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Omex 600-Pc Connection


Cornwallfrank

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Hi all

Having just had an nightmare weeekend, one minute car working next not reving above tickover, managed to trace it to, more by luck than judgement, to the TPS, fortunatly had a spare, changed it and, Bingo, all is well. ( as an aside, on a Zetec standard throttle body, do these fail a lot? is it worth carrying a spare?)

I tried the connect my laptop, loaded with MAP 3000, to the ECU using a lead, usb to serial port, reccomended by omex.

The software opens,I choose the connection, click connect to ECU, the laptop then says, ECU offline, ( with ignition on) and then windows stops working with a warning, and then closes windows on the laptop.

Any idea's? ( has worked at the tuners and a friends laptop )

Cheers

Frank

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I had the same problem last year : it was due to the windows version

XP was OK for me but Vista was a pain in the :arse: (there is some tweaking of Vista to accept the usb/serial drivers but I didn't search and used a small netbook with XP installed). I imagine that Windows 7 will also be a joy to use (ahem...)

Another point : Which kind of serial cable do you use ? you must use an extension serial cable. If you use a communication cable (RX/TX) it will not work.

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Windows 7 in both 32 bit and 64 bit seems to be fine with DTA, MBE, Lumenition and (I think) Enerald ECU's using an RS232 to USB converter. I never used Vista. My PC's are all curently either XP Pro or Wndows 7 Pro. I have no idea why but in my experience the Pro versions of Windows seem to run things like serial ports and USB to serial converters better than Home or Home Premium.

There can also be an issue with the COM Port used by USB devices, and the COM port the ECU is expecting to see. Again in my experience, setting the USB converter to use COM 1, 2, 3 or 4 always seems to work. You can change the COM port assigned to the USB to Serial converter through Device Manager.

If you want to use XP but your PC is running something else (pretty much doesn't matter what) and as long as you have an installation disc, you can use XP as a virtual machine either by using Windows 7 XP mode or by downloading and installing XP in to Virtual Box. Just make sure the BIOS on the PC is set up to allow virtual machines, but it seems most these days already are. I use Virtual Box...

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Check before using other virtualisation software though, as not all seems to handle virtual com ports.

Then again, for not too much money, second hand laptops with built in serial ports and running XP are still, just, available. Back your map file's safely to somewhere else and you have a garage machine that you don't mind bunging in the car for test runs, handling with oily mits etc.

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Thanks all, sorry not responded before but have been flat out, I'm guessing the sinplest/easiest way would be to see if I can find a "garage" laptop.

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i had difficulties with a USB to serial adaptor too. When I instead bought a PCMCIA to serial adaptor off ebay for a fiver it worked first time.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm having this problem too. Omex suggested using a different usb socket which has worked up to a point. It connects now but sometimes drops out.

Restarting the laptop will let it connect again but it's a bit annoying.

Being an idiot with computers I'm worried about doing all the changes on trackaddicts, in case it affects something else.

How would you run a windows 7 machine in XP mode? I don't really want to have to buy another machine

Doug

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  • 2 years later...

Just for the collective knowledge, I managed to connect my old Vista laptop through a USB adaptor tonight.

 

£1.69 for adaptor

 

USB Male to RS232 Serial DB9 9 Pin Adapter Cable PC Modem PDA PL DB-9 Chipset

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-Male-to-RS232-Serial-DB9-9-Pin-Adapter-Cable-PC-Modem-PL-Chipset-Converter-/131293547595

 

 

Prolific driver from cooldrives.com

 

http://www.cooldrives.com/index.php/wividrforprc.html

 

 

 

Installed the driver, then plugged in the adaptor, it configured fine.

 

Opened device manager and set it to COM 2 and in advanced turned off the acceleration.  Had to go back in and reset it, and MAP to using 9600 baud.  Remember from when used to work with Omex that was the most reliable setting.

 

Notes to follow though are to set your laptop to not go to sleep or shut the case, do not unplug the adaptor and try to not switch off the engine - any of these may result in you having to turn the laptop off completely and start from scratch.

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Notes to follow though are to set your laptop to not go to sleep or shut the case, do not unplug the adaptor and try to not switch off the engine - any of these may result in you having to turn the laptop off completely and start from scratch.

 

I had exactly this - absolute PIA when your trying different settings to get the engine running. Every time you turn the ignition off had to restart the computer  :swear:

 

Now have one of these http://forum.wscc.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic/104379-garage-pclaptop/. plug in and go, so easy  :t-up:

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i run my software via a win 7 laptop and a Aten usb-serial model UC-232A ok but i have had problems with the same adapter running the cnc machine at work dropping out.

 

back when i did the car i had a win xp laptop and it did sometime have an issue when the engine was started. no idea what usb thingy i had then but it wasnt this one for sure.

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I have a DTA ecu that I could never get connected to my Win7 laptop - I bought a USB/Serial adapter and it said the adapter was configured ok, but when i connected it to the ECU - nothing !!  :angry:

 

I even tried various things suggested on other forums (making my own lead with 9 pin serial plug / sockets etc, switching the signal / return leads, making it a "null" cable and so on) but still no luck. Fortunately I still had our old Dell laptop that had XP and proper serial ports - it was put out to grass partly as is was so slow even running things like Firefox but mainly because the battery pack had died and it'd only run on mains. I bought a proper DTA serial cable, connected up and hey presto - everything worked straight away ! :d

 

I haven't tried the DTA cable and the USB adapter on my Win7 laptop but the DTA software version (I have an E48 ecu) is quite old now and Win7 doesn't really like it - but as long as the old laptop works, I can save and modify the maps with no problem. I assume more modern ecu's and associated software have proper USB connectivity (but I'd not be surprised if some still use old "serial" type setups).

 

I'm not convinced USB / Serial connectors actually work in the way hard wired ports did (either that or modern pc's don't know how to handle the USB / Serial conversion) - still, picking up an old WinXP laptop will be cheep - especially if the batteries are dead (and you can run them on the mains in the garage)  

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I've had cause to look into usb to serial converters for work (aircraft avionics) we have had good success with Edgeport converters for software loading and diagnostic work, with modern PCs without proper serial/rs232 ports. The edgeport device is expensive, £80 ish from memory, but allows reliable read/write in my experience..

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Last night had a rummage and manage to find an old XP laptop with a serial port at my dad's house. Hopefully have found an ideal solution!

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