Broken after one day?

General Discussion Getting Started
#1

So after waiting for over 2 months I finally got my Macchina Board :grin:
I am living in Berlin, Germany and it was taking forever to get through customs.

I am qutie familiar with C programming and have some experience with low level programming (mini-os for raspberry) but never did anything on an Arduino. And I have no experience about CANBUS, but I was happy to learn something about it.

So I downloaded M2RET and all of the dependencies and everything went quite easy.
I connected Macchine to my OBD2 Port on my Ford Fiesta Mk7.5 (facelift) and just wanted to see if anything was blinking. And it did! So I opened a Serial Terminal (minicom) and I was able to see a lot of data. Great!

After that I downloaded SavvyCAN (compiled it) and went back to my car. Plugged everything back in and opened a connection over SavvyCAN. I wasn’t quite sure what speed my CANBUS was running and I thought if I just tested a few, some will display readable data.

I am quite sure that I clicked on read only before I opened the connection. So my first speed was 33kHz and it displayed some Data. But then I switched to another speed (not quite sure which one) and my board computer gave a warning sound that I should check my tire pressure. I was very suprised and immediatly turned my car off and unconnected the Board, because it should only be reading.

Quite confused I tried to hook everything back together but now there are no lights blinking and nothing is send over the serial interface…

After some testing the LED sketch still works. But after reprogramming Macchina to M2RET and testing it on another vehicle there are still no LED blinking if connected to the OBD2 Port and no data is send. The one button does however reset the board.

I do not know if I blew up some part of the circuit board and I hope that someone can tell me what I can do to check if it is even still working.

Sry for the long post, but I would be very dissapointed if it would be broken after one day in use and after traveling for over 9000km. :cry:

EDIT:
So I set the Debug Settings in M2RET and now I know that there is actually no busload but at least the board is being powered from the OBD Port. I know this from the time stamps.

EDIT2:
I am quite confused. If I plug it in my car and use SavvyCAN’s Connectinon Manager I can actually receive Frames but with the nerve-wrecking side effect of more warnings comming along (this time I am 100% sure that I selected read only). Two of them were: Tire Pressure and Hill Start Assist need service. But no LEDs were blinking on the board.

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#2

No LED’s blink on the board under normal usage that I have noticed… So I would expect that to be normal.

Try using the 500 setting for your canbus.

You can also try connecting to the M2 via Putty or another serial terminal and communicate directly with it.
Hit ? to get a list of commands.

#3

The good news is that I don’t think there is anything you could have done to break the hardware on either side.

It’s possible that I messed something up and listen only mode doesn’t work. I suppose I ought to test that. It certainly was working in the past but there’s always that possibility that something broke it. Also, single wire CAN listen only is not even coded yet so if you were using SWCAN you won’t get listen only mode for sure. So, that might explain the way your car is acting. This won’t permanently mess your car up but it might cause you to need to reset some faults. I’ve certainly tested on my own vehicles by setting the wrong CAN rate and connecting. You don’t want to do that if you can help it. You get the Christmas Tree effect on your dash. Generally removing the M2 and power cycling the car will clear most faults automatically. It isn’t as if these things couldn’t happen to a car anyway so they do anticipate a failure mode where the bus goes south and nothing can talk.

The proper speed for standard CAN in a car is almost always 500k but sometimes could be 250k. It won’t be 33333 unless you’re talking about single wire CAN. If you’re trying to read single wire CAN then you compiled the WIP branch of SavvyCAN and you’re one brave person.

#4

Yes. After power cycling all of the warnings were gone.
But no I wasn’t using SWCAN. The 500k setting seemed to be working now, as in I am getting frames.
Nevertheless I am getting a Warning to check tire pressure.

I will investigate more into this on the comming up weekend.
But thanks for the quick replies!

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#5

With Beta software anything is possible… Do you know if your vehicle has any other buses at the Diagnostic connector such as another CANBUS or other buses such as LIN or otherwise? Could be the fact nothing else is initialized causing noise on the network too?

Also, do you have any boards installed in the X-Bee port? I am assuming no since you didn’t say you did but worth asking.