Select your DashCAN product and your ECU below to see the matching step by step setup guide.
Not listed? Any ECU that broadcasts on CAN can be mapped by hand, see the note at the bottom of this page.
Connect the CAN bus wires from the ECU to the OBD connector. To connect them you will need 2 pins which are missing from the OBD connector. The easiest way is to get an OBD connector from a scrap dealer and reuse the legs in it.
In the OBD connector, connect the CANH wire to pin 6 and the CANL wire to pin 14. It is important that this pair of wires has to be a twisted pair, as this will ensure signal integrity, and the total length of the wires should not exceed 1.5 meters. The pins the wires come from on the ECU side are in the ECU section below.
Note: Some cars (e.g. Skoda Octavia RS) may have a CAN bus in the OBD connector, but it is not connected to the engine control unit, so you have to wire it in this case too!
For further help on wiring, please visit the Technical Help page.
CAN High is on leg 60 and CAN Low is on leg 58 of the ECU connector.
The bus runs at 500 kbit/s, which every DashCAN interface supports.
Download the 2 files from the "Downloads" section below and open the "Ignitron ECU" Windows program. Connect your laptop to the ECU.
Make sure your ECU has the V1.25 Firmware or newer!
Open the "CAN communication" menu on the left, then tick the "Send custom CAN messages" and "Receive custom CAN messages" options. Two new menu items should appear in the left menu column with the same names.
Open the menu item "Send custom CAN messages" and click on the "Import" button. Find the appropriate file and import it. Repeat this in the "Receive custom CAN messages" menu.
These are the channels DashCAN can decode from this ECU. Channels your engine does not measure or your ECU does not transmit simply stay empty.
After installing the app, launch it and then approve all the permission requests and turn on Bluetooth, otherwise the app will not work properly!
Open the app, go to Settings and then the CAN bus page.
The baud rate has to match the bit rate your ECU broadcasts at. On the DashCAN OBD and Wire-in interfaces it is fixed at 500 kbit/s and the selector stays greyed out, on the DashCAN Apex you can pick it.
120 Ohm termination: leave it off when you tap into a bus that already works (a factory bus, a Haltech CAN hub, a Syvecs plug and play kit). Turn it on only when DashCAN and the ECU are the only two devices on the bus and nothing else terminates it. The switch needs hardware version 1.07 or newer.
If everything is done correctly the app connects to the DashCAN interface automatically. Start the engine and watch the RPM gauge: as soon as it follows the engine, the CAN side is working and you are ready to log.
If every gauge stays at zero, work through this list:
Still nothing? Contact us with your car, your ECU and its firmware version, and which DashCAN product you have.
DashCAN reads plain CAN broadcasts, so any ECU that can transmit one can be made to work. Pick the closest ECU in the list, then open the settings of each gauge in the app and set the CAN ID, start bit, length and byte order to match your ECU's broadcast, exactly as its documentation describes it.
Contact us and we will help you map it, and if the ECU is common enough we will add it to the app.