Steering Wheel Thumb Controls?

i have a 2012 SE Premium with radio station and volume control buttons on the left thumb, along with bluetooth phone buttons a little lower on the left side also.

Now my right thumb panel is blank, except that i pulled that little cover off (#1 philips from the back side) and found a 4 pin connector wired up to the back side of the cover--all dressed up with no where to go, 4 extra wires to nothing?

Does anyone have right thumb buttons on their steering wheel--what do they control?

Maybe cruise control--wouldn't that be nice.

Interesting. In other Mitsubishi cars with the same steering wheel (Lancer for instance), the cruise control buttons are on the right side.

Do the wires go down through the column somewhere?

PV1 said:

Do the wires go down through the column somewhere?

Click to expand...

Everything electrical on a steering wheel (horn, airbag and any other controls) go through what's called a clock-spring assembly on the steering column. If there is an unused connector on the steering wheel, there *should be* a matching unused connector (for whatever the wheel connector was used for) down on the steering column somewhere. However, it's also very likely that they used a steering wheel from another car which had cruise, put it in the iMiEV and *did not* include any further wiring or connectors for it in the car harness, since they knew it wasn't needed

*If* the wiring is there, boy it would be oh so easy to work up a steering wheel paddle to control regen! :mrgreen:

When you take apart the clock-spring from a steering column, you'll quickly see how it got it's name ;-)

Don

Not as easy as it first looks. There is, of course, the clockspring assembly but it has very few wires. If you look at the wiring diagrams you can see how they do it. In the case of the radio controls, when you push a button on the steering wheel (for example volume +) a specific resistance is sent down the wire that the radio recognizes as the volume + command. By doing this, all radio commands can be sent down one wire pair in the clockspring. I don't know if the cruise control uses the same wire pair or not but the horn and airbag inflator are on their own wire circuits. If you could build a circuit that uses resistances not used by other devices on the steering wheel, then you could control other things (like regen) but the other end of the circuit is another matter. If you are really lucky, the cruise control uses a similar design and it's own wire pair.

A little research reveals that the steering wheel is the same as the 2008+ Mitsubishi Lancer, mirage, etc... hard part, is whether the circuitry is available in the i-miev to handle the buttons
GetUsedParts has a 2014 for $75 at http://mandmautosalvage.hollanderapps.com/asp/parts/details.asp?ID=5698171239
Would recommend getting from a salvage yard (vs ebay) since you can get matching steering column, electrical harnesses or other modules... if you later find that you need more parts.

kiev said:

i have a 2012 SE Premium with radio station and volume control buttons on the left thumb, along with bluetooth phone buttons a little lower on the left side also.

Now my right thumb panel is blank, except that i pulled that little cover off (#1 philips from the back side) and found a 4 pin connector wired up to the back side of the cover--all dressed up with no where to go, 4 extra wires to nothing?

Does anyone have right thumb buttons on their steering wheel--what do they control?

Maybe cruise control--wouldn't that be nice.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing the same thing for RHD, so they can use the same wheel for all global markets?

Perhaps it is where cruise is on other cars that share the wheel.

The same wheel is used in the Lancer, which has cruise control buttons on that side.

One of my local dealers told me the controller/buttons utilizes canbus to run multiple commands over a single clockspring. So even if I bought the butthurtingly expensive steering wheel (which btw is an "empty shell" without airbag, buttons++) I would probably still struggle with getting the electronicabamob to work properly.

At the same visit I asked for side mirrors with the integrated side indicators. But even there they believed I would enter a conflict with the canbus etc. Not surprised over the prices here either. Just the empty housing costs a big fraction of a traction battery ... :?

I hope someone will undertake further investigations in these two "coming up" subprojects. Perhaps someone which have access to the very parts needed. :idea:

Mmm... butthurt :shock:

I have added the cruise control and volume control to my steering wheel, i'm waiting to program the canbus the see if i can get the buttons working


before


after

Now that's an enticing i-MiEV steering wheel! Good luck on the programming. These canbus/firmware issues are why I've not gotten into anything more than superficial performance modding of modern vehicle systems, sticking to electrical and mechanical mods on my antiques.
One would expect that by now, hackers would have enabled a crazy new world of customized vehicle software that would enable drivers to monkey with factory settings (with liability waivers). Beyond the 'performance chip' market, I'm not seeing hardly any of this. To you programmers out there- is it just too hard?

Have you had any progress on the cruise control panel ?

I am interested in adding cruise control to my i-MiEV also. I found Outlander 2006 circuit diagram and I cannot see any CAN connections there. Only resistor network.

Pretty sure lots of things changed with regard to CAN Bus connectivity between 2006 and 2012, and lots more has changed since then too

What CAN connections were you looking for? In your diagram, the resistor network is tied directly to the engine ECU which would translate those resistor switched signals into a CAN message which would be put on the Bus. The object to be controlled would pick those signals off the Bus . . . . *if* the 2006 Outlander is actually using a CAN Bus communication network

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHaxv-cGZFI

Don

Ofcourse Outlander has Can bus. I put the schematic here because we want to use 2006 outlander or lancer steering wheel buttons. Newer models have new steering wheels and their buttons do not fit to i-miev steering wheel. On the end of previous page some people claimed that steering wheel switches are connected to CAN I say that they are not. That means if i-miev has unused wires on the clockspring then we can install for example Liteon AP900C and control it by steering wheel.
Cruise controller connects to can bus to get car speed and between accelerator pedal wire with Y connection and generates suitable voltages so that EV-ECU thinks you have pressed the pedal and we have constant speed!

So i went out to look at the connector on the right side of the steering wheel--it has 4 wires and the wire colors match up with the drawing above in that pin 2 is Blue and 3 is Green. Pin 1 is Violet and 4 is Gray.

I guess the next step is to find the clockspring connector to see if there is continuity across the joint, if there are wires in the harness and if so where do they go...

I found out that 2011 EU i-MiEV has 5 wires on the clock spring but only three have been connected one is for horn relay and two other wires go to airbag.

i pulled the covers off and it appears that the 2012 USA version ClockSpring (CS) has 10 channels--on the stationary side 4 are dedicated to the SRS/airbag with a separate yellow connector and yellow wires. The remaining 6 go thru a white connector, but only 4 of those were populated:
pin 1, blue wire, this is the signal return (-) for the left thumb radio and phone buttons, designated REM-.
pin 2, no wire populated, but the CS pin connects to the cruise control switch connector on the right thumb.
pin 3, same as pin 2.
pin 4, gray wire, this is the button-Illumination power supply for the LEDs, designated Ill+
pin 5, green wire, this is the signal (+) for the left thumb radio and phone buttons, designated REM+
pin 6, white wire, is +12V all the time, routed to the Horn button.

On the moving side (steering wheel) of the CS, there are two 5-pin connectors, one carries the 4 SRS wires plus the Horn, the other has one wire for Illumination, a pair for the Radio/Phone, and a pair for the Cruise Control.

The radio switch and phone buttons are tied together to create a voltage divider circuit. Whenever a button is pressed it causes a corresponding voltage to be sensed at the radio. The right thumb switch has a similar voltage divider network, but since we don't have an ECU for cruise control, there was no need to populate wires from the Stationary side of the CS.

The Lancer cruise control thumb switch fits perfectly and the buttons light up with the headlights. i'm thinking i could find the right terminals to populate the CS in order to use the Coast button on the Cruise to switch the gear position to Neutral, or switch to B mode for max regen, etc...

i'm thinking i could find the right terminals to populate the CS in order to use the Coast button on the Cruise to switch the gear position to Neutral, or switch to B mode for max regen, etc...

Click to expand...

This "should" be relatively straight forward.

If I can find a steering wheel with switches for a reasonable price, I will be digging into making the cruise buttons being accessible for any sort of accessories/controls one wishes. N/E/B controls would be awesome for certain.

If the pins don't actually pass through the CS, a simple swap to the appropriate Lancer CS may work.

I also have one of these.

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-TBAjv14UgHa/p_158RMX4S/Sony-RM-X4S.html#&gid=1&pid=1


This is a really old school Sony car audio wired remote control. Long before the days of steering wheel controls. You would mount it to a center console or the side of the steering column like another stalk. I would say around 1992-ish I had one. Then about 4 years ago I saw one in a store new for $20. Had to have it just in case I thought of something to do with it..........

It operates exactly the same way as the steering wheel controls with a different resistance for each control command.

LOTS of control potential from that thing.

Thread resurrection for anyone wanting to retrofit this stuff

if you have a clockspring with only one pin in the connector at the back and none in the front (horn only) then you'll need to change it

The part number on the 1 wire clock spring part is 8619A016

The part you need is 8619A017 - this has 6 pins on the rear connector and a 5 pin socket at the front

8619A018 looks almost the same but as a different airbag connector. AVOID

The 5 pin plug that goes in the front appears to be a Hirose ZE05-5S-HU/R (pins bought separately - part ZE05-2022SCF - the pins at the rear are the same hirose ones)

If you purchase a button kit which has a harness with 12 pin plug then it was intended for a later model 8619A167 clockspring and you'll need to move the pins to the correct plug. You can't use the 12-pin clockspring because it won't fit (and has different airbag connectors too), which is a shame if you wanted extra signals for extra functions (or a heated steering wheel?)

There are lots of photos of these parts and their connectors at Aliexpress and the clock springs are only about $10-15, with button kits being about the same. This is a good negotiating figure for buying s/h from a breaker etc

The hirose parts are available from Mouser

There's no CAN function on the wheel. The clockspring carries airbag, horn, illumination and 2 separate resistance loops (one for entertainment/phone buttons, one for cruise control buttons)

I'm still working on my retrofit because I really wanted to put heating pads in place but I don't think that's practical/possible with the existing clocksprings even if wiring is robbed/swapped around. (I was toying with somehow shoehorning an arduino into the button body to free up pins). It's been interesting to read up on experiences so far but has anyone sucesfully pulled off a heated wheel job?