ECMs, and drivers, and software...oh my!

[Mr.Buell Man]

Hey Buell XB people!

I need an ECM guru, plain and simple.

The Dilemma: I have ECMSpy installed, I'm fairly certain I've downloaded and installed the proper drivers from FTDI on my guest operating system, however...I'm still getting a prompt asking if I have my FTDI drivers installed.

The result while hooked up to my ECM, constant "connection timed out - are your ignition and kill switch set to ON" error messages. Nothing more.

Another problem is that I'm using a virtual machine to run Windows, and am also having a hell of a time configuring my serial port to properly communicate with my host system's hardware. If anyone knows how to do this, I really want to hear from you.

My System: For background, I'm running Linux (Ubuntu 20.04) and am trying to work a solution virtualizing Windows XP and Windows 7. I'm using a USB to serial adapter made by FTDI.

Anyway, if you know how to get ECMSpy to work or can suggest an alternative (Like ECMDroid with a dongle) I'm all ears.

Thanks!

 

[Cooter]

suggest and alternative (Like ECMDroid with a dongle) I'm all ears.

This.

You'd be done already.

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

This.

You'd be done already.

Yeah...

Ordered the Buelltooth. Enough is enough already.

 

[Cooter]

I'm not saying ECMSpy is bad. It is a powerful Death Star ready to eliminate all bugs, once it becomes fully functional.
You just need a Glock.

 

[chief_of_smoke]

There is a way to configure it correctly. I had the same issues years ago just running windows. I had to download another program to get the the bud rate right. I just can't remember for the life of me what I used and how I did it. It has been a long time. Had to do the same thing when used my Bluetooth modules that I made as well.

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

I'm not saying ECMSpy is bad. It is a powerful Death Star ready to eliminate all bugs, once it becomes fully functional.
You just need a Glock.

It's all good, I know you're not. Just need my Glock for now, the Death Star will come.

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

There is a way to configure it correctly. I had the same issues years ago just running windows. I had to download another program to get the the bud rate right. I just can't remember for the life of me what I used and how I did it. It has been a long time. Had to do the same thing when used my Bluetooth modules that I made as well.

Well if you do happen to remember, definitely drop me a line. It's been quite the undertaking so far...what a finicky piece of software.

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

UPDATE:

Contact has been made! Finally was able to find a solution to communicate with my ECU in a virtual environment (Windows 7). For those interested, the trick was in properly configuring my host hardware's serial ports to communicate with that of my virtual machine. Here's how it goes.

If using Linux, you need to first add yourself to certain home groups that have permissions to access the services needed to establish proper communication. These are the "dialout" and "tty" home groups.

To see which groups you're provisioned to access, in your terminal, type:

groups ${USER}

Now if you don't see dialout or tty in the output, use these command to add yourself respectively:

sudo gpasswd --add ${USER} tty

and this for dialout,

sudo gpasswd --add ${USER} dialout

Now that you've added yourself to the proper groups it's time to setup your serial adapter cable. Below are the steps do add it:

1. Open a terminal window
2. Plug in your USB to serial cable to any available USB port
3. Use the command: dmesg | tail to add it as a recognized device, and to see it's corresponding device name. In this case it was ttyUSB0
(You might need to also use the command sudo su in case you get a permission denied massage while trying to run the above command)
4. Open Virtual Box, open the settings for the machine you're configuring, and click on Serial Ports
5. Check the box enabling Serial Port 1
6. For the port number, choose COM1
7. Set port mode to Host Device
8. In the Path/Address box, type the system path to the device. With Ubuntu, it's: /dev/ttyUSB0
9. Click OK and you're good to go! Just make sure you've got your cable plugged in before booting your virtual machine, otherwise you'll get an error message signalling a failed boot-up.

Now your virtual machine should boot, and ECMspy will be able to successfully connect to your ECU via COM1.

S U C C E S S, that's the way you spell success. XD

 

[Cooter]

Thank you for spelling that out. Seriously :eagerness: But its still harder than pressing the app button to open it, lol.

 

[34nineteen]

Thank you for spelling that out. Seriously :eagerness: But its still harder than pressing the app button to open it, lol.

anything you say gets piped to /dev/null

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

Thank you for spelling that out. Seriously :eagerness: But its still harder than pressing the app button to open it, lol.

Agreed, but what else was I going to do while I wait for my dongle to arrive! For science I suppose.

 

[Mr.Buell Man]

anything you say gets piped to /dev/null

Hahaha, yessah!

 

[34nineteen]

Agreed, but what else was I going to do while I wait for my dongle to arrive! For science I suppose.

I like this guy already!

 

[Cooter]