What’s going on everybody, I’m super excited to be diving into
Chinese knockoff GM MDI 2 Multiple Diagnostic Interface for bench
programming an ECM, we will walk through setup, connecting it through
ACDelco Tis2Web and then use SPS to program the actual controller.
Part 1. GM MDI 2 win MD1:
Now these units are basically the same thing except the MDI2 has a
couple extra features as far as the WiFi goes. This thing will allow you
to connect to your router as opposed as ac delco where you’re connected
directly to it, so once you’ve connected to the router, you can plug it
into your car, pull up the MDI software which we will look at here in a
second and remotely connect to it without having to go wi-fi point to
point. the other part that MDI2 has over MDI 1 is that this unit will
do global b which is the latest communications protocol that they’re
just now rolling out. So most of you don’t need to spend the extra
money, this was less than 300USD for the Chinese knockoff now. Brand-new
these units from Bosch are about 1400 dollars and it’s kind of an
economy a scale thing where bosh has these things, maybe they make a
thousand of them ship them out to dealerships and service shops and
things like that. Well then the Chinese manufacturer makes 20,000 of
them, and they can sell for cheap.
Part 2: Hardware connection
So this should work exactly like the Bosch unit that’s what we’re
here to see and on top of that we’re gonna be using our bench force
power block too. I love this device, it is my favorite tool right now
for doing any kind of bench logging, programming, troubleshooting and
things like that. Cool thing about it is it has these nice proprietary
Snap on connectors that you’re not going to accidentally disconnect
along with your OBD2 port and your power port.
And then your ECM you get a harness like this, this is E67, this
plugs into the bench force unit and it’s not gonna come loose in the
middle of programming.
I’ve got E99 fifth flash sixth gen five and a half gen whatever you want to call the new 899 for the brand new silverados.
And bench force has been cool enough to send me a third gen for the P01 P59 platform that I’m going to be doing later on.
And let’s go ahead and get everything hooked up and connected and running.
OK, one thing to keep in mind is that MDI2 has to be connected into
an OBD2 port that supplies power or else, the unit itself will not power
up, it takes about 30 seconds for its power up.
Part 3. Upgrade GM MDI Manager
And I’m going to go ahead and pull up our screen here, this is the MDI manager
and here’s a quick tip:
I’m using Chrome Internet explorer whenever you launch this, make
sure you run as administrator, it will save you a lot of headache down
the road, but we will just search “Bosch mdi 2 software”, it’s the same
software for the MDI 1 and MDI 2.
This is V8.5.33.53.exe which I believe is an older version.
Here’s our unit, now we are showing that we’re connected, you always
have to connect up via usb the first time, but once you connect up with
usb, you can then come in here, sometimes this thing can be a little,
the software is a little finicky and it doesn’t want to connect, if so
just kind of power cycle everything and plug it back in and out, I’ve
had this happen a couple times and I think it’s the software I don’t
think it’s actually the interface itself, but as I said you gotta plug
in with USB the first time and then you can come in here.
After you get connected to the MDI2, set up your wireless interface,
and do your “Access Point”, if you want to do a the wireless side of it,
we’re just going to stick to a USB for now and it’s still booting up
over there.It is finished, now we can try and connect up, there we’re
connected.
We go the “Help”, we can look at the variations, this says 8.5.33.53
that is the version that’s on the website, now I downloaded this version
and it actually brought up an earlier version and it may have been the
version that was on the MDI itself whenever I connected up through SPS,
so keep that in mind whenever you do an update through SPS for this
stuff, you may have to reboot I did once.
Part 4. Login AC Delco, GM MDI 2 Scanner program with SPS
So now we’re gonna go over to AC Delco, let them login.
We got a couple options here, SPS is going to be the one that we
focus on today and that is for actually programming modules: ECM, BCM,
TCM and things like that and so I actually have four active right now,
as you can see over here, we’re gonna use one of my existing actives.
But if you need to do your own programming, you can add a vehicle for
two years for 40 bucks and it’s based off of VIN number, you can also
use this for GDS2 which is the later variation of GM TECH2 for the newer
vehicles, GM Tech2 only good up until about what 2013 on some
platforms, some platforms even before that might require GDS2, and then
they’ve got different prices where you can get three days access for 57
dollars for troubleshooting or if you’re serious and hardcore, you’d go
for a year 575, same with the Tech2win software where this differs from
something like the VCX Ddiag that software bootleg and so it doesn’t
work very well it’s very hard to get those devices to work so by
spending the extra hundred dollars for an MDI 2, a you have a device
that works like the factory devices that we’re using at GM. So keep that
in mind you can save money by going to cheaper but there’s gonna be
some headaches you could go a little bit more expensive, you shouldn’t
have any headache.
Now I will tell you notice how I right clicked on a Chrome and I
chose run as administrator, it will save you headaches down the road,
especially whenever you’re updating software, in particular the wrapper
for the MDI2. In order to work with SPS, make sure you’re always running
a administrator and you also need to install Java, but if you just go
over the browser and type in Java software, you can go to the Java
download, grab this version and it will work, this is the version that
I’m currently running.
so let’s go ahead, we’re going to grab one of these VIN numbers, this
is probably a Cadillac XLR and they’ll say oh I’m sorry I use this
because I was logged in previously it’s going to terminate that one and
let us open up. So think now we’re going to go into the SPS system and
on Chrome it won’t launch this natively on Internet explorer, it will on
Chrome it’ll just ask you to download these files, and once it’s done
downloading you can click it and it’s going to launch SPS.
Alright, let’s do this thing in the background, it’ll pop up a
software installation table. Now pay attention you’ll show your
installed version: the Tech2 drivers: 7, MDI: 8.5 and it says available
versions make sure you choose “do not install” on these older versions,
but we need to install this J2535 Wrapper, this is what allows SPS to
talk to the MDI2 and if you do not run this as administrator, this will
not work, trust me I know because I tried.
So now that we’ve read as administrator, you can see that we have installed it successfully.
If we hit this button “SPS will pop up, let me drag it over so we can
see it and here it is now whenever we select it we’re going to do a
J2534 tool and we are “Replace and program ECU”, because we have an ECM
that we don’t know that is necessary for this vehicle, I’m going to go
ahead and plug it in now, and then we will hit “Next”, should pop up
and it will say “OK” we need to connect it to the vehicle, let’s go
ahead and we will turn it on, and hit next, so it did not ask us which
device that we want to use I’m gonna go back and do “reset J2534 tool”,
it should pop up and say hey what do you want to use because it should
be asking us.
To choose a tool, we will try this anyway, but I have a sneaking
suspicion, we may have to restart. Okay, here, it goes now, it finally
popped up and saying hey which tool are you using and we’re using the
MDI2 in this case, if you have the MDI1 you would choose it, we will hit
“continue”.
And then now it’s going to pop up a window and say hey choose one of
these now I’ve got this device, it is not allowing me to connect. I’m
going to disconnect in the background here to make sure that is not
causing an issue.
And now we can connect here.
Okay, it is communicating with the device, I show on the device that
helps the cars lit up the usb port is lit upon the MDI2 and it is
connected to a E67 and there it grabbed our vin number that is currently
on the E60, actually this is the one we’re programming, so we will
collect next year and it’s going to give us. Okay so it says is not a
sign.
so this is the VIN number that is currently on this, this is 549 VIN, this looks to be a Corvette ZR1.
Okay we’re gonna go back, I’m gonna show you what we got put in here
and this is the VIN of that is on the ECM. Right now that is for a
Corvette, I’m going to paste in the vin number for Cadillac because
we’re trying to put this programming and it’s going to take us over to
our options here, so this is Powertrain vehicle control module we’re
programming that we’re gonna go normal VCI, if you have a specific code
from GM Tech line for options, we normally don’t have options to get
those code, so we’re just going to be normal and it’s going to tell us
turn the ignition off, remove the existing controller from vehicle,
we’ve pull it out and put the new one in, turn the ignition back on.
And we’ll go ahead and hit next, it’s going to communicate with the CEM and its gonna write everything in.
Okay, now showing us the different operating systems for the main
operating system that were available, you can go down here, look at the
history showing what all they’ve done, you know enhancements for these
DTCs things like that we don’t care about any of that because we’re
going to be installing the latest grades which is 12614654, we hit next.
And then next and it’s going to download which is already done, and now it’s going to reprogram.
okay we’ve got 3 minutes left before programming finish. I want to
touch on a couple of tips that are gonna help you in the programming
process:
1.Getting this thing set up as I said the big one;
2.Get the latest version of Java get that installed do that right away, they’ll help you out.
3.Then go out look for the Bosch MDI software whether or not you’re
using the MDI 1 or MDI2, both of them are the same software platform.
4.Now whenever you connect up to SPS the first time it will update
your device to the latest version of the hardware, so just be prepared
for that, and if it has issues connecting after doing updates like that
reboot your computer I have to reboot maybe twice to get this thing to
work.
5.The big one though, make sure whenever you launch your browser that
you are right clicking and choosing run as administrator that will
allow you to make sure that all of the software that is trying to load
whenever you launch something like GDS2 or SPS gets properly loaded.
6.Without that J2534 Wrapper being loaded this thing just does not
work, it will not find the device and as you saw whenever we went in
there we actually had to disconnect from the GM MDI manager because it
popped up a new window through SPS to connect to it, so if you’re going
through and setting this thing up on your network, you don’t have to
worry about this, once you get it set up you’re not going to be using
the MDI Manager anymore, then whenever SPS is looking for the MDI, it’s
gonna pop open that window and say hey which MDI or MDI2 are you trying
to connect to.
Ok, so we’re done and as you can see here there’s actually some cool
stuff that pops up like the warranty claim code in case you’re replacing
this for a warranty. Cool thing about that claim code will show up
there are specific warranty updates that come out for special vehicles
are certain vehicles I’ve gone through and done recalls on all my own
vehicle through that and I have the warranty claim codes, you can call
in and say hey, here’s a warranty claim code from this VIN I’ve already
completed this, stop sending me those notifications, other than that
he’s going to tell you to go ahead and turn off the ignition to reset
the controller and then clear any DTCs and then other than that we are
done, in fact we can turn this back on hit “Clear DTCs” button, it’s
gonna clear DTCs, but we would get a ton more on this device are this
ECM because it’s not plugged into anything except for our test setup
here.
Okay, I’m pretty happy with GM MDI2 clone there was a couple of steps
that I stumbled through on the initial set up, but once I got setup,
everything went smooth as silk.
