OK, so I bit the bullet and decided to buy the 'CIC emulator'. That little control board that I found on the web a few weeks back.
What does this board do.
Put simply it negates the need to buy separate FSC enabling codes for the CIC and Voice Control. You just connect this board to your CIC instead. As an added bonus you get video in motion thrown in for good measure.
http://www.codecard.lt/dash/bmw-cic-.../prod_432.html
Since I was a little skeptical of the product I emailed the US distributor to try and get some detailed information but after a few days wait I still hadn't received an answer which didn't really surprise me so I ended up going directly to the source.
I placed my order for the 'CIC emulator' on the 7th June and it was delivered by DHL on 10th June. The package was posted from Lithuania which is in eastern Europe so I was quite staggered by how quickly I received it.
The board arrived fairly well packed in its own packing, it was then stuffed into two courier supplied envelopes. Along with the board and packing there is a nice piece of heat shrink material to keep the board insulated after installation.
The board is professionally made using surface mount components which are all housed on the front of the board.
The CIC emulator board itself is quite small, measuring just 1.25" x 1". There are a couple of transceivers on the board and a larger IC performing the glue logic which unsurprisingly had its details sanded off to hide its origin and function.
How does it work
One explanation of how this might work is that the board sits on the CAN bus and manipulates the security packet containing the vehicles VIN. This tricks the CIC into playing nice with the car.
I'm sure someone will pipe in with a better explanation.
Installation
http://www.codecard.lt/images/file/B...n%20manual.pdf
The installation instructions that can be downloaded from the codecard website are basic but enough to get the job done so I'm not going to repeat those here. You will need 22 SWG stranded wire and a soldering iron with a small tip to solder the wires to the board. Installation of the board is very simple. Now I'm not a big fan of cutting stock wiring so I deviated from the instructions and made myself a temporary harness so that I didn't have to cut any wires. For $475 it would have been nice if they had supplied such a harness with the board, given the type of car its going to be installed in.
Operation
I'll keep it plain and simple, IT WORKS.
After putting everything back together and connecting the battery, the CIC came on with the navigation option enabled. The big one for me is that the Voice control is fully functional, which is like the icing on the cake. A nice little bonus, I popped in a DVD, put the car into drive and rather than seeing the usual safety message the video continued to play.
The emulator board integrates perfectly with the CIC, there is no noticeable delay or anything strange going on during operation.
I've had the 'CIC emulator' installed now for 3 days and its working perfectly as advertised, the Navigation option has remained enabled 100% of the time, every time I've turned the car on so I'm very happy.
Conclusion
The CIC which I purchased from ebay was coded perfectly for my car. It came from a US spec MY2010 E92 335i with just about every option enabled, this meant that my 6FL and Logic 7 worked out of the box, my phone and other communication functions worked exactly as they had done with the old CCC installed so I had no coding to do. This made installation of the 'CIC emulator' extremely simple in my case.
If you need coding support or also have to purchase an FSC code to enable country specific maps you will be better served using the services offered by Patrys.
My retrofit is not quite complete since I do have one item outstanding which I plan to replace soon. I currently have the older CDMA TCU installed in my car so at some time in the near future I want to upgrade to a GSM unit and enable the CIC online services. I also have to source the new sharkfin antenna fitted in MY2010 cars with Sirius enabled from the factory.
So here's the disclaimer. I do not know or have any affiliation with the makers of this product. The 'CIC emulator' is working for me.
YMMV
.