Shifter integration

How the driver asks for a gear. There are two halves to every shifter integration and they are documented separately:

  • The hardware — what the selector is, how it is wired, and what it puts on the bus.
  • The configuration — how the device turns that into a gear request.

Pick your shifter type below; each row links to both halves.

By shifter type

Type Configuration Hardware pages
OEM shift-by-wire selector OEM shifter BMW F-series GWS · Land Rover Evoque
Paddles Paddle as shifter Read over CAN from the donor car's paddle module — see Supported Vehicles & Modules
Sequential lever Sequential shifter Any spring-returned +/− lever on device inputs
Analog PRND (legacy) Analog PRND Cable-actuated selector with a linear position sensor
Porsche PDK selector Follows the OEM shifter pattern 7DT45 shifter

Combinations are normal and supported — an OEM selector for P/R/N/D with paddles for manual mode is the most common arrangement.

"I want to keep my OEM shifter"

Usually yes, and it is the nicest result — the factory selector, its lighting and its display all behave as they did.

What it takes depends on where the selector came from:

The selector matches the transmission's own family. The simplest case. The selector talks on CAN, the device reads it, and the gear request goes through.

The selector is from a different car than the transmission. Also common — an E-series lever with an F-series gearbox, for example. The device reads whichever selector you have and translates; the two do not need to match. Check Supported Vehicles & Modules for your selector, and see the chassis guides for worked examples.

The selector is cable-operated. A classic PRND lever with no electronics is read as an analog position — see Analog PRND. This is the legacy path; prefer a shift-by-wire selector where you have the choice.

Your selector is not listed. Any selector that puts its position on CAN can be mapped by hand with CAN inputs. A selector with discrete switched outputs can go onto digital inputs, optionally decoded with a reflected binary code input if it is Gray-coded.

Things that catch people

The brake interlock is real. Most selectors require the brake pressed to leave Park or select reverse. Brake status is a mandatory input on both gateways, and most ECU streams do not carry it — so it usually has to come from a device input. See signal requirements.

Check the decoded position, not the lever. When a shifter appears not to work, look at the decoded position in the datalogger. The lever moving tells you nothing about what the device received.

Minimum, maximum and start gear are configurable on the standalone drivers, and until they are set the unit uses only gear 1. If a sequential lever will not go past first, check these before suspecting the shifter.

Temporary manual mode — pulling a paddle in D to take manual control, and returning to automatic after a timeout — is a configuration behaviour, not a property of the shifter.