[Robben@ltbmw]

Originally Posted by 1QuikWS6

You've already gone way above & beyond with the DIY that compiled a ton of info from different sources into one neat pkg to review

Perhaps we could all chime in & compile a list of the different modules that will come up available that contain the most common items we are coding and exactly where the specific items are located within the modules?

that'll be very hard because each car have different name for the modules. ie. I don't have a NFRM module. However, compiling a list of codes and what they do is definitely a start.

ps. jw, do most of the cables have their 8th pin soldered out in order for dcan to work?

[DimSum]

Originally Posted by GenePoole

<rant>

No offense, but this is a pretty naive defense. Did you expect them to say "No, ours are crappy compared to theirs!"?

Look, this is the last I'm going to post on this. I've got three cables. They all LOOK the same because they all have the same plastic enclosure. The guts are definitely different in two of them despite the fact that they look identical on the outside. The third has a clear plastic enclosure, but looks like it was molded on the same equipment, just with clear plastic. The boards in two appear the same but one works and the other works sporadically (probably cold solder joint or something). The third has a completely different board layout. I'll post photos with the enclosure removed if anyone wants to see the guts.

For what it's worth, I work with microcontrollers for a living. We sell software that works on process control modules for process automation (MODBUS TCP for refineries and such). We get our modules from Indonesia. We get them in shipments in the 100's. We then submit them to a rigorous QC process and probably end up sending back 2-3% because of defects, and this is a company we partner with that tests them themselves before shipping them.

I really Hope you guys will have no problems with your cables. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but for my money, I trust the QC of DoIt, etc. more than some schmo on Ebay.

</rant>

Have you bought doitauto.de cables yet?
One-stop's cables are made by the same person. What do you not understand? Also the eBay account is ran by the same people who are manufacturing the cables. For them to produce a cable like that, you'd probably think they have the software and equipment to do the QC.

I do not understand what you guys don't get.
Every K+DCAN cable on the market is made by the same manufacturer. I highly doubt they will come defective. I've ordered over 5 cables from these guys and I have a do-it-auto cable I've had no issues, and they all were the same.

[1QuikWS6]

Originally Posted by Christina@ltbmw

that'll be very hard because each car have different name for the modules. ie. I don't have a NFRM module. However, compiling a list of codes and what they do is definitely a start.

ps. jw, do most of the cables have their 8th pin soldered out in order for dcan to work?

damn, I shulda known that nothing is EZ with BMW

When programming/tuning my GM vehicles - the ECU's are all basically same ladder design for Trans Am from 1998 thru 2002

[GenePoole]

Originally Posted by 1QuikWS6

I understand exactly where you're coming from - but I didn't ask him 'Are your cables any good?' I asked him if his cables were the same as, or same mfg. as the other (2) companies.

It turns out that one-stop-electronics IS their actual home site - if you click on ebay auction 'go to store' it goes to that website.

I apologize. I didn't follow the link. You are correct. It is their ebay store. My clunky cables did NOT come from that ebay store, but from some (now gone) other store and/or some Chinese web site(s) I ran across.

Hopefully you'll all have good luck with your cables.

Happy thanksgiving!

[1QuikWS6]

Yes - may the gobbler smile upon us - one and all!

[E90PAT]

Originally Posted by GenePoole

I apologize. I didn't follow the link. You are correct. It is their ebay store. My clunky cables did NOT come from that ebay store, but from some (now gone) other store and/or some Chinese web site(s) I ran across.

Hopefully you'll all have good luck with your cables.

Happy thanksgiving!

[GenePoole]

Originally Posted by jaguar36

Could you go into a bit more detail about the three different ones you have? Who'd you get them from, what chips are they using and so on?

I've picked them up over the years so I'm not sure of the origins at this point. Two are K+DCan USB and one is KCan RS232. Here's the guts:

[jaguar36]

Would you mind posting the part numbers of the large chip that is on each one?

[DimSum]

Originally Posted by GenePoole

I've picked them up over the years so I'm not sure of the origins at this point. Two are K+DCan USB and one is KCan RS232. Here's the guts:

All three cables are old...

The new ones onestop and doitauto.de are selling are Rev 2.00.
Ever since onestop and doitauto.de has been pushing out their new cables many china suppliers are trying to replicate them and sell them for 20-30$ less.

I've provided close up photos of the K+DCAN cable by one-stop.
Micro controllers made by ATMEL. High-quality indeed. Made in China FOR THE WIN.

I've been coding for quite some time now... and honest to say this cable(onestop K+DCAN) is the closest one to a real OMITEC interface.
Do not believe everything you hear, see it for yourself!

[tofu-]

Originally Posted by DimSum

Probably high-quality than some over-priced "tested" JUNK cable being sold from Poland .

why are you so bitter about the polish cable

seems like you have an ax to grind...

if it works, it works. cheers.

[DimSum]

Originally Posted by tofu-

why are you so bitter about the polish cable

seems like you have an ax to grind...

if it works, it works. cheers.

Just my 2 cents.

[ryanful]

Originally Posted by DimSum

Just my 2 cents.

I personally love grinding axes! (and it's completely called for in this case)

EBAY cable ordered

[fpf]

Registered here to clear up few things:

The design and QC is done by the owner

True

and he is from Munich Germany.

Partially true, I am German, but not from Munich

Only reason why the cables are made in China is because 90% of the materials (micro-controllers and ICs) come from there.

True, it's mainly about cost, most people would not be ready to pay 3-4 times the price just for the device being made in Europe or the US.
(IC's are mostly imported here, and often more expensive than outside of China, except you buy some 2nd hand stuff that got de-soldered and refurbished from old trashed equipment... But yes, all the stuff around, such as cables, connectors, casings, PCBs, labor costs are way lower than in Europe or the US, and there is a good infrastructure available here serving also small time manufacturing companies)

Quality of a product depends on the Material you purchase (You can't simply make gold out of wood), on the company that provides labor such as assembling, the mechanical as well as the electronic design and of course on a good QC.

Most electronic items that are available nowadays are made in china, all the apple products, 99,9% of the laptop, notebooks and netbooks available, TV's, DVD players. Those items are produced in high quantity and cost saving is also a big issue here, because the consumer is NOT willing to pay a high price for an item like this (take the dvd players for example.. PC motherboards, graphiccards...) Since those kind of items are produced in quantity for export and you purchase them locally - at the shop down your road.. you won't hear many complains about them.. most of those items are just fine. For niche business such as those cables - new, small companies see the demand and simply join by doing and selling such kind of equipment and they will do it "the cheapest route" because they don't actually know what they are selling and they actually don't care, they just try to keep the cost at a minimum to maximize their profits...

If you take the cheapest route in China, non electronically tested PCB's from a 2nd or 3rd grade factory, 2nd hand components (AKA refurbs), bad mechanical design and a non effective or non existent QC - and this is what many of those companies do (to save cost and maximize profits) of course the results are bad, and I am sure everyone here have seen at least one product like that, some a few more. China doesn't have the best name in those terms, and yes a lot of things like this are happening here, but they also happen with a reason, people expect to get everything for free, and even if a product is sold at a reasonable price there is competition going on and one company will look for ways and means to offer a cheaper price to the wholesalers and consumers. (this trend that is going on like forever already is mainly caused by consumers, because they want more and more for paying less, and companies have no choice but to follow this kind of trend because otherwise they aren't competitive)

A good friend of mine told me a long time ago, in china you can get anything - at/for any price, problem is that you will have to accept the quality. "You get what you pay for" - And this is more or less true, there will be always someone somewhere "trying to" do it for less, but there are thresholds and once you step under them, you will have to suffer from the results. There is a lot of demand for all kind of material and components in mainland china, and it really depends on in which kind of equipment they will be used, for certain things where there is a lot of competition going on you can expect the cheapest stuff, those are mainly high quantity junk products, such as toys, remote controls / receivers for them, cheap electronic gadgets and so on.

Anyway, enough about the "backgrounds" and back to what we sell:
- We only use new components, we do NOT use second hand stuff
- All the hardware design is done by myself, we spend money on hardware to achieve a mechanical stability where others only uses wires and glue.
- We know how our items work and we can make a proper QC (I use a special canbridge I built for the DCAN to check if the can part works fine, means data gets send an received over the can interfacing from and to the PC)
- We also do a optical inspection as well as a "power consumption" test on it to check for any irregularities.
- I do have tons of BMW ECU's and access to certain cars here.

The first DCAN cables we sold had dual K-Line (PIN7 and 8 joined, the time I made that it was fine to do that, since DCAN equipped cars did not use pin8 at all, and for many older Kline cars it was a must be to cover pin8 as well to be fully backward compatible, it turned out that BMW now "re-used" that pin8 for the latest cars that got ethernet available on the OBD2 connector, and pin8 is doing the activation for that ethernet interface.. since pin8 was covered by us with it's original use as a 2nd Kline there will be connection problems on those new cars. But the solution is simple, all you have to do is disconnect pin8 from the interface to work on those cars. Many of the other interfaces never had this "issue" because they never covered the 2nd kline (pin8).

We also do sell a OBD/ADS Interface, and till today it's still the only full working (industrially made) device on the market. (Not sure myself why others haven't copied it yet, maybe not interesting enough)

Defective electronic items can be found from ANY manufacturer regardless of their name/rep. Recently a fairly expensive Sony flat screen I bought was defective after only 4 days of use - it was returned and exchanged for a new one. You would think that a company such as Sony would never let a pre-tested product go out to the consumer with a possible defect - but shit happens.

Exactly, shit happens, and it can happen to anyone with anything - anywhere.

To GenePoole:
The OBD2 Interface on the left is based on a board / circuit design I did many years ago, It's function is based on the appnote from BMW covering all functions incl. fast mode pullup switching, power & ignition feedback etc.
The whole circuit does not have much in common with their original one, it's by far superior, but many of the ic's I used that time are not available anymore and got replaced by newer (also cheaper) models.
However, we always used a PCB with pinheader to connect the OBD2 connector to the board - so this one is a "copy" of my old circuit / board design, they just copied it 1:1 incl. all prints on the board.

Middle is a DCAN as sold by ECUtool.com, right one is another DCAN from an unknown source, first time I see this board.

Thank you for reading

Phil

[DimSum]

Thank you for the clarification Phil!

[Neutrino45]

Thanks for the informative post Phil! I have a 06/2008 E90 328i. Do you know if I have solder out Pin8?

[fpf]

@Neutrino45

06/2008 E90 328i
No need to as I know - only the latest models have the Ethernet on board. (But I will check again and try to post a list of cars that are confirmed to have Ethernet)

Cars with Ethernet:
2009up F01 / F02 / F03 / F04 (7 series)
2010up F10 / F11 (5 series)
Some other new F models that are on the market right now or models in the future are most likely to have this as well.

All cables of the new stock have that pin removed already, if anyone needs that pin (most people don't) he can steal one of the unused ones, de-solder it and solder it back in position for pin8. (Unused pins are, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15) It's easy to check (on our cables, all other cables on the market neglect the need for pin8 by default) if you got one of the old ones or one of the new ones, simply have a look at the OBD2 connector side, for the new ones pin8 is not assembled. As long as you work on DCAN cars that don't have ethernet there won't be any difference, in case you work on a DCAN car that got ethernet and you still have pin8 installed the DCAN connection will break after a short time, however on older K-Line cars you can reach modules on the second K-Line. In case pin8 is removed, it will work fine with any DCAN equipped model, but on old K-Line equipped cars you will only see the modules on the main K-Line (PIN7) Cables from most vendors are delivered like this covering only the main line on those "old" cars.

But there is a (cheap) solution for people that need both:
(Besides the option to put a mechanical switch themselves to connect and disconnect pin8)
We will have some small & light OBD2 female to male Adapter available at low cost (or maybe even included with the DCAN Interface) that can be put in between the DCAN Interface and the older K-Line equipped car's OBD2 plug to cover again all modules connected to the second kline on pin8.

Phil

[jaguar36]

Woot, finally someone who knows what they're talking about!
Thanks for all of the clarification Phil!

[E90PAT]

Originally Posted by fpf

Registered here to clear up few things:


True

Partially true, I am German, but not from Munich

True, it's mainly about cost, most people would not be ready to pay 3-4 times the price just for the device being made in Europe or the US.
(IC's are mostly imported here, and often more expensive than outside of China, except you buy some 2nd hand stuff that got de-soldered and refurbished from old trashed equipment... But yes, all the stuff around, such as cables, connectors, casings, PCBs, labor costs are way lower than in Europe or the US, and there is a good infrastructure available here serving also small time manufacturing companies)

Quality of a product depends on the Material you purchase (You can't simply make gold out of wood), on the company that provides labor such as assembling, the mechanical as well as the electronic design and of course on a good QC.

Most electronic items that are available nowadays are made in china, all the apple products, 99,9% of the laptop, notebooks and netbooks available, TV's, DVD players. Those items are produced in high quantity and cost saving is also a big issue here, because the consumer is NOT willing to pay a high price for an item like this (take the dvd players for example.. PC motherboards, graphiccards...) Since those kind of items are produced in quantity for export and you purchase them locally - at the shop down your road.. you won't hear many complains about them.. most of those items are just fine. For niche business such as those cables - new, small companies see the demand and simply join by doing and selling such kind of equipment and they will do it "the cheapest route" because they don't actually know what they are selling and they actually don't care, they just try to keep the cost at a minimum to maximize their profits...

If you take the cheapest route in China, non electronically tested PCB's from a 2nd or 3rd grade factory, 2nd hand components (AKA refurbs), bad mechanical design and a non effective or non existent QC - and this is what many of those companies do (to save cost and maximize profits) of course the results are bad, and I am sure everyone here have seen at least one product like that, some a few more. China doesn't have the best name in those terms, and yes a lot of things like this are happening here, but they also happen with a reason, people expect to get everything for free, and even if a product is sold at a reasonable price there is competition going on and one company will look for ways and means to offer a cheaper price to the wholesalers and consumers. (this trend that is going on like forever already is mainly caused by consumers, because they want more and more for paying less, and companies have no choice but to follow this kind of trend because otherwise they aren't competitive)

A good friend of mine told me a long time ago, in china you can get anything - at/for any price, problem is that you will have to accept the quality. "You get what you pay for" - And this is more or less true, there will be always someone somewhere "trying to" do it for less, but there are thresholds and once you step under them, you will have to suffer from the results. There is a lot of demand for all kind of material and components in mainland china, and it really depends on in which kind of equipment they will be used, for certain things where there is a lot of competition going on you can expect the cheapest stuff, those are mainly high quantity junk products, such as toys, remote controls / receivers for them, cheap electronic gadgets and so on.

Anyway, enough about the "backgrounds" and back to what we sell:
- We only use new components, we do NOT use second hand stuff
- All the hardware design is done by myself, we spend money on hardware to achieve a mechanical stability where others only uses wires and glue.
- We know how our items work and we can make a proper QC (I use a special canbridge I built for the DCAN to check if the can part works fine, means data gets send an received over the can interfacing from and to the PC)
- We also do a optical inspection as well as a "power consumption" test on it to check for any irregularities.
- I do have tons of BMW ECU's and access to certain cars here.

The first DCAN cables we sold had dual K-Line (PIN7 and 8 joined, the time I made that it was fine to do that, since DCAN equipped cars did not use pin8 at all, and for many older Kline cars it was a must be to cover pin8 as well to be fully backward compatible, it turned out that BMW now "re-used" that pin8 for the latest cars that got ethernet available on the OBD2 connector, and pin8 is doing the activation for that ethernet interface.. since pin8 was covered by us with it's original use as a 2nd Kline there will be connection problems on those new cars. But the solution is simple, all you have to do is disconnect pin8 from the interface to work on those cars. Many of the other interfaces never had this "issue" because they never covered the 2nd kline (pin8).

We also do sell a OBD/ADS Interface, and till today it's still the only full working (industrially made) device on the market. (Not sure myself why others haven't copied it yet, maybe not interesting enough)


Exactly, shit happens, and it can happen to anyone with anything - anywhere.

To GenePoole:
The OBD2 Interface on the left is based on a board / circuit design I did many years ago, It's function is based on the appnote from BMW covering all functions incl. fast mode pullup switching, power & ignition feedback etc.
The whole circuit does not have much in common with their original one, it's by far superior, but many of the ic's I used that time are not available anymore and got replaced by newer (also cheaper) models.
However, we always used a PCB with pinheader to connect the OBD2 connector to the board - so this one is a "copy" of my old circuit / board design, they just copied it 1:1 incl. all prints on the board.

Middle is a DCAN as sold by ECUtool.com, right one is another DCAN from an unknown source, first time I see this board.

Thank you for reading

Phil

You are the most useful contribution to these forums ive came across so far. Thank you for taking time off to register with us.

[moaad]

I thought this is a topic about how to code with ncs expert and not about cable's.

[E90PAT]

Originally Posted by moaad

I thought this a topic about how to code with ncs expert and not about cable's.

they are both related, therefor valid. Some people experiencing communication problem and were trying to resolve why the problem is so. Were diagnosing the problem to be coming from the what is communicating between the coding program and the dme; the cable. Some people would rather know which cable to buy and from where before trying it out themselves. It is still valuable information in the process as a whole. So, still on topic.

[1QuikWS6]

Yes Phil, thanks for taking your time to register and post all the info

I purchased my cable from you thru eBay yesterday (great price BTW) - got the notice that it shipped same day - I eagerly await it's arrival so I can get busy

I was going to mention to you about the forum during our eBay message conversation - but I saw your site has a Traffic Tracker which showed quite a few hits from the E90Post forum so I assumed you would figure out where the demand was coming from.

-Jay-
'QuikWS6'

[moaad]

Originally Posted by E92PAT

they are both related, therefor valid. Some people experiencing communication problem and were trying to resolve why the problem is so. Were diagnosing the problem to be coming from the what is communicating between the coding program and the dme; the cable. Some people would rather know which cable to buy and from where before trying it out themselves. It is still valuable information in the process as a whole. So, still on topic.

but now people are talking more about cables that they are chinese copy or not. normally when you're dealing with coding with ncs expert, you use good equipment and not chinese copy's.

greats