Greetings,

I haven't been able to find anything quite like this in my searching. I have an oled commander for my PFC, and its behaving a little odd.

If I twist the key to accessory power (battery only, don't crank the engine) the commander always works fine. Never an issue.

However, once I crank the engine on, about 70% of the time the commander switches to "Communication Error" and cannot do anything. It does this whether or not its connected to the datalogit -> PFC, or directly to the PFC.

Sometimes unplugging it and plugging it back in solves the problem and it works fine, other times it just keeps going to "Communication Error". I do find that unplug + plug worked better when it was the Commander wired straight to the PFC, but that might just be in my head.

I don't keep my laptop plugged into the datalogit super often, but I can't say I have noticed an issue like this when monitoring data through the datalogit. That seems to always connect to the PFC.

Any ideas? Is there something bad internally in the commander I should try to take a look at? I thought maybe it was a bad cable, but I would think that would also cause issues on accessory power, and not just on ignition.

The second common thing I read seems to be a bad connector on the PFC itself, but since the datalogit works fine, and the commander has issues when plugged into either the datalogit or the PFC directly, I don't think they both have bad connector sockets...

All I can think of is either a bad ground somewhere, or something isn't quite right inside the commander unit. I would think a bad ground would cause other issues besides just the commander though.

Any ideas? I can certainly try to open up the commander, but I don't think I would know what issue to look for off the top of my head.

 

I had one go bad that was similar. Occasional communication error. My problem was at the base of the commander. The wires entering through the small rubber connector at the base kept being stretched until it pulled one of the wires loose on the circuit board connection, hence the occasion error depending one the position of the wire at the time. Unscrew the back off the commander and carefully check the small wires to make sure they are soldered well and I would also check continuity from the circuit board connection to the plug end to rule out a partially broken wire somewhere else.
Mike

 

Hey Mike, here is what I see. I don't see anything at the solder points that looks suspicious to my eyes, but I do notice that the ground(?) connector seems to be exposed a bit where it comes out of that rubber deal. Is that normal? Posting pictures of the entire board, but that's all I noticed. I haven't checked the continuity yet, but I'll do that in a bit.

If that's the problem, Is there a good source for these cables anywhere? All of the DIN cables I have tried to order for my PFC seem to have the plastic lock post in a slightly different shape/position.

 

My multimeter leads are a little big to try to get each DIN pin individually, I'll have to get some smaller ones. However, just clamping to the ground/casing of the connector has some level of continuity to the solder point for the ground cable, and 4/5 of the colored cables. The red cable had pretty low resistance to ground, but the brown, orange, and yellow still measured continuity with a higher resistance value. That seems a little odd to me.

 

My one wire was almost completely off. Yours are soldered on the one side well but the other side solder connections don't look great. I would resolder the ones where the wires enter. Not great there at all. Should be soldered to the metal ring completely. This may not be the problem but I would rule it out completely with the resolder.
Mike