WICAN not powering on when power is provided via OBD

[bogdanionut]

Hi,
I just received my WICAN from mouser today and when I plugged it in ODB port, it doesn't power on.
I applied power over microusb and that works fine(managed to upgrade firmware to latest). Tried to apply 9V to pin 16 and 5 and still no led light up. When powered over microusb I get 4.5V on pin 16 and 2.2V on 6 and 14.
Any idea what could be wrong or if it's a defective unit?
Thanks,
Bogdan

[mt104]

I also received my WiCAN from Mouser today. It worked for a few minutes when OBD2 powered, then no lights. Connecting USB power I see a very short flash from blue then orange and green LEDs then it goes dark and I don't see a WiFi network from it.

[meatpiHQ]

Could you please try to retrace the steps that led to this state in the first place?

I will try to reproduce here so I can fix this bug.

[mcgyver78]

erasing and flashing was successful, but connected to a bench PSU the wican doesn't light up. i´ll try it in the car tomorrow.

[mt104]

I think I just did... setting the CAN section like this ready for when I put it back in the car tomorrow has made the unit unresponsive again. At least I know how to flash it back to life this time though. My thinking was that setting things to Auto would be useful. In case it's relevant, I had it in AP + Station mode.

[mt104]

Sorry @mcgyver78 , I seem to have hijacked / complicated your thread. I thought we had the same problem.

[meatpiHQ]

I think the "CAN bitrate: Auto" what caused the issue. This is disabled in the new firmware and I'll remove it in the next release.

[meatpiHQ]

@mcgyver78 @bogdanionut I think we are dealing with different issues here.

Please try to erase the flash first and reflash the latest firmware. And try to power using the OBD port only.

[bogdanionut]

Tesla Model Y 2022. OBDLink LX works fine on the same connector. As mentioned above, I tried to power it on directly on the bench with 15V on pins 16 and 5, but still nothing, not even a blink on one of the LEDs.

[meatpiHQ]

I guess there's first time for everything, I might need you to send that back to me. Please reach out in the contact form.

[bogdanionut]

Message sent in contact form. Cheers!

[mcgyver78]

nothing,
Mercedes Sprinter VAN model 906 from 2018 ( name is different in the US market ),
work ok for a few minutes.
Battery Voltage is <14.5V , >13,1V

[mcgyver78]

Message sent in contact form.

[bogdanionut]

Hi!
Coming back here with more info on the topic...
I did some more digging and there was no issue with the wican module, issue was with the Tesla OBD2 male connector which was using PIN4 iso PIN5 for GND, so please double check this if you also own a Tesla and you have installed an aftermarket OBD harness. What I did was to shorten those 2 pins on the wican module and voila, works fine(OBD harness only has 4 wires coming from the car and ground was pointing to PIN4 on wican) - don't do this if you have all wires coming to OBD2 male connector.
As a coincidence, my bench PSU was broken as well, supplying a lower voltage than wican needed.

Thanks,
Bogdan

[meatpiHQ]

@bogdanionut good catch!