Diagnostic attempted with tune in place
 

Diagnostic attempted with tune in place by the dealership, now the OFT shows a gray screen when I try to connect to the car. The OFT works perfectly for my desktop computer, just not the car.
The car has a problem with the front defroster in that it no longer gets hot. The car was in for maintenance so I asked them to look at it. It just didn't occur to me that they would hook up to the ecu for that. The diagnostic threw an error and wouldn't work. Now when I try to connect my OFT to the car to put the factory tune back on, all I get is a gray screen on it.
How screwed am I? @shiv@vishnu is it possible that there is a switch not set in the tune that caused the heat strips to stop coming on? I'm using the V2 beta.

Try disconnecting your battery and resetting your ECU just in case it's something simple? That may fix the problem with the OFT not reading your car.

For the defroster, check that your fuses are good. I believe the owner's manual has a chart showing what's what.

If those aren't solutions, then dig deeper.

Well If its the front defroster that uses coolant through the heater core and ducting to defrost, not strips. So I highly doubt the tune had anything to do with that.

Just unplug the OFT, count to 5 and then plug it back in. You may have to try this a few times. It looks like it didn't boot up properly (usually cause by a flakey power or ground connection in your OBD2 plug or, more likely, it wasn't plugged in firmly). Nothing to worry about.

My plug was pushed up when connecting the OFT and needed to pull it back down...grey screen was bad connection...now I just leave the wire in place and disconnect the OFT at that end.

+1 on what shiv said. White screen caused by power going on/off/on to oft in quick sucession. dont wiggle plug when inserting push it straight in. If its tight a small amount of silicone spray on plastic helps

nothing in oft tune should upset dealer software. i have techstream and it works fine with tuned or untuned roms for me,

see OFT TIPS thread link below

I think the dealership must have hulk smashed the diagnostic cable into the obd port.

My car is a limited edition with the fancy hvac setup. It has a special front defrost switch that provides instant heat and turns up the fan.

Shiv and Steve, I'll try that in the morning. I'm afraid the mechanic might have tried to reprogram the ecu when the diagnostic failed.
If the unit is married to one car and gets connected to a second car, does it give a message or just not work? What should I see if they did overwrite the ecu?

You should be fine even if they have overwritten ecu with a new rom just use the OFT to write over it ,as you will still be able to flash with oft as it just checks the vin matches your car its still the same car isn't it :D

It only when loading tunes into the OFT it checks the Revision matches ie A01C or B01C.

You will just lose what they have written. If you use the oft diagnostics it should read out the rom revision that in the ecu.

Interesting, this is what tech support at OpenFlash sent to me in response to my question.
"You have to be 100% sure that the dealership did not reprogram your ecu. Meaning when you took your car to the dealer you should have flash the car back to stock or do not authorize any sorts of reprogramming. If the dealer reprogrammed your ecu with a new software that will explain why your tablet is not connecting to the car. if this is the case it means that the tablet cannot retrieve the file that was originally in the car to match the VIN therefore it cannot communicate. "


Fortunately it is a moot point as I took the advice supplied by the friendly forum members (thank you!) and it actually connected this morning and rewrote the original file back to the car before going to work.
The car is now at the dealership so they can check out the diagnostic connection and see if that is working. I spoke with the shop foreman, who also drives a tuned FR-S, and explained everything that has been going on and he'll monitor the situation this time so we'll figure this out.


Meanwhile, the defroster worked as expected this morning. This brings up a new question. I'm not imagining that there is some sort of supplemental heating element in this thing, am I? It certainly feels that way when it fires up. Don't forget, I have the same HVAC as the top of the line BRZ.

Update. The diagnostic system worked today at the dealership after I was able to load the original file back to the car this morning.
I wish I could swap it back and immediately have them try the diagnostic to figure out for sure what the key is.

Weird, I thought it was possible to use a married OFT in another car but only for logging.

correct you can for logging diagnostics and clearing codes, done it definitly works