Emerald ECU laptop problems

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1

Hello

Not sure if this is the correct room to post this in.
Anyway I have an emerald ecu on my elise and when I use the serial cable and plug it into a computer or laptop with a serial port it works fine. However my laptop does not have a serial cable so I bought a usb to serial adapter plugged it in and it read the ecu no problem, you can see what the engine is doing etc etc, the problem occurs when you try and upload a new map or upload a changed map. When I upload it the engine stalls and if you look at the data tables everything is set to “0” and some of the data looks currupt like the map description. I then have to either borrow a friends laptop or drag my main computer outside with an extension cable to upload a map again before I can start the engine. I know this problem is a computer problem rather than an emerald problem. Any ideas? Do you think my usb to serial port adapter might be the problem?

Thanks
James

2

Always thought you had to load a new map with just ignition on (ECU powered), but with the engine not running?

Never actually done it though - so I could be wrong. Only ever used the comms to peek at the map thats already loaded…

Maybe an email to Dave Walker at Emerald will get the answer you need. He’s a busy bloke though!

Alex.

P.S. I use a USB to Serial adapter too. Pulls the map in from the ECU OK - so no reason to suspect problems going the other way.

3

I regularly upload, download and generally overload my ECU, no problem.
It should work, so I guess you have a problem with that adaptor.
I’d suggest buying a cheap, old laptop just to play with the Emerald.

4

Has to be the adaptor, as the emerald cable ISN’t a standard serial cable, it has “custom” pins so I think you’re lucky to even get it read…

Maybe speak to emerald and see if there’s something that can sort.

5

It’s the USB to serial adaptor, the problem is that the USB port hasn’t got the power to drive an RS232 port properly, this means that you can read ‘from’ a device but not write reliably ‘to’ it. We have had this problem in work when dealing with older kit, one way round it is to get a PCMCIA to RS232 adaptor like this one from elan digital . But this can have other problems such as s/ware not recognising it as a serial port.
We usually end up trawling e-bay for an old laptop (with a proper serial port) and keeping that to one side for these occasions. HTH