Bad clone detected before attached to car?

[oldbod]

Hi again.

I've pointed someone at forscan pats functionality as he needs to add a key to a mondeo mk3.
He hasn't used Forscan before. He's sent me this message

"Also, got my ELM327 cable but (having spent a few days pulling hair to get the drivers to work with my win 10 tablet) Forscan recognises the cable butI then get a "unable to connect to vehicle bad elm327 clone detected" message before I even attempt to attach to my car. It would seem that not all ELM327 cables are alike! "

I've asked him to clarify some things, try with older laptop if possible and also forscan 2.2.7 but I'm wondering how Forscan identifies a bad clone and if drivers etc may be the issue rather than hardware.

I may end up sending him my cable to try to narrow things down...

[fred08155]

Bad clones can be detected by sending some commands to the adapter. If the adapter doesn´t respond or the answer is "?" it can be identified as bad clone. It´s not necessary that the adapter is connected to the vehicle for this test.
This feature was added to the last Wndows release to make it easier to identify bad clones.

[oldbod]

Hi Fred08155

Thanks very much for that, I do understand that certain responses or lack of responses can indicate an adaptor that isn't emulating a real elm327 properly and that forscan now tests for that and a jolly good thing too when one of the things that makes the software author's job hard is the potential lack of standardisation in the hardware.

What I should have asked is, how confident are forscan that the check identifies a physically bad hardware clone not host system problem interferring with things.

[fred08155]

I don´t know. It´s a brand new feature.
That´s the first time i hear about it after reading about it in the release notes.

[FORScan]

Yes, this is new feature added in v2.2.8. FORScan analyzes adapter responses and if it becomes confident that the adapter is a "bad clone", special flag is triggered. Then, if FORScan is unable to connect to vehicle or identify it AND the flag is triggered, this message is displayed:

bad_clone2.png (52.84 KiB) Viewed 22708 times

If FORScan is able to connect and identify the vehicle, this error will not be displayed, even if the special flag is triggered. So theoretically there is a chance that in the case described the adapter will work if the user connects it to his Mondeo Mk3. Practically, the chance is close to zero. We tested this feature quite thoroughly with several different bad clones specially ordered for this test, and also counting all the stats we have from the users who sent us their logs. Anyway, if anyone has any doubt about this featyre, s/he can do it (connect to vehicle) or roll FORScan back to v2.2.7 (that has no such feature). We are ready to quickly fix any issue found with this feature.

[oldbod]

Thanks very much for the yet again excellent support. I suggested they try 2.2.7 before i posted here just in case but havent heard back yet. I am not optomistic though, but if they succeed will let you know.

Thanks again for an excellent product.

[chongvohai]

Hi,
I bought ELM 327 from amazon and met the same error.
ELM 327 link: http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Diagnosti ... _sim_263_2

Is my adapter bad clone or have other error like wrong COM connection setting,...

Thanks,
chongvohai

[chongvohai]

Hi,
I bought ELM 327 from amazon and met the same error.
ELM 327 link: http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Diagnosti ... _sim_263_2

Is my adapter bad clone or have other error like wrong COM connection setting,...

Thanks,
chongvohai

This is my terminal test log

Code: Select all

ATI
ELM327 v1.5

>ATPPS
?

>ATI
ELM327 v1.5

>ATE0
OK

>ATL0
OK

>ATH0
OK

>ATR1
?

>ATST32
OK

>ATS0
OK

>ATAT1
OK

>ATCF700
OK

>ATCMF00
OK

>ATI
ELM327 v1.5

[FORScan]

This adapter is bad clone.