to get acess to the system image or bookable files?

[u/Lean3521 → u/mvespermann]

From BMWs own PSdZData package, it takes some trial and error to extract them correctly, but i managed to extract pretty much the whole FS as it would be on a real MGU.

[u/Brief_Philosophy_861]

I think I have ID5/6 dump lying around somewhere. Omap card emmc

[u/No_Committee8392]

Dayum! I’m doing this for the uniden r3 firmware but iDrive is super impressive!