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ECMlink "no response received" im going insane.

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Alright so I'm gonna necro this thread with good reason. OP's solution was something extremely silly and luckily he found it out. However in my case I know for a fact my chip is in my ECU.

For the last 1-2 months I have been getting this error EXTREMELY frequently. Doesn't matter the order I do things, I hook my HP up to the car, start up Link, press Connect and it just throws this error at me. 1 out of 5 times it will connect and allow me to log for awhile, but while driving it will either completely freeze logging (or lets say JUST as I start doing a nasty pull) and it will freeze my log mid-pull with junk data. Afterwards I have to hard-restart the whole car and ecmlink in order to get it running.

This wasn't an issue the first few months when I got the setup. Before, I could easily press F12 on the go to start and stop logs and I could datalog for an hour straight. Now I am lucky to get even 5 minutes of log before it freezes or loses connection.

I am 99% confident it's not my laptop because it's a well maintained HP omen 2021 that has no place in a car but it's what I got. I am suspecting the USB end of the ecmlink cable might be bad and losing connection maybe from the bumps but I cannot be sure.

It drove me mad today especially since I had like a gallon of fuel left in the car and wanted to get a nice 1-3 pull to examine and it just froze when I flatshifted from 1st to 2nd. f***!
 
Check the caps in the ECU for bulging or leaking.
Could you be losing power to the diagnostic port, which would throw an error code?
 
Check the caps in the ECU for bulging or leaking.
Could you be losing power to the diagnostic port, which would throw an error code?
I guess it's a possibility? When the log freezes the PC remains active and is responsive so it's 100% to do with either the signal or ecmlink itself. I can remove the ECU and double check if everything looks good on it. How would I check power loss at the diagnostic port though?
 
Well thats a dam good question but it is what it sounds like is happening. Like unplugging the cord only you aren't. @steve , you are always good at our electrical, how would Stefen check for power at the diagnostic port being continuous?
 
What's interesting to note is that for some reason when putting load on the car such as doing a pull, it freezes the signal at that moment. So either something weird is going on with the electrical signal or maybe the software is getting backed up with data? But again this makes no sense because just a month or two ago it wasn't giving me so much trouble. And I just saw at the last log before dropping signal, battery voltage was 13.7-13.8 fairly good steady voltage at WOT so it can't be that. Maybe from all the G-forces and bumpy road, the laptop shifts back into the seat and maybe the USB cable moves ever so slightly that it loses connection for a split second? Come to think of it there seems to be some wiggle in my USB ports even right now I have a separate mouse and keyboard plugged into the laptop and I can wiggle the USBs a fair bit, not so much as to lose signal but still. I can preemptively put some more tension on the inner pins.

But even so, I go to my car, I plug all the cables, start up ECMlink, ,car is switched to ON, press connect and it will give me this error 5-6 times in a row until I re-connect everything again.
 
And you have downloaded the latest Firmware from ECMLink? I always keep that up to date. You could always try uninstalling ECMLink and reinstall it (on the computer) to see if that helps work out any bugs.
 
Alright so I'm gonna necro this thread with good reason. OP's solution was something extremely silly and luckily he found it out. However in my case I know for a fact my chip is in my ECU.

For the last 1-2 months I have been getting this error EXTREMELY frequently. Doesn't matter the order I do things, I hook my HP up to the car, start up Link, press Connect and it just throws this error at me. 1 out of 5 times it will connect and allow me to log for awhile, but while driving it will either completely freeze logging (or lets say JUST as I start doing a nasty pull) and it will freeze my log mid-pull with junk data. Afterwards I have to hard-restart the whole car and ecmlink in order to get it running.

This wasn't an issue the first few months when I got the setup. Before, I could easily press F12 on the go to start and stop logs and I could datalog for an hour straight. Now I am lucky to get even 5 minutes of log before it freezes or loses connection.

I am 99% confident it's not my laptop because it's a well maintained HP omen 2021 that has no place in a car but it's what I got. I am suspecting the USB end of the ecmlink cable might be bad and losing connection maybe from the bumps but I cannot be sure.

It drove me mad today especially since I had like a gallon of fuel left in the car and wanted to get a nice 1-3 pull to examine and it just froze when I flatshifted from 1st to 2nd. f***!
Check if your ecmlink cable itself has flattened contacts. Mine did and randomly lost electrical contact with the usb port on my laptop. These cables don't last forever. So I switched the cable end out around the same time I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 via a new laptop.

Now I notice that certain "factory" Windows 10 changes cause issue with USB connectivity when it thinks you're idle. I don't get disconnects when I'm on a power inverter but on battery, even in performance mode, it's totally random when it happens but always after being left alone for a while. Happens much less if I frequently tap the touchpad to keep Windows from thinking I've gone to sleep as often.
Perhaps ecmlink cables are sensitive to USB voltages and Windows tries to cheat.
 
For the last 1-2 months I have been getting this error EXTREMELY frequently. Doesn't matter the order I do things, I hook my HP up to the car, start up Link, press Connect and it just throws this error at me. 1 out of 5 times it will connect and allow me to log for awhile, but while driving it will either completely freeze logging (or lets say JUST as I start doing a nasty pull) and it will freeze my log mid-pull with junk data.

I had a pretty similar issue with my very old Dell laptop just earlier this year. I thought my old Dell must finally be ready for the scrap pile. But it turned out to be the mouse! Seriously! The mouse was causing the computer to either crash or just run at a crawl, so slow it was hard to tell that it was still doing anything.
I tried a different mouse and it worked fine. The ancient (Windows XP) laptop is still working great with a good mouse.

I had been using a "gaming" mouse on it. These particular mice last practically forever on my desktop. But in the car, the side buttons can cause trouble if you don't have them turned off. Also the gaming mouse gets all excited whenever it gets flipped upside down, turns purple. Anyway so I bought a new very simple Logitech M90 wired mouse with no special features and the whole thing works great.
 
Check if your ecmlink cable itself has flattened contacts. Mine did and randomly lost electrical contact with the usb port on my laptop. These cables don't last forever. So I switched the cable end out around the same time I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 via a new laptop.

Now I notice that certain "factory" Windows 10 changes cause issue with USB connectivity when it thinks you're idle. I don't get disconnects when I'm on a power inverter but on battery, even in performance mode, it's totally random when it happens but always after being left alone for a while. Happens much less if I frequently tap the touchpad to keep Windows from thinking I've gone to sleep as often.
Perhaps ecmlink cables are sensitive to USB voltages and Windows tries to cheat.
I believe a combination of these might be my underlying issue, especially since in the beginning (almost a year ago) I was not getting these issues at all. I will double check my laptop side usb ports and the ECMlink USB end. Another thing maybe worth mentioning, as soon as I plug the USB in with ignition to ON and ECMlink running, I will hear the "USB plugged in" windows signal, then the ECM controller light will blink green maybe once then go off and again no signal received. Could this point to an issue elsewhere along the circuit?
 
Today, on Fun with Electronics...

If no usb disconnect it's probably still talking to the controller in the cable but there might be comms issues there even though signal is high.
I would be hitting it with a logic analyzer at that point on the ECU side, if I had one..
 
If the ECU looses power you would see the CEL cycle just like a fresh power up.

How many items are you logging? There are only so many processing cycles and datalogging is a low priority. If the ECU is too busy it will drop logging cycles. If you have a lot, try reducing to a basic set and see if that helps.

There have been issues with the cables in the past but I suspect you don't have anyone close to borrow one to see if that clears the issue.
 
What's interesting to note is that for some reason when putting load on the car such as doing a pull, it freezes the signal at that moment. So either something weird is going on with the electrical signal or maybe the software is getting backed up with data? But again this makes no sense because just a month or two ago it wasn't giving me so much trouble. And I just saw at the last log before dropping signal, battery voltage was 13.7-13.8 fairly good steady voltage at WOT so it can't be that. Maybe from all the G-forces and bumpy road, the laptop shifts back into the seat and maybe the USB cable moves ever so slightly that it loses connection for a split second? Come to think of it there seems to be some wiggle in my USB ports even right now I have a separate mouse and keyboard plugged into the laptop and I can wiggle the USBs a fair bit, not so much as to lose signal but still. I can preemptively put some more tension on the inner pins.

But even so, I go to my car, I plug all the cables, start up ECMlink, ,car is switched to ON, press connect and it will give me this error 5-6 times in a row until I re-connect everything again.

Coming from someone who's had ecmlink v3 full for a very long time, I would definitely suspect the cord. If all other wiring is good as well that is. I use a fairly old laptop and when my old cable got bad, it got to the point it wouldn't connect anymore. My old cable sat in the heat and cold alot and was very old so it was time for a replacement. After getting a new cord I never have that issue!
 
If the ECU looses power you would see the CEL cycle just like a fresh power up.

How many items are you logging? There are only so many processing cycles and datalogging is a low priority. If the ECU is too busy it will drop logging cycles. If you have a lot, try reducing to a basic set and see if that helps.

There have been issues with the cables in the past but I suspect you don't have anyone close to borrow one to see if that clears the issue.
Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. By datalogged items is that how many I have visible on my live graph or all items I've selected to be captured internally? For my live display I have 40 items which I was using (and still using) to keep a good eye on my overall operation of the car. I guess I could drop some but I'm still not happy with the tune even 1 year later. Here is how it looks, also I have shown my "ECU connection" configuration tab. There is an option "poll connection (keep alive)". Should I check that? Does that 'poke' the ecu frequently for cases like these?

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Also I have tried all 3 USB ports, all 3 act the same way; it will connect 1 time out of 10 then let me log for awhile before freezing up. I am 99% sure I have ENABLED legacy USB function within my BIOS so that the USB3 ports will support 2. Like I said, this is an issue most commonly occurring within the last 2 months or so. Nothing else has changed; neither the laptop, OS, cable, car, ECU, nothing.

What I did just now before writing this is to slightly bend up the 2 prongs that keep the USB male end secure into the laptop's ports. They were fairly loose. Now it's a bit more stiff, so I am curious to test it out. If / when I manage to fix this for good I will post an update here, in the meanwhile I will try all the things you guys are suggesting. Luckily my neighbor has ecmlink on both his 1G and 2G so I can ask him to try with his cable!
 
Okay so today I had some time for the Eagle and managed to troubleshoot the issue. I followed all the steps in the wiki and all the pins/connections pinged out fine, voltages good. I then took some mineral spirits and cleaned the heck out of the USB end of the cable, I also unplugged and replugged the ECU connectors just in case and even tried a different laptop.

SURPRISINGLY one or a combination of those worked!!! It connects mega fast now, keeps its connection even when I have had the car or laptop off/closed for a few minutes. I press F12 and she starts loggin'!
So I guess just general maintenance on the USB ports and connecting/reconnecting stuff does the trick.
 
When I had similar behavior in the past it was one of three things:
- cable went bad. they annoyingly go bad sometimes, so I keep a spare now.
- wiring. after cable changes didn't fix it the second time I dug around and found the idiot prior owner had kind of hacked up the obd2 data lines, with cuts and shoddy splices, to the ECU, and these had poor connectivity after years of being nudged around. Cleaning up this wiring by replacing the shoddy connections fixed it.
- caps went bad. after checking the cable and wiring, I ended up finally giving up and shipping out to ECMLink. even though visually I didn't see any cap leakage (and had I know the values and locations I could have checked cap values, but didn't) there were failing caps which ECMLink replaced (for dirt cheap, they really charge too little) and bingo back in business.
 
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