BMW Mk.4 (HIGH) Sat Nav map database editing

[ac427]

The last update to the Mk.4 Sat Nav map DVD was in 2019. I was wondering if there was any information about the underlying Mk.4 system.

Is the database structure/format known?

It would be great if editing of the map DVD was possible.

[Shonky]

I looked into this quite a while back. I wasn't able to find much documentation or work done to reverse engineer the map format.

I was sort of able to parse through some of the database but there were so many fields to decipher.

Let me look what info I have

[Shonky]

This all the info I found. The format is CarinDB. Someone on Xoutpost had this info (I think he might be the author of Navcoder):

https://xoutpost.com/electronics/navigation-system/54693-all-data-structure-carindb.html

I have some links / saved pages to a French forum "GpsPasSion" but the forum seems gone. I will attach my saved verions (remove .pdf extension and open as 7z):

I started to write a bit of a "dumper" program but lost interest pretty quickly.

NB: I have the SDAL spec but that is different as noted in the Xoutpost forum thread

[ac427]

Thanks Shonky.

My hope is to somehow convert some newer map data in the CarinDB format.

[Shonky]

Thanks Shonky.

My hope is to somehow convert some newer map data in the CarinDB format.

Yes that was my idea too - to be able to convert say OpenMap data to CarinDB. I didn't get to the point of looking at OpenMap but at least the format is... well... open.

My LCD has since started to fail in a couple of ways so I'm probably more leaning towards an Android head unit these days which means Waze, Google Maps etc solves the problem completely.