VIDA Software update bought online

[madslick]

Thanks for the input Shammyh and others.
My internet service provider (ATT) just crippled me with some recent updates rendering my network worthless.
I'm partially up now.

[vtl]

shammyh, are you serious? Your fully operational and charged battery will feed electronic modules for day or two. EEPROM rewrite requires slightly more, but still what are you doing is overkill.

[shammyh]

I've considered trying to reverse engineer the protocol, however, VIDA is based on a larger IBM-created enterprise product, and as such, it seems to be almost entirely encrypted by default.

That said, I only sniffed around at incoming/outgoing network traffic, and haven't looked to hard at the local side of VIDA to see what can be done.

Perhaps a project for another day!

Any the last time I had a subscription was December of last year (2012). There was no issue purchasing, and further, my "company name" in VIDA is "PersonalUse". I don't think they're allowed to only restrict to garages though... Not certain though.

[shammyh]

shammyh, are you serious? Your fully operational and charged battery will feed electronic modules for day or two. EEPROM rewrite requires slightly more, but still what are you doing is overkill.

I'm absolutely serious. And this isn't based on my subjective opinion, it's based on my actually trying downloads and having them fail, or having the VIDA connection cut out completely.

There's also a Tech Journal somewhere (I have a copy downloaded, but not immediately available) describing in some great detail exactly how precise the voltage tolerance is when doing a software download. It also points out that many shops were seeing failures because of this specific issue. Now call me crazy... but Volvo doesn't usually put out TJ's for no reason.

I'm sure it's more than a simple case of EEPROM programming, as yea, from a purely technical standpoint it makes no sense. But nonetheless, if the voltage drops even a few tenths of a volt below a certain point, errors start occurring. Since the protocol is all proprietary (Volcano CAN), and it's not exactly clear how DiCE "programs" other modules, or what checks/requirements/processes are going on behind the scenes while that's happening, I just have to assume something else within the "programming" process is more complicated than it appears.

And yea, the modules themselves don't take a ton of juice (though more than you might think...), but again, I know from personal experience that it's very sensitive to voltage drops... take it as you will. It could also be because I'm using a self-powered knock-off DiCE unit, but again, since the TJ is referring to official DiCE units, I imagine it's a similar issue.

I even had a problem the other day when doing a quick diagnostic on a friend's 2007 V70. I plugged in my DiCE unit (again, cheap chinese knockoff), and the BCM and ECU weren't showing up in VIDA. As in they were completely non-responsive. I turned on the car, ran it for about 4-5 minutes, and tried again. Everything worked fine after that, and the car had been sitting in the garage un-driven for maybe 4-5 days. Obviously the ECM wasn't unresponsive in a traditional sense, but it was enough of an issue to cause DiCE not to want to talk to it.

[JRL]

EVERY Volvo dealer puts a charger on the car before downloads

[shammyh]

EVERY Volvo dealer puts a charger on the car before downloads

Every dealer I've ever seen... In fact, the charger is part of the "official" VIDA kit I believe (along with the stand and everything else).

Hence, stable voltage = important during software downloads.

[kamiar]

I am using a Volvo software often to hook up to Volvo trucks called Vcads Pro, it's the very something as visa in terms of ordering and downloading the software online, but after a while I found out where they actually save the files on my hardcdrive and now can use them for future reloads, although the files are time limited and sometimes vin dependent, but those can be dealt with....

So if you find out where the files are saved.....

[Antherzoll]

Looking for an update.

Has anyone had anymore success with this?

[pctechfl]

Looking for an update.

Has anyone had anymore success with this?

it will be nice if someone share the knowledge..

[nickbw]

Shammy This is all very interesting and informative and I am sure that those of us with the knock off DiCE are grateful for the detail. I would like to ask if you use Windows XP sp3 in your VMware or Windows 7 (Ultimate or Pro?) and to what extent do you install Microsoft OS updates? Do you install all recommended updates and in particular the most recent IE version and security fixes? Lastly do you have AV installed in the VMware?

Update. I have just tried to follow your guidelines in post about installing DiCE on the host OS as a precaution. I went to the link and printed out the pdf DiCE Firmware update procedure (only print first 3 of 5 pages, as last two are some general principles of electronic theory) and then downloaded the latest available Firmware version 5.6.1.exe (14.6MB). Back to Volvo's update procedure I searched for the SetupDiCE.xxx file in the download and of course it was not there. So I searched my Vida setup disk (version 2012A, well this is how it is labled but Win 7 reports it as being v2012B ?! ) and found the setup file in Vida2012A/3PP/Products/DiCE/ and copied it to the host OS desktop. It ran and installed DiCE (under Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit) fine. Then I found the version of the FW is 5.6.2 so, although no problem, I am curious to see that it is more recent than the version available in US Technical & Owner Bookstore as my Vida version is from China via Ebay.