I was curious if anyone has looked into making their own tuning cable. I just ordered a Tactrix cable and it looks feasible based upon the pictures.

Is anyone aware of any threads regarding this? I am starting to think my search methods totally suck. I get nothing but non-pertainable info. Find other interested threads nonetheless.

 

Of course it is possible. However, it's likely much more cost effective and MUCH less time consuming to just purchase one. $80 isn't a lot of money.

Parts alone to build one to the quality of the Tactrix cable you can buy would likely be $40 or so at least.

 

you can order the parts for a total of $4.00 for the connector, $5.00 for the USB connector and wire. Very easy to do. Just search for USB pinouts on the internet. why spend $80. total waste.

 

Thats a little cheaper than I thought ... lol. Good info. Any links for suppliers?

 

here is the pin out http://pinouts.ws/usb-pinout.html
here is the connector http://www.carplugs.com/
(its a little higher in price, look around for cheaper, allied electronics ect..)

 

Thanks for the info. I haven't gone to the links (will do so after writing this). I figured you could get the parts relatively cheap. Being an EE its amazing how cheap the parts are on most electronic equipment. Price usually makes the general public think magic happens in little plastic IC chips. The cost is usually attributed to R&D, documentation, advertisments, and all the other overhead in desigining something. After that its bulk order which greatly reduces cost.

I already purchased a cable since I don't have the time to deal with it but in the future I might take a stab at it. Plus I don't want to miswire something, give too much voltage or current to something and smell burning plastic. Back in the day I loved going to lab and smelling people burning up IC chips. The good ol' days....

Even if it was $40.00 I would consider $50.00 savings to be put towards a mod or an oil change!

Thanks again for the responses!

 

I wouldnt even bother with it. It is a hassle and a cable is only 80bucks.

 

So now the question is how do you determine which wires go where. i mean the pinout only shows soo much. do i have to disassemble a real tactrix cable to find out or does someone have a wiring diagram

 

I could be wrong about this, but I thought it's not just a straight cable (pin to pin), but there are some IC's in the connector housings? I've actually never taken my tactrix cable apart, even though I'm curious. If it really was just a matter of matching up the correct pins, that would be ridiculously easy ... however, since newer versions of ECUFlash have had issues with correctly detecting older tactrix cables, I suspect there's more going on inside the connectors.

 

dang man just get one on the forum it safe

 

I already have one, im going to take it apart for a lil reverse engineering. I want to know what makes it tick. There is prob a very small IC in there or something

 

here is the schematic, so easy so cheap way less than 89 bucks.
http://obddiagnostics.com/DataSheet.pdf

 

wow... thanks alot for the help man. im gona start making these, i already started ordering parts. am i still going to be able to use standard logging software or am i going to have to make a program or modify one. my only concern is that the intialization sequence might not be the same for this chip making it incompatible with ecuflash. has anyone actually done this yet or will i be the first brave soul

 

nice info man. to bad i already got my tactrix cable.

 

it will never work and joes car will blow up lol