June 2021

The flash programming of electronic control units (ECUs) in vehicles has now become widely accepted: There are anywhere between 3 and 120 ECUs depending on the market segment. These can usually be supplied with new software directly or via a gateway using a tester. This capability is used in a number of ways, although a vehicle interface currently has to be plugged in to mediate between the programming application and the ECUs. In the future, over-the-air updates will open up further possibilities.

Virtually identical user interfaces are required in test systems on a regular basis for new vehicles, new ECUs or even ECU variants – usually with only a few minor adjustments. Particularly, the high-end interfaces demanded by users today – in terms of the display, but also in terms of the operating concept – prove to be extremely time-consuming. The design templates in the after-sales tester Softing TDX help you work faster and ensure you gain top-quality results in a very short time.

After replacing or repairing vehicle components, the ECU and its peripherals must be adapted to each other again. In addition to only functional sequences, interaction with operating personnel to start individual process steps or enter parameters is often necessary. The advantages that OTX and the Softing OTX tools offer for a fast and robust realization of commissioning sequences are obvious.

The ISO standard on diagnostic communication “Diagnostics over Internet Protocol” – or DoIP for short, is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern vehicle architectures. This is not surprising as the advantages of this innovation are obvious. On the Internet, it is normal to transmit large amounts of data – in modern vehicles, data packages of several GBytes are no longer unusual. The trend towards remote diagnostics is also unstoppable, which is why the current edition of the ISO 13400 standard details the necessary data backup. The answer: DoIP with TLS.

Vehicle Communication Interfaces (VCIs) are the central component when it comes to tester systems accessing the electronic control units (ECUs) that perform a wide range of control and regulation tasks in modern vehicles, including diagnostic functionality. The answer to the increasingly complex tasks and requirements of diagnostics is the multipurpose VCI VIN|ING 2000.