DIY: Matrix LED
04-10-2019, 05:41 AM
#1
AudiWorld Member
Thread Starter
DIY: Matrix LED
So there has been a lot of controversy going around about the legitimacy of my Matrix LED retrofit. There has been a lot of accusations that coding was stolen from Jaron’s old allroad and I want to clear the air that this is entirely false. My interest in this project went really on and off during points, modules not flashing, had the car working with just low beams, and I also purchased my first house as well. So this took far longer than we all expected. Let me go into some dates just to prove some facts.
I’ve been working with Alex at Europrice on and off over the last two years to get these to work. Our first significant issue we suffered was getting the power modules and light control units flashed with the appropriate information necessary for Matrix headlights. This was a lot of back and forth with VCP and getting the correct flash files. At one point the headlights were shipped back to Alex so he could try things himself on his S5. Eventually Alex got everything flashed but things still did not work correctly on his vehicle. We were able to verify that VCP’s flashes worked only after sourcing some used modules out of Europe. It was figured out that there are some significant differences in the way the A4 vs the A5 in regards to how their headlights are managed so things weren’t working as expected on the A5. Once we got this figured out, this ended up giving me a little bit more motivation at that time to get the car working again. Around June of last year I had the headlights installed in the vehicle and working minus the high beams. Alex originally sent me entire scan of a Matrix equipped car May 26, 2017. When we were debugging the lights and the modules, he sent me updated coding to try on May 29th, 2018. On June 5th, 2018 I had plugged in the headlights, adjusted the coding that I received from Alex to get it to work on my car with the options it has, the low beams, DRL’s and dynamic turn signals were all working but still had issues with the high beams which was enough for me to install the headlights in the car. I had a car show coming up so I wanted to at least have my dynamic turn signals, plus the Matrix housings just look better and more aggressive.
During the initial process of trying to get these to work, I ended up resetting my camera’s basic adaption which caused me to lose lane assist and pre-sense functionality. This is where things started to get frustrating because I couldn’t get anything to work. My drivers assistance module was no longer accepting any coding and I couldn’t even revert it back to the OEM LED’s. I posted this information on the ross-tech forums trying to see if I could get some assistance:
https://forums.ross-tech.com/showthr...ofit&styleid=5
There you can see proof of my entire vehicles coding all setup for Matrix. This is where I reached out to the current owner of Jaron’s car (July 11th, 2018). Due to our cars being the same vehicle with the same options, minus a few extra retrofits on Jaron’s, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just completely botch the coding somewhere that was causing the drivers assistance module to be unresponsive to coding changes. At this point I had working low beams now and there were other priorities in my life so again I lost interest.
Beginning of this year, my vehicle was ready for it’s 30k service. I wanted to get my coding back in a working format before I brought my car into the dealership and asked them to calibrate my camera. I talked to the owner again because I really just wanted to verify my coding was good prior to bringing it in. This is where I received the coding, and where I did indeed use it to verify that my coding was actually all correct and that the problem here really was that I reset my camera calibration.
I eventually tried to get my camera calibrated, which it wouldn’t take. This was another problem that I induced. My vehicle has an AirLift Performance setup on it, so I went into the chassis control module and disabled the EDC which ended up causing all the downstream issues. Those need to be enabled so that the camera can be calibrated (for the level sensors), so that the headlights can be adapted and also calibrated. From the Ross-tech forums, it was also suggested that I was indeed missing coding from my BCM module to the front camera as well. Once I got all of these sorted out, the rest of the procedure was cake.
I’m not here to stir up any drama, but I do want to clear my name and clear the fact that Alex had nothing to do with the request. The problems, outside of the VCP flashes being incorrect for a while, were all created by myself and ended up being solved by members of the Ross-tech forums and myself. I have proof of all of the information above, but unless people really still think I’m a liar and a thief, I have no reason to release further evidence of things that took place.
The Matrix LEDs are definitely a very cool feature that we can’t get on B9’s in the states as of today still. I really would like to see the community be more helpful and work together on cool things like this, so without further ado, I’m releasing the entire procedure so that the rest of community can also enjoy.
This was performed on a 2017 A4 allroad Prestige so your conversion may vary.
The parts needed for this conversion are:
In order to perform this retrofit you’ll need the access to following items:
The conversion requires that you have the R242 Drivers Assistance front camera. In order to get access to the plug you need to remove the upper console piece. It takes quite a bit of force to pull that down with some trim removal tools just for warning. With that removed, you have access to the plug to the back of the camera. Without matrix there are two wires missing in Pin 1 and Pin 7 as shown below:
These need to be pinned and tied in to the wire going into the J519 (Central Electronics) module. You’ll need to take off the plastic trim near the drivers side door including the one under the hood release lever. You’ll also need to take off the A-Pillar to run the wire. Pin 1 needs to be tapped into T73a /42 and Pin 7 to T73a /43, these are the twisted pair shown in the image below. These wire colors are listed wrong in the wiring diagrams by the way. I found these wires by looking at my plugs on the actual headlights.
On my car, those are the only wires necessary. Depending on your equipment, you may have to go as far as adding the camera and changing your BCM1 module.
If you received your lights brand new from the factory and not used, you will be required to flash the matrix profile to the LED Control module. I had issues flashing these at first so I’d recommend trying to flash them prior to installing the lights. This is where you’ll need VCP. From the VCP activator, you’ll need to download these file files:
From there you’ll need to go into that module and flash it. You can find the normal flashing procedure for VCP online, but you’ll need to go into module 29/39 and flash the individual light control modules, and then D6/D7 to flash the power modules with the Matrix firmware
In order to install the headlights, you’ll need to remove the front bumper. I’d recommend taping over the oem lights and the Matrix light during this process. There are a few tight areas and wouldn’t want to scratch either of them.
Once they are plugged in and ready for their permanent home, it’s time to do some coding
I’ve been working with Alex at Europrice on and off over the last two years to get these to work. Our first significant issue we suffered was getting the power modules and light control units flashed with the appropriate information necessary for Matrix headlights. This was a lot of back and forth with VCP and getting the correct flash files. At one point the headlights were shipped back to Alex so he could try things himself on his S5. Eventually Alex got everything flashed but things still did not work correctly on his vehicle. We were able to verify that VCP’s flashes worked only after sourcing some used modules out of Europe. It was figured out that there are some significant differences in the way the A4 vs the A5 in regards to how their headlights are managed so things weren’t working as expected on the A5. Once we got this figured out, this ended up giving me a little bit more motivation at that time to get the car working again. Around June of last year I had the headlights installed in the vehicle and working minus the high beams. Alex originally sent me entire scan of a Matrix equipped car May 26, 2017. When we were debugging the lights and the modules, he sent me updated coding to try on May 29th, 2018. On June 5th, 2018 I had plugged in the headlights, adjusted the coding that I received from Alex to get it to work on my car with the options it has, the low beams, DRL’s and dynamic turn signals were all working but still had issues with the high beams which was enough for me to install the headlights in the car. I had a car show coming up so I wanted to at least have my dynamic turn signals, plus the Matrix housings just look better and more aggressive.
During the initial process of trying to get these to work, I ended up resetting my camera’s basic adaption which caused me to lose lane assist and pre-sense functionality. This is where things started to get frustrating because I couldn’t get anything to work. My drivers assistance module was no longer accepting any coding and I couldn’t even revert it back to the OEM LED’s. I posted this information on the ross-tech forums trying to see if I could get some assistance:
https://forums.ross-tech.com/showthr...ofit&styleid=5
There you can see proof of my entire vehicles coding all setup for Matrix. This is where I reached out to the current owner of Jaron’s car (July 11th, 2018). Due to our cars being the same vehicle with the same options, minus a few extra retrofits on Jaron’s, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just completely botch the coding somewhere that was causing the drivers assistance module to be unresponsive to coding changes. At this point I had working low beams now and there were other priorities in my life so again I lost interest.
Beginning of this year, my vehicle was ready for it’s 30k service. I wanted to get my coding back in a working format before I brought my car into the dealership and asked them to calibrate my camera. I talked to the owner again because I really just wanted to verify my coding was good prior to bringing it in. This is where I received the coding, and where I did indeed use it to verify that my coding was actually all correct and that the problem here really was that I reset my camera calibration.
I eventually tried to get my camera calibrated, which it wouldn’t take. This was another problem that I induced. My vehicle has an AirLift Performance setup on it, so I went into the chassis control module and disabled the EDC which ended up causing all the downstream issues. Those need to be enabled so that the camera can be calibrated (for the level sensors), so that the headlights can be adapted and also calibrated. From the Ross-tech forums, it was also suggested that I was indeed missing coding from my BCM module to the front camera as well. Once I got all of these sorted out, the rest of the procedure was cake.
I’m not here to stir up any drama, but I do want to clear my name and clear the fact that Alex had nothing to do with the request. The problems, outside of the VCP flashes being incorrect for a while, were all created by myself and ended up being solved by members of the Ross-tech forums and myself. I have proof of all of the information above, but unless people really still think I’m a liar and a thief, I have no reason to release further evidence of things that took place.
The Matrix LEDs are definitely a very cool feature that we can’t get on B9’s in the states as of today still. I really would like to see the community be more helpful and work together on cool things like this, so without further ado, I’m releasing the entire procedure so that the rest of community can also enjoy.
This was performed on a 2017 A4 allroad Prestige so your conversion may vary.
The parts needed for this conversion are:
- Matrix Headlight Assembly
- Light Control Unit
- Light Power Module
- Pinned Wires for Specific plugs mentioned.
In order to perform this retrofit you’ll need the access to following items:
- Vag Can Pro (to flash your own modules if you didn’t buy used)
- VCDS (Should be able to do the same long coding procedures in VCP, but I’ll be using some of the labels that they have in my coding section)
- ODIS (The OEM tool used at the dealership, I have a local shop that also has a licensed version so you may want to ask around)
- Trim Removal Kit
- Torx Kit
Wiring:
The Matrix LED’s require an extra ground wire on the headlight plug. This ground goes into pin 7. I jumped it from another ground,Pin 5, to do the trick. In order to get to these plugs, I was able to get to them through the fender liners to unplug them.The conversion requires that you have the R242 Drivers Assistance front camera. In order to get access to the plug you need to remove the upper console piece. It takes quite a bit of force to pull that down with some trim removal tools just for warning. With that removed, you have access to the plug to the back of the camera. Without matrix there are two wires missing in Pin 1 and Pin 7 as shown below:
These need to be pinned and tied in to the wire going into the J519 (Central Electronics) module. You’ll need to take off the plastic trim near the drivers side door including the one under the hood release lever. You’ll also need to take off the A-Pillar to run the wire. Pin 1 needs to be tapped into T73a /42 and Pin 7 to T73a /43, these are the twisted pair shown in the image below. These wire colors are listed wrong in the wiring diagrams by the way. I found these wires by looking at my plugs on the actual headlights.
On my car, those are the only wires necessary. Depending on your equipment, you may have to go as far as adding the camera and changing your BCM1 module.
Installation
Here are the Matrix headlights in all their glory:If you received your lights brand new from the factory and not used, you will be required to flash the matrix profile to the LED Control module. I had issues flashing these at first so I’d recommend trying to flash them prior to installing the lights. This is where you’ll need VCP. From the VCP activator, you’ll need to download these file files:
From there you’ll need to go into that module and flash it. You can find the normal flashing procedure for VCP online, but you’ll need to go into module 29/39 and flash the individual light control modules, and then D6/D7 to flash the power modules with the Matrix firmware
In order to install the headlights, you’ll need to remove the front bumper. I’d recommend taping over the oem lights and the Matrix light during this process. There are a few tight areas and wouldn’t want to scratch either of them.
Once they are plugged in and ready for their permanent home, it’s time to do some coding
Coding
In order for the car to know you have Matrix headlights, you’ll need to code 3 modules09: Central Electronics (J519)
- Byte 4 - Bit 0-1 -> 01 ,parking_single_side_parking
- Byte 4 - Bit 5 -> Off highbeam_function_config,installed
- Byte 5 - Bit 5-7 -> 20, high_beam_function,Matrix_beam
- Byte 31 - Bit 7 -> On Crossing_light_with_route_data,0=not enabled / 1=Enabled
- Byte 33 - Bit 1-3 -> 04 skl_config, skl_r119
- Byte 33 - Bit 5 -> Off headlamp_config,0=ece_headlamps / 1 = sae_headlamps
- Byte 34 - Bit 0-1 -> 02 headlamp_coding_word,headlamp_variant_3
46: Central Convenience (J393)
- Byte 5 -> Bit 5 -> Off IRUE_NGS_aware_defuse,0=not active / 1=active
A5: Front Sensor Driver Assist (R242)
- Byte 19 - Bit 0-3 -03 FLA_Additional_High_Beam,LED
- Byte 20 - Bit 01 - On AFS_Curvelight,0=Disabled / 1=Enabled
- Byte 20 - Bit 05 - On AFS_Pafs,0=Disabled / 1=Enabled
- Byte 21 - Bit 5-7 - 80 AFS_coding_Light_Assist,Matrix beam
Calibration
The headlights now have to be calibrated in order to have the Matrix be enabled. This procedure is done in ODIS. This is just in the A5 - Basic Settings. This will end up going through the normal headlight aiming procedure. The actual procedure is to perform this with a VAS 5209B- or VAS 621 001 which gives you all the data on a screen on the adjustments necessary, but since most of us won’t have that we have to wing it. It’ll go through the low beam adjustment, then it’ll ask for the parameters that the machine is saying you need to put in for the matrix offset. I won’t provide the values I used, because they are definitely not 100% accurate, but I’ve been able to play with them enough and no one is flashing me on the road. Once we have the aiming tools here at the dealership locally, I plan to go get them calibrated completely accurately.Conclusion
The Matrix LED Retrofit is actually not that hard and I’m not sure why no one has done a DIY at this point. It does take time and a lot of different software/dongles that may not be in your arsenal. I’m sure Europrice will end up providing a much better solution for customers going forward, but if you want to get into the weeds, hopefully this should get everyone started. Happy Matrix Day!Last edited by meijerbrantm; 04-15-2019 at 01:06 PM.
The following 4 users liked this post by meijerbrantm:
04-10-2019, 08:55 AM
#2
AudiWorld Member
Good work dude, I'm planning on doing this to my 17 Prestige but will source used Matrix that comes with both control on each headlamp, The only thing i'm worried about is the aiming.
04-10-2019, 06:37 PM
#4
AudiWorld Senior Member
This is phenomenal and I don’t understand how someone could accuse what you have written.
I really want MATRIX LED but wow... there’s definitely no way I can do any of that
I really want MATRIX LED but wow... there’s definitely no way I can do any of that
04-11-2019, 08:51 AM
#5
There you can see proof of my entire vehicles coding all setup for Matrix. This is where I reached out to the current owner of Jaron’s car (July 11th, 2018). Due to our cars being the same vehicle with the same options, minus a few extra retrofits on Jaron’s, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just completely botch the coding somewhere that was causing the drivers assistance module to be unresponsive to coding changes. At this point I had working low beams now and there were other priorities in my life so again I lost interest.
Beginning of this year, my vehicle was ready for it’s 30k service. I wanted to get my coding back in a working format before I brought my car into the dealership and asked them to calibrate my camera. I talked to the owner again because I really just wanted to verify my coding was good prior to bringing it in. This is where I received the coding, and where I did indeed use it to verify that my coding was actually all correct and that the problem here really was that I reset my camera calibration.
Beginning of this year, my vehicle was ready for it’s 30k service. I wanted to get my coding back in a working format before I brought my car into the dealership and asked them to calibrate my camera. I talked to the owner again because I really just wanted to verify my coding was good prior to bringing it in. This is where I received the coding, and where I did indeed use it to verify that my coding was actually all correct and that the problem here really was that I reset my camera calibration.
04-11-2019, 09:17 AM
#6
AudiWorld Member
Thread Starter
In the interest of full clarity, please confirm for the readers: Once you received the scan from me, you verified your coding was correct prior to bringing the car in. Then, you maintained the privacy of that file by not sharing it with anyone else, correct? (For the audience - I am the current owner of Jaron's Allroad.)
04-11-2019, 10:43 AM
#7
AudiWorld Super User
Seriously? All this coding thing is “private property” now? Then mitchfin could’ve been an *** and kept everything to himself. Pathetic.
But yes. Great job on the conversion.
But yes. Great job on the conversion.
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04-11-2019, 11:59 AM
#8
Private property is not accurate. Enthusiast-to-enthusiast collaboration can still be a good thing, but concerns arise when businesses get involved because they can turn around and try to make a profit by selling that coding on the open market. To be clear, I'm not saying that's did or did not happen, but that's the concern.
04-12-2019, 06:57 AM
#9
AudiWorld Super User
Private property is not accurate. Enthusiast-to-enthusiast collaboration can still be a good thing, but concerns arise when businesses get involved because they can turn around and try to make a profit by selling that coding on the open market. To be clear, I'm not saying that's did or did not happen, but that's the concern.
04-12-2019, 10:31 AM
#10
Audiworld Basic Sponsor
First off, need to thank Jonathan (meijerbrantm) for his work on this project. There were definitely some hurdles with him being one of the first adopters. VCP had communication issues with the D7 module and the flash files were incorrect which we solved. He had coding in 2017 and the lights up and running in 2018 minus matrix LED. Since there wasn't any enthusiast to enthusiast collaboration happening Jonathan managed to make the error of resetting his camera calibration which required a trip to a dealership. He went the extra mile of making up his own calibration board to set his camera up at home since the dealership was unwilling to help.
We noted the error in him turning off the adaptive damping because this alters how the level system functions, solved that. One of our first emails about fitment I had mentioned he check or add CAN wiring from the camera and it got lost in the VCP back and forth (wiring diagrams are a little cryptic if this wiring is in every car or just matrix equipped cars). Once he found the CAN wiring was missing he added and everything was good to go for final calibration. Jonathan took his time and had other aspects of his life that took precedent so the project would come and go when he had the time and energy. Since 2017 we had 250+ emails back and forth collaborating, really a proper enthusiast.
Since the company in question is mine, Europrice, I also wanted to secondly make a quick statement since even after this post I keep hearing a silly rumor that Jonathan was "tricked" into contacting the new owner of wdimagineer’s Allroad to steal coding to give to me for business purposes. Firstly Jonathan has shown above that he had matrix coding from me in 2017 and I sent more coding in 2018 just to be sure he had everything set. Secondly Jonathan is obviously a smart and capable person, I highly doubt my powers of persuasion could ever trick him into anything. Thirdly Jonathan is into helping others do this modification which is why he posted this DIY so it’s not like he’s out to help my business by stealing coding. Fourthly coding is in every matrix equipped A4, S4 and RS4 worldwide and it’s really not hard to find so absolutely no need to “steal” it.
Again huge thanks to Jonathan for sticking it out and not giving up. He jumped through some serious hoops to get this all accomplished and it was rough to see that his hard work was being overshadowed by some silly rumor that he was stealing coding for himself or for me for business purposes. Kudos to him and to this DIY post that helps everyone that want’s go this route have the knowledge to do it!
We noted the error in him turning off the adaptive damping because this alters how the level system functions, solved that. One of our first emails about fitment I had mentioned he check or add CAN wiring from the camera and it got lost in the VCP back and forth (wiring diagrams are a little cryptic if this wiring is in every car or just matrix equipped cars). Once he found the CAN wiring was missing he added and everything was good to go for final calibration. Jonathan took his time and had other aspects of his life that took precedent so the project would come and go when he had the time and energy. Since 2017 we had 250+ emails back and forth collaborating, really a proper enthusiast.
Since the company in question is mine, Europrice, I also wanted to secondly make a quick statement since even after this post I keep hearing a silly rumor that Jonathan was "tricked" into contacting the new owner of wdimagineer’s Allroad to steal coding to give to me for business purposes. Firstly Jonathan has shown above that he had matrix coding from me in 2017 and I sent more coding in 2018 just to be sure he had everything set. Secondly Jonathan is obviously a smart and capable person, I highly doubt my powers of persuasion could ever trick him into anything. Thirdly Jonathan is into helping others do this modification which is why he posted this DIY so it’s not like he’s out to help my business by stealing coding. Fourthly coding is in every matrix equipped A4, S4 and RS4 worldwide and it’s really not hard to find so absolutely no need to “steal” it.
Again huge thanks to Jonathan for sticking it out and not giving up. He jumped through some serious hoops to get this all accomplished and it was rough to see that his hard work was being overshadowed by some silly rumor that he was stealing coding for himself or for me for business purposes. Kudos to him and to this DIY post that helps everyone that want’s go this route have the knowledge to do it!
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