G4X Laptop connectivity issues

[Adamw]

On 1/23/2021 at 2:05 PM, koracing said:

I'm getting an error trying to install the 6.19.65 software on my xp laptop

PC Link works in either 32bit or 64bit from Windows 7 and up, but I think XP will be a problem due to the old openGL version. 

[jrdnclrk]

I too am having connectivity issues with my link storm g4x and my Dell Inspiron 15-3567 . With key on engine not running. It will connect and disconnect several times and never hold a connection. This is without moving the laptop ecu or anything. So the connection issue must be with my laptop or the g4x ecu. This is very frustrating to deal with and work around.  I have less than 5 seconds of connectivity before the laptop is searching for the ecu again. This wasn’t always the case. It has only started to happen after I tried to set my base timing for my trigger 1. 

[Adamw]

3 hours ago, jrdnclrk said:

I too am having connectivity issues with my link storm g4x and my Dell Inspiron 15-3567 . With key on engine not running. It will connect and disconnect several times and never hold a connection. This is without moving the laptop ecu or anything. So the connection issue must be with my laptop or the g4x ecu. This is very frustrating to deal with and work around.  I have less than 5 seconds of connectivity before the laptop is searching for the ecu again. This wasn’t always the case. It has only started to happen after I tried to set my base timing for my trigger 1. 

Are you using 6.19 firmware and do you have the connection port set to USB?

[jrdnclrk]

29 minutes ago, Adamw said:

Are you using 6.19 firmware and do you have the connection port set to USB?

Yes and yes

[Adamw]

9 hours ago, jrdnclrk said:

I too am having connectivity issues with my link storm g4x and my Dell Inspiron 15-3567 . With key on engine not running. It will connect and disconnect several times and never hold a connection. This is without moving the laptop ecu or anything. So the connection issue must be with my laptop or the g4x ecu. This is very frustrating to deal with and work around.  I have less than 5 seconds of connectivity before the laptop is searching for the ecu again. This wasn’t always the case. It has only started to happen after I tried to set my base timing for my trigger 1. 

What ecu and car do you have?  There shouldnt be any EMI issues with engine not running, sounds like potentially some other issue.  Does the engine run?

[jrdnclrk]

8 hours ago, Adamw said:

What ecu and car do you have?  There shouldnt be any EMI issues with engine not running, sounds like potentially some other issue.  Does the engine run?

I am running a link storm g4x.. I have a 1jzgte. And yes the engine runs. The connection issues are between laptop and ecu. No other issues at this time. 

[link_user]

I tried an almost new Lenovo Ideapad and no luck with it. Only 5 sec of connection when the engine is running.  Still using a HP Elite Book 850 G1, going without disconnect like with the G4+.     Anyone tried a newer Thinkpad 400 or 500 series? Those are more robustly built.  Similar to an Elite Book which is top of the line at HP.

[TechDave]

I have a Thinkpad X280 which has never lost connection.

[koracing]

On 1/26/2021 at 1:13 AM, TechDave said:

I have a Thinkpad X280 which has never lost connection.

I'm willing to bet money that if you sent me your laptop it will lose connection on the car here...

[koracing]

Have a buddy with a Lenovo thinkpad x1 carbon with a core i5 processor (not sure on exact age but it was small and light with one USB A port on each side) - tried it and it immediately disconneccted.  Unplugged and plugged into the port on the other side and it actually stayed connected for 10 minutes!  This was with a shortened Tripp-Lite active extension cable (7 feet long) and the tech support ferrite bead cable.  Unfortunately somehow I damaged the extension cable when it got closed in the door of the car and after repairing it disconnects every minute or two.  I have another Tripp-lite extension on the way as well as a Belkin active extension cable coming.

Any possibility of putting active signal boosting onboard the Link ecus?  I've been googling to try and determine the hardware required to do this to maybe make a right off the ecu type active signal booster, and if there are components in this hardware that could be experimented with to attenuate the boosting to better combat this particular issue.

[One Armed Bandit]

Came to start a thread about this but seems like im not the only one having issues.

Here is what I am finding. My connections seems to drop in and out a bit BUT it happens consitantly when car is under electrical load. (it also sometimes does it in quick succession, link like on off on off, I know this as the laptop makes connected and disconnected noises). 

I was trying to get oil pressure while cranking & the ecu kept dropping out. I assumed this was due to continued cranking the battery was the issue. However with another battery it had the same issue. I know the ECU was running fine as it was turning on fuel pumps as I was cranking.

Later I was testing my Thermofan circuit, When I tested the Thermofan the fan started up but the PClink then disconnected. The fan kept running though & PC Link wouldnt reconnect so I had to pull the Pwr on the battery.

Computer is 64 bit windows 10 & Link is G4x Extreme

[link_user]

Another computer that works is a Lenovo Thinkpad T560 Win 10. This is like 4 years old. New Lenovo Ideapad does not work. There must be something different on the motherboard USB circuit .

[jrdnclrk]

On 1/24/2021 at 3:18 PM, jrdnclrk said:

I too am having connectivity issues with my link storm g4x and my Dell Inspiron 15-3567 . With key on engine not running. It will connect and disconnect several times and never hold a connection. This is without moving the laptop ecu or anything. So the connection issue must be with my laptop or the g4x ecu. This is very frustrating to deal with and work around.  I have less than 5 seconds of connectivity before the laptop is searching for the ecu again. This wasn’t always the case. It has only started to happen after I tried to set my base timing for my trigger 1. 

Update: I tried a different laptop. I used a Panasonic tough book. Significantly better results. Constant connection at all times. There must be some compatibility issues with the newer g4x link ecu and certain laptops.   

[koracing]

Belkin USB extension cable (5M long) so far is working as good or better than the shortened Tripp-lite.  With the new software update I will see how it does in the next couple of days.  So far i've had up to 7-8 minutes of connectivity at a time with the Belkin, though sometimes only a couple of minutes.  

[koracing]

Ok, so the Belkin active extension and the ferrite cable seemed to work the best and I proceeded to attempt to dyno tune the car for wide open throttle.  The vehicle is a 1993 MR2 Turbo with a 4th gen ST215 Caldina 3SGTE swapped in.  The bottom end of the block has been rebuilt with forged pistons and upgraded connecting rods, ARP studs, and other good parts.  While able to maintain connection for several minutes at a time, at times it would still disconnect in moments or less than a minute.  I went through the process of setting up the internal logging to capture as much as I could think of I might need in the event that the pc logging was unable to capture the sweeps on the dyno.  Dyno is a Dynojet 424xLC being used in inertia mode for the WOT tuning.

The car originally came in and swtiched from an OEM Toyota Caldina ECU to a G4+ Storm with custom wired adapter to the Caldina ECU header pinout.  Car ran fine and was tuned on pump gas and pump gas + methanol injection in September and November.  When we started adding tables to the ecu for multi-fuel, that's when we ran into the 20 table limit on the storm and decided to upgrade to the G4x plug-in with customer adapter.  ECU is a Link G4X Xtreme plug-in custom adapted to the ST215 Caldina wiring.

Not one run was possible to get the PC to fully datalog, so the internal logger was key for this.  Beyond this a real problem arose when the RPM signal would drop out during a run.  By drop out: the rpm in the log would instantly go to zero, ignition and fuel would go to zero, but no limiter was active.  It seemed to behave somewhat ok at lower power or part throttle and low boost (10psi or so) for a few runs, but even then was cutting out.

It should go without saying, but this type of cutout could easily destroy a motor that was not reinforced with stronger internal components.

Given all of these connectivity issues and the fact that I still could not get the tuning done on the G4x even with internal logging - I decided to switch out the G4x plug-in to a G4+ plug-in.  The 30 tables on the G4+ plug in allowed all the tables necessary to get the tuning done.  No RPM signal issues, but there were still some connectivity issues on this vehicle (unsuprising as it appears to be the most EMI ridden vehicle on the planet) with the G4+. 

The worst issue that happened while tuning on the G4+ was at one point the timing table got corrupted.  I'm not sure if a store command got interrupted or what, but the timing table looked exactly like it should, but the datalog showed some wildly fantastical values:

This was resolved by re-entering the values in the timing table in this region, saving the file, and then completing a store command successfully.  

At no time was there ever a RPM drop out or trigger issue with the G4+.  The communication cable for the G4+ was a 12' long standard belkin usb-A extension cable with ferrite beads added on to each end and the standard non-ferrite beaded link USB comms cable.  Testing with the Belkin 5 meter active extension cable and the ferrite beaded USB comms cable from tech support on the G4+ almost seemed worse than the standard stuff.

It's my sincere hope that this car is an outlier and not the norm for EMI issues and how the G4x is going to work going forward.  I really hope the incremental fixes that have been coming from Link for connectivity issues for the susceptibility of the G4x to noise take a giant leap forward in the near future.  It is also troubling that it seems like there is more of a potential issue than just comms issues on the G4x.

[senordos]

I have the same issue on an MR2 but on a Link G4+ (Fury).

I’m on with UK tech support who are helping and sending me a ferrite lead to try. To be fair to Link, they have been very supportive with quick responses,  it we’re yet to solve. 

Symptoms:
- connects fine with engine off - updates and store are ok

- with engine running, sometimes disconnects when starting engine, and I can repeat the issue by trying to make multiple cell changes at once (say, highlight all 500 rpm calls vertically and hit Q or A a few times) or by doing a few CTRL-S store to ecu.

- when just generally trying to map, it will also drop out on a change to a single cell.... does seem to be worse if the car is under load,  but this is perception and not necessarily fact.

 

My setup:

- forged 3S~GTE on stock distributer / coil. Magnatec leads and iridium plugs.

- charge cooler pump in boot, but this runs a constant voltage and is on when engine isn’t running while ECU connectivity is fine.

- Link Fury G4+ (not X) standard comms usb cable, straight into laptop. I can repeat issue in garage on tick over. 

- when tuning I use an extension cable, have tried various ones but all exactly the same unreliability - predictable due to it failing without extension.

- have tried various laptops and also a surface - all behave exactly the same. My tuning laptop is a cheapish (£300) Lenovo. Tuned a GT-Four ST205 on a plug in G4X last week and didn’t have a single problem with this laptop.

I’ll let you know how this ferrite cable does...

...I do hope Link can fix this though as it really is a killer.

 

[Adamw]

27 minutes ago, senordos said:

I have the same issue on an MR2 but on a Link G4+ (Fury).

I’m on with UK tech support who are helping and sending me a ferrite lead to try. To be fair to Link, they have been very supportive with quick responses,  it we’re yet to solve. 

Symptoms:
- connects fine with engine off - updates and store are ok

- with engine running, sometimes disconnects when starting engine, and I can repeat the issue by trying to make multiple cell changes at once (say, highlight all 500 rpm calls vertically and hit Q or A a few times) or by doing a few CTRL-S store to ecu.

- when just generally trying to map, it will also drop out on a change to a single cell.... does seem to be worse if the car is under load,  but this is perception and not necessarily fact.

 

My setup:

- forged 3S~GTE on stock distributer / coil. Magnatec leads and iridium plugs.

- charge cooler pump in boot, but this runs a constant voltage and is on when engine isn’t running while ECU connectivity is fine.

- Link Fury G4+ (not X) standard comms usb cable, straight into laptop. I can repeat issue in garage on tick over. 

- when tuning I use an extension cable, have tried various ones but all exactly the same unreliability - predictable due to it failing without extension.

- have tried various laptops and also a surface - all behave exactly the same. My tuning laptop is a cheapish (£300) Lenovo. Tuned a GT-Four ST205 on a plug in G4X last week and didn’t have a single problem with this laptop.

I’ll let you know how this ferrite cable does...

...I do hope Link can fix this though as it really is a killer.

 

Senordos, This thrread is about G4X, it doesnt apply to G4+ which uses a completely different comms chipset, different communication method and has less than 1/4 of the data moving between ecu and pc and lower speeds.    G4+ was very robust comms and rarely gives any trouble.  For troublesome cars with a G4+ you can use the  CANSER cable and plug it into the RS232 port instead.  https://dealers.linkecu.com/CANSER_2

[ellisd1984]

I can vouch or the updates to the G4X.  I was having real issues with conectivity on my GT Four (gen3 3SGTE) when I first got it. I would be luckiy to get 2 0r 3 minutes without disconnecting before.  Now I can do an 1+ hour PC log without a single disconnect.  Downloading ECU logs is still a chore though.  It will just randomly cancel the download at any point and you'll only get a portion of the log.  It can take up to 20 tries before I can download an entire 10mb log.

[senordos]

7 hours ago, Adamw said:

Senordos, This thrread is about G4X, it doesnt apply to G4+ which uses a completely different comms chipset, different communication method and has less than 1/4 of the data moving between ecu and pc and lower speeds.    G4+ was very robust comms and rarely gives any trouble.  For troublesome cars with a G4+ you can use the  CANSER cable and plug it into the RS232 port instead.  https://dealers.linkecu.com/CANSER_2

Hi Adam,

Understood. My mistake - just appears to be the same symptoms. As I say, Scott is helping with this one and sending me a USB cable... if this doesn’t work then we can look at the serial option.

[koracing]

Small update on the problem customer 1993 MR2 Turbo car: As I posted previously due to the inability to even dyno tune the car via internal logging on the G4x plug-in, this customer car was switched to a G4+ plug-in and this allowed the tuning to proceed but even on the G4+ there was some connectivity issues.  Well once dyno tuning on ethanol was completed (404whp at 270 kpa MAP ~ 25psi boost on 79% ethanol), when street testing the car under load a new problem showed up: the ecu would shut off completely - no check engine light, no connection, no anything until the power to the ecu was cycled and then restarted.  In trying to sort out this issue over a couple weeks with the customer, I finally tried swapping in a G4+ Xtreme wire in ecu with wired adapter versus a plug in unit and while it at first seemed to help on his test driving and drive home from my shop, a couple things happened: 1. one of the 4 coils died (used toyota coil that came on the caldina motor that was swapped into the car) 2. In sending me pictures of his plugs I found out the customer had freshly installed non-resistor spark plugs when the car was dropped off for tuning last November at the start of what would be months of trying to sort through connectivity issues with the Link g4x. 

At my insistence he has recently reinstalled resistor type spark plugs (BKR7E) and another good condition used coil - and the shutting off of the ecu issue has gone away.  I had him drive the car for a week on the wire in G4+ to ensure the problem was resolved and the ecu no longer shuts down, and just a few days ago switched him back to the plug-in version G4+ ecu.  Still there has been no shut down of the ecu under any load conditions.  I am not going to reinstall and retune the G4x at this point, but I feel even the G4x would have been much better served if the customer had not installed non-resistor spark plugs.  I don't even understand why he did that as we rebuilt the motor and fired it up in late august and did initial tuning on a new set of resistor plugs in September, and when he dropped it off in November for ethanol tuning it should have just been on the same plugs.  Months of heartache potentially due to a "Oh, I thought those were the right plugs" customer error.   

I still find the Link product far too susceptible to EMI compared with competitive products and hope that more is done in the future to help alleviate these types of issues.

[senordos]

While I appreciate this is the G4X forum, I can confirm that in my 1993/4 MR2 having now switched to the serial cable on my G4+ Fury ecu (see above) I no longer have disconnection issues.

 

[barge]

Have there been any real solutions or resolutions to the comm issues?

I tried to upgrade from g4+ to g4x yesterday and basically wasted 2 hours trying to get it going before swapping back to the G4+. I can't stay connected long enough to even do anything with the engine running. I'm also seeing other odd stuff that's off topic for this discussion thread.

[Adamw]

Are you on 6.20 firmware, connection port set to USB and did you try the slow comms mode (in configuration menu)?  If you have done all that and still have issues then contact tech support so they can run through some troubleshooting with you.