jomama

did you get around to flashing your car yet? i ordered the dongle (which showed up saturday) to program for the multibeam headlights. i've been too busy to reach out to RJ just yet, but will likely do so later this week. hope your programming went ok.

Daso

Hi, not yet, I’m booked for the 28th I think. I was hoping I could do the multi beam too but Option not available to me. I’ll update once I do it. Haven’t decided on a couple of the options yet.

jomama

nice! good luck with the coding today. i was booked for today as well, but had to push it back. it's amazing how hard it is to come by a windows device in my household that's all mac. the one laptop i do have at my disposal is my work macbook, so there's no way i can/should install software for someone to remote into it. i'm going to try to update my hp tablet to windows and give it a go. i rescheduled my appt for next week. let me know how yours goes!

Daso

Same here, I decided that I would have my local shop do the control panel install in the steering wheel just out of an abundance of caution and will get that done later this week. I'll prbabaly reschedule for next week. So what options are you getting?

jomama

i'm only doing the multibeam headlights upgrade. i considered the adaptive cruise control, but i simply don't use cruise control in my daily driving.

Daso

I figured that the reason I never use cruise control is that I don't have the adaptive part ;-)

jomama

ain't that the truth. but with working from home, i don't have a commute. i only drive maybe 8 miles each way to drop my kid off at/pick my kid up from preschool. and i simply don't have the patience to just sit in a single lane and let the cruise control do its thing. if it's bumper to bumper rush hour mon-fri traffic, there prob could be some merits to getting adaptive cruise coded in.

Daso

if it's bumper to bumper rush hour mon-fri traffic, there prob could be some merits to getting adaptive cruise coded in.

that’s exactly where I’m hoping it works otherwise it’s kinda questionable whether I would use it myself 😊

z28lt1

Had my Multibeam headlight coding done by RJ Automotive in my GLS today. It's daytime where I am, so can't really test the lights, but the menu item to turn on Intelligent Lighting is there now. The first laptop I used had trouble keeping a connection to the OBDII device for some reason, but I swapped to a different one it and worked fine. Overall, quick and easy.

I really do like the concept behind the "other method" where you get a device and can program/unprogram yourself as many times as you see fit, but that is more than twice the price of this and didn't see the need to pay double just so I can reverse it. Next owner will have a pleasant surprise .

jomama

thanks for that info and let us know how the multibeam works out!

as much as i like the option to code/uncode, it simply hasn't been necessary. i bought a $200 cable to flash a tune on my audi Q5 thinking i may need to undo the flash at some point. nope, never needed to take the tune off the car. as for the multibeam - i see even less reasons for undoing that feature.

z28lt1

As a follow up, my Multibeam seems to work great. As has been posted elsewhere, it is difficult for the driver to really tell it is working while driving. That said, on my "dark road" previously the vehicle would constantly and obviously switch between high beam and low beam (when another vehicle was present). This time it stayed on high beam the entire time and no one coming in the other direction flashed their lights at me (or flashed their finger at me), so I assume it is working great. I'm sure if I took video or pictures, I could find the dark spots in the beams around the other cars, so I'll try that eventually, but seems like it all works great.

Neurobit

This is pretty awesome. I may have to do this. Acording to their webpage, it supports Macs, not just PCs. Can anyone confirm?

jomama

yeah, i just did my flash yesterday via a mac. you have to jump thru a few more hoops, but it works. first off, i believe your mac has to have an intel processor. basically, you set up a virtual machine that runs windows 10, so you have to download/create a VM, and then load win 10 onto that VM. once that's done, you load up anydesk on the VM so that RJ can remote into your computer. from there, you plug the obd2 connector and give RJ access to your VM and he does the rest. the entire process took about 15-20 mins and required that you start the car up once.

i took my GLS out to some dark(er) roads last night to test it and it worked nicely. as a previous poster mentioned, it's subtle from the driver's perspective. the high beams stay on even with cars approaching from the other side and no one appeared to complain. you can't quite see the beams carve out a section of darkness tho. i did test it once tho when there was a car about 200yds ahead of me. with auto high beam on, i pulled the stalk back to flash the high beam and it lit up the car quite a bit more. you can see the beam pattern was a lot higher when i pulled the stalk back. with high beams at full blast (no cars in front of me), pulling back the stalk would cause no change.

another thing i noticed - the multibeam doesn't really reduce glare off signs as one of the youtube videos suggest, at least not from afar. the signs on the side of the road were pretty "lit," and i'm not sure if they only dimmed as i passed it, or if the car did dim the beams in that direction as i got closer to the sign. i guess i can try the pull the stalk for high beam trick again the next time i approach a sign in a dark area.

Neurobit

Thanks for the mini review!

Daso

Well I'm happy that I chickened out of replacing the steering wheel pods since I found an awesome Mercedes (and other cars) repair shop in the city who not only did the part swap for me but also got rid of the airbag light which goes on once disconnected and needs to be reset. I'm scheduled to do my flash Monday where I will activate the adaptive cruise (Distronic pro), get the AMG screens on my 450, add Sport + setting and a couple of other smaller options. If anyone with an MB in NYC needs someone to do their parts swap or even do some coding, PM me. I'll update after the flash

Daso

hi Raj, that makes sense. I guess I didn’t question it but appreciate your clarification. I’m looking forward to our session to get set up.

CMFUSA

Hi Raj,

related question, please: I have been lurking around your website for a couple of weeks now, still trying to convince myself to purchase your distronic upgrade. I have, however, watched your installation video at least 10 times by now and have one question regarding the airbag removal. You say that I should have two holes or dimples on the underside of the steering wheel to push a rod in to release the airbag. I don't seem to have a hole, but I can feel two small dimples. Do I push through these to get to the "hollow tube" underneath and how do I cover the holes up afterwards? Secondly, I already have the Mid City Engineering "Eco Off" OBD programming. Will that conflict in any way with your programming? Thanks!

Daso

Hello All, Update on my flash!!! Awesome experience with Raj. Update was painless and took about 45 min plus some driving time to get my adaptive cruise calibrated. I really did this for the adaptive cruise, so everything else was kind of secondary candy. add ons:

1) Adaptive cruise with start and stop (wow, so nice and even worked in NYC traffic while I was testing it) and no, I wouldn't use it regularly here in city driving.
2) AMG screens (very cool) with some additional personalization stuff and Main AMG screen cluster is a cool option to have
3) Sport + ( Wow, throttle way more aggressive and downshifts as you pull your foot off of gas) engine revs at 1,000 vs 700-800 in sport. I could have too much fun with this as it likely eats gas
4) Energizing comfort - Funky and cool, not sure if I'll use it but it's cool nevertheless and fun to have
5) Snow mode added to Dynamic select - We'll see come winter :-)

Will post some pics tomorrow

jomama

i'm kinda curious as to how closely the adaptive cruise follows the car in front. having driven in nyc traffic for the better part of my life, if you leave half a car length, 3 yellow cabs will shoehorn themselves in. same here in CA, except it's not bumper to bumper city traffic. it's 75+mph traffic with cars squeezing in when you leave more than a car's length of space.

raj told me about all the other available features but i'm not sure he mentioned some of the ones you added, like Sport+ and snow mode. do you have an AMG GLE? and energizing comfort - is that where the seats adjust a little bit back and forth? if so, that's standard on the GLS and i actually use it a lot when driving between bay area and socal

nextmilenium

I did extensive driving using the adaptive cruise on my recent 2000 mile trip and can comment on how it works. First of all, I wouldn't use it on local streets. I think it works best in highway setting. As far as leaving space between your car and the car in front, that can be adjusted. Depending on the speed, traffic condition, and your comfort level, the distance to the car ahead can be set to different length and the car does its best to keep that. I think I used 200 ft as the distance and it worked well for my situation. Now, if a car squeezes in between, GLE will slow down to maintain the preset distance.

It's a very relaxing experience using the adaptive cruise on long trips. It doesn't mean you can take a nap but it really cuts down on the fatigue. Oh, and the car is able to keep you in the lane as well so that's really nice.

The energizing comfort is exactly how you described it. I have it and use it occasionally.

Daso

Hi, I only tested the adaptive cruise control for a little bit and as you said, urban traffic can be tricky (or dangerous) regardless of the technology. I was on a quiet side street and used the distance adjustment and had my speed at 6 MPH and it followed a taxi (scary) but came to a full stop slowly when it stopped and stared again when the taxi moved. not super fast but this is not the place I would ever use it. I think it will be great on long highway trips when needed and we have the same issue of (need for speed) drivers who either squeeze in at 75mph to weave through traffic. I don't think i would feel comfortable having any adaptive cruise follow close enough to prevent that but haven't had a chance to test on highway yet

I have a regular GLE 450 with the AMG body options. I already had the function where my seats move around to help with fatigue, this is basically that kind of on steroids with specific music and animations screens. I could swear it turned on my seat ventilation when I started one program of which each program is around 10 minutes. I think it's displayed on a video on Raj's site or I can try to post sometime.

maalox

I think you're referring to the Seat Kinetics feature, which makes small adjustments to the seat position as you're driving (not the same as the massage feature).

Energizing Comfort is a screen where you can select various preset programs like Vitality and Warmth and a few others, and each one has a playlist of about 5-6 songs, combined with different massage programs, seat heating/ventilation/air freshener (you can disable any of those subfeatures for each program).

I'm interested in this "Snow mode" and how it's different from Comfort/Off-Road/etc, especially if I have e-ABC.

Also curious about "Perimeter Alarm/Parking Damage Detection" for my 2020 (built in Oct 2019), I think those sensors were added sometime in 2021 so not sure that feature can be activated for my car.

Ron.s

I didn’t know I had the feature until I jacked up the front to change to my winter tires and set off the alarm…It seems to work very well. I’ve also set it off loading my UTV on the trailer. It must be shock sensitive as well as using some degree of tilt.

Daso

Raj mentioned that snow mode basically refuses throttle input or power to weeks to prevent spinning I would guess. I’m not sure how that differed from off road but he also said that most MB in Europe have the setting. My 2021 GLE has the perimeter alarm and thankfully any time it’s sent a message to my phone so far has been either a false alarm or maybe a bump. Last time I ran a few blocks to see if someone had hit me and nothing (thankfully).

CALLA

Is there a price/options list posted someplace? I actually have a new GLS coming and would love to add some of these features to my car.