I don’t think you understand what our concern is with the PC, which is understandable because it’s hard to explain.. These units will work as advertised 99.9% of the time but our theory is you could drive through an area where some sort of electrical phenomenon is going on and that is what will cause the malfunction. So again, my unit working on another truck says absolutely nothing unless that truck drove through the same area I did without issue.
“EMC testing is necessary in ensuring that product immunity from several sources of transient phenomena and continuous radio frequency phenomena that are present in the electromagnetic environment. The transient events can be from natural causes - electrostatic discharge (ESD), lightning or man made - fault surges, switching transients.
These involve very short duration events in the region of nanosecond or microsecond that have high amplitudes that can disrupt or destroy electronics circuits and components in a electronic device.”
With respect and acknowledging that an internet forum is a poor venue to discuss this kind of issue...
You’re wrong.
First, I do understand your concerns, and I --just-- agreed with them in my last post in this thread. Again. Still.
Second, since it isn’t articulated from me, I’ll agree with your concerns - quoted above, concerning EMC testing as it applies to ESD ( I just took a class in this last week), EMF interference, RF interference, etc. With the exception of lightning.
If you take a lighting hit, you have way bigger concerns than your pedal commander. Local patrol car got nailed about 18 months back and it seriously injured the patrolman, and totally fried -every. single. electrical and electronic component. Harnesses melted, I believe the battery exploded, PCM destroyed. I don’t have the report handy, but the damage done was, well... epic.
3rd, you’re allowing confirmation bias to color your analysis of the evidence. You’re assuming that the new owner of the PC has no such EMF or electrical interference of a similar nature. Your video showed a parking lot that looked a lot like a strip mall, areas notorious for microwave signal and RF interference. They incite all manner of false alerts on radar detectors for example. Please keep in mind, I did not say that your old PC working in another vehicle was proof positive of a truck fault or that it ruled out the PC as the cause, I classified it as a possibility; I’ll clarify
this is strong circumstantial evidence and as I believe you’re trying to say - it is not proof positive, but it’s clear we disagree on the level of proof provided by this set of facts as to whether or not you have a truck problem or
had a PC problem. The 2 are not mutually exclusive either, which I touched on previously. While the same area may provide some troubleshooting value, we don’t know as a given what the source of the alleged interference was, whether it was stationary or mobile, man made or freak of nature.
I will further opine -
I would think at this point, ESD is unlikely as the circuitry would have likely been permanently affected. If I were trying to run this problem to ground ( no pun intended ) I’d try repeating the scenario and pulling mods one at a time, but it’s moot because you’ve apparently not had the issue again and removed the PC from the truck. If the unit is, in fact, insufficiently shielded from interference, it would stand to reason we’d be seeing all manner of reports of this kind of issue. We’re not. And, in stark contrast to the Chipwerke fiasco in which that product was allegedly released to the Raptor community without ever having been tested on a Raptor, with predictable, sub-standard results. I realize these two issues are not the same, but the point I’m trying to illustrate with the chipwerke comparison is that practically every user reported drivability issues, and Jax seemed to confirm the unit has not been Raptor tested. With PC the opposite experience has been observed or at least reported here. practically all PC users from the ’17+ trucks report positive results ( full disclosure, I have one ). Again, I’m at a loss to think of a single 17+ truck reporting some kind of weirdness like you experienced.
This is not proof, and I don’t think it really rises to the level of evidence, it’s just data, but the data seems to suggest there’s not a common issue if nothing else. Hopefully, we’ll get some follow up on EMC testing.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out... this isn’t just the internet, it’s FRF.
EVERYONE is an engineer on the Internet and on FRF, everyone has a doctorate.
