Direct Access


The term Direct Access refers to the ability to directly read and write certain areas of the ECUs code.  Use the tabs defined here to alter these underlying values.  You can change as many tabs as you'd like before "commiting" to the ECU.  When you're done, use the Save to ECU button to save the currently displayed tab to the ECU or use the Save all to ECU button to save all changed tabs to the ECU at once.

While saving direct access data to the ECU, the engine must be stopped.  The ECU is not capable of running the engine while simultaneously reflashing itself.

Show/Use Stock Values

One nice feature of the Direct Access function is the ability to compare the current state of any given tab to the "stock" values for that tab to see just how far you have deviated from the original stock values.  You use the Show stock values item in the pop up menu or the corresponding toolbar button to activate this mode.  If you use the item in the popup menu, then ONLY the table you're doing the popup menu on will show stock values.  If you use the toolbar button instead, all tables in the current tab will show stock values.

While in this mode, the table header will change to indicate that you are currently viewing the stock values and not your actual live values.  This is a view-only mode that doesn't actually change anything related to your current values.

If at any point you want to reset back to the stock values, you use the Reset to stock values item in the pop menu or the corresponding toolbar button.  Doing so will copy all stock values for the current table or tab in as your current live values.

Copy/Paste Table

When you activate the popup menu on any given table, you'll see Copy table and Paste table menu items.  These items do exactly what it sounds like, but it's important to note that these work on the entire table, not just a selected portion.  You can use these functions to copy entire tables from one tab to another or to copy/paste tables between the ECMLink application and Excel for further analysis/visualization options.

To copy to Excel, start by activating the popup menu on the table you want to copy and then select Copy table.  We'll walk through an example below using the TmngMaxOct table on a stock 2G DSM ECU.

TmngMaxOct table

After you have done that, a copy of the entire table contents will have been placed into the system clipboard.  You can then pull up Excel and do an Edit->Paste operation.

Excel paste

Once the table has been pasted into Excel, you can visualize or analyze and change the data in any way you want.  For example, here's a quick 3D plot of the above table data.  This was literally 10 seconds of work to copy/paste/plot this data.

Excel 3D

You can also copy your changed data from Excel and paste it back into the ECMLink application.