Successful Matrix headlight activation for US Taycan

[SergeyIndy]

My J1.1 Matrix lights activated and need night time testing.

I would appreciate anyone outside of US who have the Matrix LED on J1.1 (2020-2024) to share the copy of Exterior Lights PCM menu, copy from online Manual on Matrix beam use/function, and what to look for to make sure it works at low speeds and highway speeds. There is surprisingly no information about it that I could find and I cannot hack into non-US manual to get to the Matrix lights section. One UK video shows head to head but the driver goes around streets with lights and traffic which makes the video kind of useless.

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[whitex]

My J1.1 Matrix lights activated and need night time testing.

I would appreciate anyone outside of US who have the Matrix LED on J1.1 (2020-2024) to share the copy of Exterior Lights PCM menu, copy from online Manual on Matrix beam use/function, and what to look for to make sure it works at low speeds and highway speeds. There is surprisingly no information about it that I could find and I cannot hack into non-US manual to get to the Matrix lights section. One UK video shows head to head but the driver goes around streets with lights and traffic which makes the video kind of useless.

Remember to run through the calibration against a wall. My car did a 2 or 3 calibration cycles on the same night that I activated it. Now it will do it every few months.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Remember to run through the calibration against a wall. My car did a 2 or 3 calibration cycles on the same night that I activated it. Now it will do it every few months.

How do you do the calibration, not familiar with that.

Otherwise:

Green Auto mode, this is where it is in Low Beam mode, I am not sure if anything is happening, but it appears the light is more crisp, intense, far and wide.

Blue Auto mode, this is when it is in High Beam, I can see that it is doing the Matrix thing by not blinding the car in front or incoming and not blinding me with road sign reflections.

Very happy with the investment of time and money. Hope that stays working and dealer will not override during Wheel Alignment procedure, for example.

 

[PhillyTCT4S]

Sergey, can you confirm if your side markers work after the matrix coding. My stopped workig completely, only work when turn signal is ON

 

[SergeyIndy]

Sergey, can you confirm if your side markers work after the matrix coding. My stopped workig completely, only work when turn signal is ON

They do not. I did reply to your new thread. I am not happy about it, so thank you for noting this. I will ask the coder to see what can be done.

 

[whitex]

They do not. I did reply to your new thread. I am not happy about it, so thank you for noting this. I will ask the coder to see what can be done.

If you find a coding solution, let us know.

 

[mystermykee]

Green Auto mode, this is where it is in Low Beam mode, I am not sure if anything is happening, but it appears the light is more crisp, intense, far and wide.

Blue Auto mode, this is when it is in High Beam, I can see that it is doing the Matrix thing by not blinding the car in front or incoming and not blinding me with road sign reflections.

Very happy with the investment of time and money. Hope that stays working and dealer will not override during Wheel Alignment procedure, for example.

Might be helpful.
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/anyone-with-piwis.20946/page-10#post-521757

 

[whitex]

How do you do the calibration, not familiar with that.

If you park the car at night with a vertical wall 10-20 feet in front of it, level surface, no rain, automatic high beam with adaptive enabled, the headlight should start their dance which looks like this (this is one of the occasional re-calibrations, not filmed from the start, but IIRC the initial ones lasted longer).

After I activated it on my car, I think it did it twice the first night, then once the next day, then even when I parked in front of a wall it wouldn't do it again. I did notice after first calibration it got better at dimming out oncoming traffic (I tested it before even the first calibration, I think I was the fist in the US to accomplish this, so had no instructions to lean on, I did read parts of EU user manual online, so I knew it existed, but didn't know exactly how to trigger it, but it triggered itself when I came back from the initial test drive). It does this every so many weeks now (sorry, I haven't paid enough attention, every month or two when I have an opportunity I park in front of a wall and see if the car is ready for recalibration. It doesn't do it every time, I guess it doesn't need it. I've had this enabled for 3 years now, did maybe a dozen calibrations total.

 

[irrelevant]

It's nice to read this is now available for us in the US. I'll have to wait until the side marker light issue is resolved, due to the chance the car won't pass a local safety inspection if they don't illuminate.

 

[howardmw]

I have been wandering through this rabbit hole for the last 24 hours trying to figure out if a DIY is possible to unlock my matrix on my 2023 Taycan. Does anyone know what version of PIWIS is needed?

 

[SergeyIndy]

I have been wandering through this rabbit hole for the last 24 hours trying to figure out if a DIY is possible to unlock my matrix on my 2023 Taycan. Does anyone know what version of PIWIS is needed?

I am not sure if this is worth the time or risk. I just activated mine and can provide a coder reference. The process requires a PC with full local admin rights to install many components that takes a lot of time even for the expert then a lot more time to perform the activation as many modules need application of Euro datasets. My process took 4 hours of my own time just being on the other side of the coding. The price to do it is very well worth it. Also, night driving completely transformed. Let me know, and I am happy to introduce.

Also, I just gave my PC and my OBD to a local owner who will be activating it this weekend.

 

[howardmw]

Yes, would very much want to see if a coder would be cost/time effective. Please feel free to DM me if you prefer.

I am pretty good with tech, and have already have a working version of PIWIS 3 v38.4, which is too old of a version & doesn't work with Taycan. I was looking to get a newer version, but do not know which version is needed to recode the lighting module. What is the ver that you lent to a local owner?

 

[SergeyIndy]

Yes, would very much want to see if a coder would be cost/time effective. Please feel free to DM me if you prefer.

I am pretty good with tech, and have already have a working version of PIWIS 3 v38.4, which is too old of a version & doesn't work with Taycan. I was looking to get a newer version, but do not know which version is needed to recode the lighting module. What is the ver that you lent to a local owner?

I am happy to make a reference and will DM you. I observed the process and have no idea about what software or version a there were many modules to install, special OBD drivers, and then the programming in PIWIS was mostly in German.

 

[howardmw]

I ended up doing the Matrix activation as a DIY. There are a lot of threads about setting up a cheap PIWIS with a $40 and a free or near-free bootleg PIWIS installed in a VM, but after spending many hours trying to make that work, I found that for a Taycan you absolutely need the most recent PIWIS 3 version and a VNCI clone, which I bought for about $400 (including software preinstalled on a SSD) from this guy on AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256...il_item.4.2805f19cLl2vRF&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa.

Ideally, you will want a dedicated laptop (like a used Lenovo ThinkPad) as a dedicated PIWIS machine, but I used a desktop machine that I had to move to my garage for a day. Also, you do need to have a good charger or high quality jumpers and an other car running to make sure your 12v on the Taycan does not drop in voltage while you are coding. When the Taycan is in maintenance mode, it disconnects your high voltage battery, so you do not get to use it as a backup while coding in PIWIS.

I definitely spent way too many hours on this project, but I was not going to stop without success. It helps if you know how to operate in PIWIS, as it was time consuming figuring out how that software operates. I like a DIY challenge, and the $800+ price tag on having a coder do this plus getting to have a PIWIS myself for future use was my motivation. In the end, it cost me $400 and I now have working Euro spec Matrix headlights, a good PIWIS install and some well earned DIY satisfaction.

The specific coding entries from @bigkraig were very helpful. The only surprise I had when finishing was that my spoiler stayed up like it had Perony's disease, but after parking for a couple hours and then driving, that resolved itself.

 

[gnr3312]

I ended up doing the Matrix activation as a DIY. There are a lot of threads about setting up a cheap PIWIS with a $40 and a free or near-free bootleg PIWIS installed in a VM, but after spending many hours trying to make that work, I found that for a Taycan you absolutely need the most recent PIWIS 3 version and a VNCI clone, which I bought for about $400 (including software preinstalled on a SSD) from this guy on AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256...il_item.4.2805f19cLl2vRF&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa.

Ideally, you will want a dedicated laptop (like a used Lenovo ThinkPad) as a dedicated PIWIS machine, but I used a desktop machine that I had to move to my garage for a day. Also, you do need to have a good charger or high quality jumpers and an other car running to make sure your 12v on the Taycan does not drop in voltage while you are coding. When the Taycan is in maintenance mode, it disconnects your high voltage battery, so you do not get to use it as a backup while coding in PIWIS.

I definitely spent way too many hours on this project, but I was not going to stop without success. It helps if you know how to operate in PIWIS, as it was time consuming figuring out how that software operates. I like a DIY challenge, and the $800+ price tag on having a coder do this plus getting to have a PIWIS myself for future use was my motivation. In the end, it cost me $400 and I now have working Euro spec Matrix headlights, a good PIWIS install and some well earned DIY satisfaction.

The specific coding entries from @bigkraig were very helpful. The only surprise I had when finishing was that my spoiler stayed up like it had Perony's disease, but after parking for a couple hours and then driving, that resolved itself.

Great info, thanks for sharing. What model year do you have? And I read that the side markers are now off unless you turn your blinker on, can you confirm?

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