Great disappointment with a new Nanocom Evo

[farmergeo]

After following all the in and outs of Electronic Diagnostics, I eventually decided on buying a Nanacom Evo. I was also put on a waiting list for nearly 3 months, and when I was told that the new model was available for sale I ok'ed the bank transaction.
I was given a DHL tracking number, and after a few days it had arrived in Jo'burg SA. After another few days I was contacted to pay the Vat & Customs, which I did. I then had to wait nearly a week before it was eventually delivered to our small rural town.
Great was the excitement today (Sat), after I had organized my son who has a PC Bussiness, to help me set it up. Everything went well with the codes ,setup etc, and we took it on a test run. Every now and again the Evo would " loose contact" with the OBDII plug, and my son would Reset it. After 4 different runs we came home and plugged it in to the PC. When went through the data and decided to do another run.
When we plugged it into the Defender 99 Td5 the Evo would not power up.We tried it with my other 05 Td5, but once again .... blank screen. We tried it again with the PC and again ...all Blank.:(:(

HAS ANY OTHER MEMBER HAD THIS PROBLEM WITH THEIR EVO'S? and if so .... how was this problem rectified?

I have contacted BBS, and hopefully they will contact me on Monday.

[peter5111]

Yelling about things isn't going to make support happen any quicker and only serves to irritate those who might be able to help.

Now having said that, since you have managed to sort out the unlock codes successfully the Evo must have been working properly when you received it.

Can you please describe what happens when you;
==> Connect the Evo2 to the vehicle ODBII socket

==> Connect the Evo to a Windows XP (or later) machine using the USB port

==> Connect *Just* the external plug pack power supply (Not sure if the Evo2 has an external power socket ? )
*** Make SURE you have correct polarity and voltage BEFORE you connect the power supply ***



You could have a problem with the ODBII socket in the vehicle - mine has very weak contacts and tends to let go of the Evo's cable.

There could be a problem with the cable itself, maybe a broken solder joint in the connector ?

There could be an internal problem with the Evo, but since it worked to start with, I think this last option is unlikely.


Is there anybody local to you with an Evo ? Trying a known good cable would certainly help narrow things down.

Pete

[Lorryman100]

What colour is the OBDII Plug? Blue or Green? or have BBS changed the plugs since Mattia's time?

Green plug was wired for TD5's only and the Blue plug did both Puma and TD5. If you let me know what the vehicle is I will check what the live pin is so you can put a DMM on it to see it's not a power issue at the vehicle OBDII end. Also you could do a continuity check on the OBDII cable and plugs to rule that out as a cause.

[farmergeo]

Pete,
Sorry if I came through as yelling. My big concern is that I have to send it back to Cypress. The easy part was getting the unit here to South Africa, but sending it back and the expense invovled is another matter.
One would just think that because the units are shipped from Cypress (very limited market) every care would be taken to make sure that the units and all the connecting cables are working properley.The instructions sent with the unit is very limited, and not much more on the BBS web site.



Yelling about things isn't going to make support happen any quicker and only serves to irritate those who might be able to help.

Now having said that, since you have managed to sort out the unlock codes successfully the Evo must have been working properly when you received it.

Can you please describe what happens when you;
==> Connect the Evo2 to the vehicle ODBII socket

When first connected all the diaognestic functions performed as meant to.

==> Connect the Evo to a Windows XP (or later) machine using the USB port

When the codes were entered and the unit unlocked everything functioned as mentioned in the instructions.

==> Connect *Just* the external plug pack power supply (Not sure if the Evo2 has an external power socket ? )

We did that again after seeing that the unit would not power up from the OBDII port.
Yes the Evo II has an external power socket, and one is told that the usb port does not supply power.

*** Make SURE you have correct polarity and voltage BEFORE you connect the power supply ***

Yes, the polarity and voltage was checked before connecting


You could have a problem with the ODBII socket in the vehicle - mine has very weak contacts and tends to let go of the Evo's cable.

Like I said in my write up the plug seems to loose contact, and that my son saved the data up to that point, and then opened another file.
Also when we found that the unit didn't power up in the 99 td5 we tried it in the 2005 td5 OBDII port.


There could be a problem with the cable itself, maybe a broken solder joint in the connector ?

Maybe, but the unit woldn't even power up from the mains to 12v transformer lead.

There could be an internal problem with the Evo, but since it worked to start with, I think this last option is unlikely.

Very possible, unless there is a reset switch somewhere.


Is there anybody local to you with an Evo ? Trying a known good cable would certainly help narrow things down.

The upsetting part is the closest possible known units are 300kms away.
This the main reason I bought the Nanocom is to be ale to do the diagnostics and the repairs in the "sticks"
My son will though be able to check and if neccesary build up another cable.





I must add, one of the main reasons I bought the EVO is that I am very impressed in the way BBS GUY on the forum seems to follow up on the chat and keeps giving us members feedback.
I am sure that we will be hearing from him soon.

Thanks Pete,

regards,
farmergeo

[farmergeo]

Lorryman,

What colour is the OBDII Plug? Blue or Green? or have BBS changed the plugs since Mattia's time?

Green plug was wired for TD5's only and the Blue plug did both Puma and TD5. If you let me know what the vehicle is I will check what the live pin is so you can put a DMM on it to see it's not a power issue at the vehicle OBDII end. Also you could do a continuity check on the OBDII cable and plugs to rule that out as a cause.

The OBDII plug is blue, and we tried it on a 99 and 05 td5. I will get my son to do a continuity check in the meantime on all the cables.
Thank you,
farmergeo

[Lorryman100]

One would just think that because the units are shipped from Cypress (very limited market) every care would be taken to make sure that the units and all the connecting cables are working properley.

I do believe that BBS test everything that gets shipped including accessories before shipping. I recently got a MSV2 and the check sheet was attached to the inside of the MSV box and was assembled by one person and checked by another.

[BBS Guy]

Hiya all. Sorry to hear your woes Farmergeo, I understand you must be upset and frustrated, probably more so than if it did not work from the start, as then you would not know what a brilliant bit of kit it is and might not be so desperate to get it going again ;)

For what it is worth, everyone had to wait to get their hands on these, some for much longer, and no one knew just what a nice job we were doing and that the wait would be so worth it.

It was only the fact that you were on the list at all that saw you able to get one so quickly and in fact today is the first day we can ship to customers not on the list although i know this won't be the case for more than a few days.

I guess that given the truly vast amount of these we have shipped in just a couple of weeks, and how quickly we tried to get them available again, there was bound to be the odd problem.
It's only a shame that hardly anyone ever writes in or posts up to say how pleased they are, worth the wait, nice job, or to say that they had no problems, But we sure do get to hear about it when someone does have a problem :eek:

Although it was unfortunate enough that this happened on a Saturday when we would normally be closed for 2 days anyway, you also had an additional days delay in getting an answer from BBS which was caused by the fact it was a Bank holiday here yesterday. Even although i was very hard at work elsewhere. :(


One would just think that because the units are shipped from Cypress (very limited market) every care would be taken to make sure that the units and all the connecting cables are working properley. Your apparent assumption that we do not already take every possible care regardless of our, or a customers, geographic location is absolutely not the case. Everything we ship is tested multiple times before dispatch. :angel:

Co incidentally I do not think that there was anything physically wrong with your unit and certainly it is very unlikely that you have a lead or connection problem.

I am fairly certain that your only problem would have been occasional communication disconnections and from the TD5 Engine Management while the engine is running causing freezing up or dropping out of live data collection. This is because we have had a growing number of reports of some customers, now totally almost a dozen, who have experienced this communications problem. Naturally we have not seen this before and it has not happened during the testing we have done on vehicles and percentage wise it's looking like only about 1 in 20 are experiencing this problem. This can apparently also be caused by bad earths.

However late last week we managed to see and test the problem ourselves and get to the bottom of it. It looks like a global improvement we have made to speed things up in the newest software revision, has got so borderline with some versions of the TD5 ECU and / or it's Software, that the TD5 ECU occasionally fails to respond to a request for live data when the engine is running. Sadly in a few cases, folks who think it's their Vehicle, their Nanocom unit, their OBD connection or otherwise have tried all manner of things, which sadly can under just the wrong circumstances can corrupt the units firmware flash drive or have other un desired effects.

We have already made changes to solve this TD5 ECU with engine running problem as well as making the firmware flash drive write protected at all times, except during updating etc and even improved the restore function for the drive significantly as some have had problems doing this.

This is currently being Beta tested, so we really are on the case with this and doing the best we can to resolve it as quickly as possible.

I know my support team are now communicating with you to see if your unit can be fixed remotely or if it will unfortunately need to come back.

In the meantime might i add my appreciation and thanks to the many members providing help, support and advice.

I would also like to point out that all guides, information and literature is available from The Nanocom.it site

[farmergeo]

BBS GUY,



.................................................. .................................................. .........................
.............I know my support team are now communicating with you to see if your unit can be fixed remotely or if it will unfortunately need to come back.
.................................................. .................................


You are correct, emails are going back and forth from the support team and it seems that the problem is being narrowed down.

Like I said in a previous post on this topic,
.........one of the main reasons I bought the EVO is that I am very impressed in the way BBS GUY on the forum seems to follow up on the chat and keeps giving us members feedback.
I am sure that we will be hearing from him soon.
:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

Thank you Colin,
farmergeo

[foz.in.oz]

BBS Guy,

I too recently recieved my Nanocom Evo and have also suffered the loss of connection problems, but thanks to your very informative post, no longer need to spend the coming weekend trying to find an imaginary loose connection! :(

Meanwhile, I shall wait patiently for the software upgrade. Please don't take too long as first impressions of the unit are good, with a clear easy to read screen and easy to use menu system.

Can you post a notification on the forum when the upgrade is available please.

Regards,
Ray

[greg-g]

BBS Guy

I've also had the above problem but only on long trips which I thought was just a connection issue.
I've also just found that I have the old oil in injector loom problem. I only suspected there maybe an issue as the nanocom battery voltage was jumping around.
I've ordered the parts and it will be interesting to see if it solves the Nanocom issue. I'm not though planning any 1 hour plus trips required to test the result.

[BBS Guy]

You are welcome farmergeo

TBH although your initial post did come over a bit negative and yelling, i am sure this was just initial frustration and desperation and i must say you have actually been an absolute delight to work with and help. I am quite sure you appreciate that this has played a major factor in our being able to work together on this common problem and achieve the sucess we have so far. It will also very likely result in us getting you fully sorted without your unit having to come back. I anly wish others were more so.

foz.in.oz
No worries, you will likely have to wait a couple of weeks while we re locate. And when we do post up the software upgrade i will post up a notification on the board.
However to know for sure this is your problem, try the instrument mode for obtaining live data values as this is not affected, having its own timing.

If you still get problems it may well be the common poor earth problem.

There is actually a document on the Nancom.it web site detailing this

:: FAQ - Nanocom :: (http://web.nanocom.it/faq_i.cfm?articolo=423)

Also check this out greg-g as your descripion of occurance does not match the profile of this problem

[foz.in.oz]

BBS Guy,

Have been playing on the car this morning for a couple of hours following your instructions re bad earth.

There is no didfference to the fault.

Just to summarise, I can access ALL areas with the Nanocom with the engine off, however, when the engine is on and I access say fueling inputs I get a dialog box that says working. Then after a second or so the data flow starts to populate the boxes, then after about 2 seconds later I get a message stating that communication with the ecu has failed. This happens with "TD5inst.APP" loaded on start up or from the TD5 engine menu in normal mode. I get the same message scenario for the abs module too.

Regards,
Ray

[foz.in.oz]

"This happens with "TD5inst.APP" loaded on start up or from the TD5 engine menu in normal mode. I get the same message scenario for the abs module too."

My mistake, it works fine in instrument mode! Sorry. Just faults in normal mode.

[BBS Guy]

Hiya foz.in oz

Glad to hear your instrument mode works as expected.

Do you still have the same engine running problem in ABS without moving the vehicle?

[foz.in.oz]

Hey BBS Guy,

Just done some testing in the back yard with the Evo.

In the WABCO app I can read all the functions with the engine running and the car stationary. If I move the car, I can maintain comms AS LONG as I stay below the speed that the ABS dash lights goes off! As soon as I exceed that speed (~6-8pmh) I get an error that states "Cannot perform that function" then after a second the cannont communicate with the ecu meassage appears. I have to turn off the ignition and wait for 15 seconds or so before I can reconnect the EVO and ecu.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Ray

[BBS Guy]

Hiya foz.in.oz

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to test and confirm my suspicions.

I know some ABS ECU's simply do not support diagnostic communications when all four wheels reach above a few KPH, 7 IIRC.

It's just i can't remember which ones :(

Well it was a very long time ago when we first covered all this with our equipment and i have since worked with quite a lot of different systems and later technologies.

I know what you are probably thinking, why have dynamic wheel speed values at all if you cannot access them when moving?
Well i recall the OEM (TestBook) tests were all about jacking wheels up and rotating them by hand to test each wheel speed sensors input.

Frankly a slow crawl keeping to just a few KM would test all 4 at once much easier and faster, but then the TestBook did not have it's software written to allow this, was not that portable and was / is all about wasting time a dealer could charge to the customer :twisted:

Just one of the many reasons we do what we do and much better IMHO :angel:

Also i recall some ABS ECU's do need to have the Ign reset before you can re establish communications and worse still they then Block communications to other ECU's too. So on a P38 for example, if you read fault codes from the ABS and then want to do so from the EMS you can't until you reset the Ign.

In the hope of saving as many members / readers as possible from getting into trouble, as we do seem to have a growing number of customers who have managed to end up with what is obviously a corrupted firmware flash drive, including farmergeo, might i re iterate and re emphasize my earlier comment.


the TD5 ECU occasionally fails to respond to a request for live data when the engine is running. Sadly in a few cases, folks who think it's their Vehicle, their Nanocom unit, their OBD connection or otherwise have tried all manner of things, which sadly can under just the wrong circumstances, can corrupt the units firmware flash drive or have other un desired effects.

We have already made changes to solve this TD5 ECU with engine running problem as well as making the firmware flash drive write protected at all times, except during updating etc and even improved the restore function for the drive significantly as some have had problems doing this.

This is currently being Beta tested, so we really are on the case with this and doing the best we can to resolve it as quickly as possible.


So if you do get a loss of communications during live Data sessions with the TD5 ECU, it is best to stop trying until we release a software upgrade to fix this.

Sadly it seems like there is also a problem with using the restore function, in that it only seems to work when the unit itself is used to save a restore file and not when one we supply is put on the SD card.

So if you use the unit to save a restore file to a card and then get a corrupted firmware flash drive, you can use this card and the restore function to fix it.

Our Beta testers do report that applying an update does fix a corrupted firmware flash drive, but sadly as we are closed for re location it will be at least 2 weeks before we can generally release the first upgrade package which will of course also fix all these problems ;)

[bell1975]

Hi Colin,
I hope the move went smoothly for you. Are you back online for business again yet? If not can you please provide an estimate on when it will be.

Thanks.

[BBS Guy]

Hiya bell1975

I have updated this thread regards the latest news on our re location

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/showthread.php?p=1539248#post1539248

Regards

Colin