Syncmate
- Thread starter Canyon
- Start date
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Canyon
you can get one direct from our own web shop, where you would have to factor in the 10% established forum member discount for Landy Zone members, our Ebay shop, or there are now many other vendors on ebay etc you can go to.
As with anything, you need to shop around for the best deal you can get, but in any event you should be glad that there is now such a low cost solution availiable at all, and better still one you can keep on hand in the glove box.
While i understand the lend / hire one principle, and i know you would expect me to say this, but it's really a bad idea unless you are planning to sell the car, as once this starts to happen on a P38, it is almost certainly going to happen again and again and almost always at the most unfortunate and in opportune moment.
It seems that even replacing the BeCM is only a temporay fix as LR now often supply refurbished ones which does not include replacing the microcontroller that houses the problematic EEPROM block. In fact LR seem to have a bury their head in the sand approach and you could well end up with a BeCM that was replaced due to this very problem.
A few months back a mate of mine who runs a garage serviced a DSE, after parking it up after the service the customer came to pick it up and it would not start. In a panic he called me and i talked him through checking the immobilser code with his Rovacom, sure enough it was wrong and a quick change to the right value had the car going. After kicking himself for panicing and not thinking to check this himself, He told me he had used his Rovacom to change the BeCM on that very car less than 6 months back for another problem. I told him it was likely to happen again and sure enough, less than a month later it left the customer most unhappy on a supermarket car park and arguing with my mate as to who woud pick up the recovery bill.
As i explained by PM to you, we have now supplied several hundred of these and have by popular request just now also introduced a GEMS version. To date we have had only one returned due to a construction error. But do you know how many people have bought one and then wrote to tell us it did not sort their problem?
Exactly Zero !!!!
I can only guess we must be doing something right
you can get one direct from our own web shop, where you would have to factor in the 10% established forum member discount for Landy Zone members, our Ebay shop, or there are now many other vendors on ebay etc you can go to.
As with anything, you need to shop around for the best deal you can get, but in any event you should be glad that there is now such a low cost solution availiable at all, and better still one you can keep on hand in the glove box.
While i understand the lend / hire one principle, and i know you would expect me to say this, but it's really a bad idea unless you are planning to sell the car, as once this starts to happen on a P38, it is almost certainly going to happen again and again and almost always at the most unfortunate and in opportune moment.
It seems that even replacing the BeCM is only a temporay fix as LR now often supply refurbished ones which does not include replacing the microcontroller that houses the problematic EEPROM block. In fact LR seem to have a bury their head in the sand approach and you could well end up with a BeCM that was replaced due to this very problem.
A few months back a mate of mine who runs a garage serviced a DSE, after parking it up after the service the customer came to pick it up and it would not start. In a panic he called me and i talked him through checking the immobilser code with his Rovacom, sure enough it was wrong and a quick change to the right value had the car going. After kicking himself for panicing and not thinking to check this himself, He told me he had used his Rovacom to change the BeCM on that very car less than 6 months back for another problem. I told him it was likely to happen again and sure enough, less than a month later it left the customer most unhappy on a supermarket car park and arguing with my mate as to who woud pick up the recovery bill.
As i explained by PM to you, we have now supplied several hundred of these and have by popular request just now also introduced a GEMS version. To date we have had only one returned due to a construction error. But do you know how many people have bought one and then wrote to tell us it did not sort their problem?
Exactly Zero !!!!
I can only guess we must be doing something right
Irishrover
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- La Trimouille, Vienne, France
As far as I am aware, new Becm's are no longer made, they are all "Refurbished". I do know for a fact that the main power Philips Mosfets are obsolete and only available from suppliers of obsolete components in crazy quantaties.
:behindsofa:
:behindsofa:
Irishrover
Well-Known Member
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Just a thing with the Becm. Unplugging the RF just stops the Becm waking up due to spurious signals.
JohnP38
Active Member
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- Alton Hampshire UK/Cape Town SA
I believe it is the electronic device that stores the code.It can no longer keep the code due to age and deterioration of the storage medium.Sort of like an old car battery can no longer hold its charge and goes flat after a short while.
I had heard similar IrishRover, and that does make sense, but then you hear a lot that you don't actually like to state as catagorically correct.
My mate ended up fitting the logic board from the old BeCM he had kept with the power board from the supposedly newer replacement for this customer. But i have absolutely no doubt that he is simply buying time for the customer.
This is borne out by the fact that we now have almost 2 dozen indies who buy these from us at ten a time to get the maximum 22.5% bulk buy discount and then supply them as part of the fix cost to their customers. This also happens with our kicker lites where they have a P38 owner with a repetative and problematic EAS that is uneconomical or otherwise proving impossible to permanently fix.
I guess adding an extra 50 quid into the bill and knowing that your customer has a workable solution that any idiot can use is much better than an angry, left in the lurch with a recovery fee one blaming them for having thought they fixed it.
Canyon:
The jury is still out on what exactly causes this well known problem. Some think it is down to RF interference and some think it's a low battery voltage thing.
I have collated enough reports to support both theories equally and have a few more.
Interestingly i happen to have over 25 years experience with EEPROM technology, i know it like the back of my hand and when you really think about it, absolutely everything i have ever done and still do is based upon it in some way or other.
Not surprisingly, and probably quite sadly, i happen have knowledge of it down to the micron level.
EEPROM wear out is by no means new, i first encountered it myself 20 plus years back in Renault / Phillips 661 and other model car radios when i used to run a car radio repair business.
The strategy was that whenever the Radio was powered down, Ie when the IGN was turned off, it would store the current volume level and selected frequency in its serial EEPROM, such that on re powering it could put the volume back to how it was and tune into the same station it was on etc.
However the problem was that the EEPROM was not storing the right values and users would find the volume way too loud or too quiet and that the station was just mush when they came back to their cars and turned the ign on.
Like mobile phone batteries, EEPROMS can only have their cells charged a finite number of times before they don't store a charge any more. And in binary, something that should read as a 1 (Charged) reading as a 0 (discharged or Fhooked) can make all the difference in calculating a number from it.
This aspect of EEPROMS is known as EEPROM endurance (defined as its maximum number of erase / write cycles) and if you google it, you will see what a big problem it really is.
I have personally encountered well over 100 examples of techniques being employed in the utilisation of EEPROMS for storage in such a way that is designed specifically to try and avoid this. I have also encountered a number of cases where a failure to impliment some kind of plan has resulted in common problems like the radio example.
A common way is to store something in 10 places, read them all and compare, if one or two are different to the rest, those are re written back to the same values as the rest.
Even if the design is such that the cells are not constantly being re charged, thus wearing them out prematurely by virtue of the Erase / write cycle, EEPROMS have a data retention period not guaranteed to exceed 10 years at best. And how old is your P38 !!!!
However my educated guess for what it is worth to ya, is that the sync code in the BeCM is being re written periodically, causing premature cell wear out, which is why other data in the BeCM's 640 byte EEPROM is not being affected.
I have decoded some read examples of the sync code the BeCM supplies after forgetting what it should really be ssupplying and have noted that the difference is indeed the BeCM EEPROM supplying zeros where it should be supplying ones.
I apologize to anyone still awake for all the techno mumbo jumbo detail.
The bottom line is that if you have a P38, at some point it will not start, and it will require a BeCM to EMS re sync. After then it will likely need the same done periodically.
At present the most convenient and affordable long term solution is to get a Sync Mate and keep it in the glove box.
My mate ended up fitting the logic board from the old BeCM he had kept with the power board from the supposedly newer replacement for this customer. But i have absolutely no doubt that he is simply buying time for the customer.
This is borne out by the fact that we now have almost 2 dozen indies who buy these from us at ten a time to get the maximum 22.5% bulk buy discount and then supply them as part of the fix cost to their customers. This also happens with our kicker lites where they have a P38 owner with a repetative and problematic EAS that is uneconomical or otherwise proving impossible to permanently fix.
I guess adding an extra 50 quid into the bill and knowing that your customer has a workable solution that any idiot can use is much better than an angry, left in the lurch with a recovery fee one blaming them for having thought they fixed it.
Canyon:
The jury is still out on what exactly causes this well known problem. Some think it is down to RF interference and some think it's a low battery voltage thing.
I have collated enough reports to support both theories equally and have a few more.
Interestingly i happen to have over 25 years experience with EEPROM technology, i know it like the back of my hand and when you really think about it, absolutely everything i have ever done and still do is based upon it in some way or other.
Not surprisingly, and probably quite sadly, i happen have knowledge of it down to the micron level.
EEPROM wear out is by no means new, i first encountered it myself 20 plus years back in Renault / Phillips 661 and other model car radios when i used to run a car radio repair business.
The strategy was that whenever the Radio was powered down, Ie when the IGN was turned off, it would store the current volume level and selected frequency in its serial EEPROM, such that on re powering it could put the volume back to how it was and tune into the same station it was on etc.
However the problem was that the EEPROM was not storing the right values and users would find the volume way too loud or too quiet and that the station was just mush when they came back to their cars and turned the ign on.
Like mobile phone batteries, EEPROMS can only have their cells charged a finite number of times before they don't store a charge any more. And in binary, something that should read as a 1 (Charged) reading as a 0 (discharged or Fhooked) can make all the difference in calculating a number from it.
This aspect of EEPROMS is known as EEPROM endurance (defined as its maximum number of erase / write cycles) and if you google it, you will see what a big problem it really is.
I have personally encountered well over 100 examples of techniques being employed in the utilisation of EEPROMS for storage in such a way that is designed specifically to try and avoid this. I have also encountered a number of cases where a failure to impliment some kind of plan has resulted in common problems like the radio example.
A common way is to store something in 10 places, read them all and compare, if one or two are different to the rest, those are re written back to the same values as the rest.
Even if the design is such that the cells are not constantly being re charged, thus wearing them out prematurely by virtue of the Erase / write cycle, EEPROMS have a data retention period not guaranteed to exceed 10 years at best. And how old is your P38 !!!!
However my educated guess for what it is worth to ya, is that the sync code in the BeCM is being re written periodically, causing premature cell wear out, which is why other data in the BeCM's 640 byte EEPROM is not being affected.
I have decoded some read examples of the sync code the BeCM supplies after forgetting what it should really be ssupplying and have noted that the difference is indeed the BeCM EEPROM supplying zeros where it should be supplying ones.
I apologize to anyone still awake for all the techno mumbo jumbo detail.
The bottom line is that if you have a P38, at some point it will not start, and it will require a BeCM to EMS re sync. After then it will likely need the same done periodically.
At present the most convenient and affordable long term solution is to get a Sync Mate and keep it in the glove box.
Last edited:
Top explaination, I now understand it. It's basically the same as solid state memory in eg SD cards. There is a finite number of times for reads and writes/rewrites.
I was wondering if anyone had thought of hardwiring the syncmate into the becm? BTW can it be left plugged in?
I was wondering if anyone had thought of hardwiring the syncmate into the becm? BTW can it be left plugged in?
Derek Ward
Active Member
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Superb explanation once again Colin. Thanks..
Datatek
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A precise explanation, one thought though, if you can read the contents of the EEPROM, why not replace the chip and re-write the info?
Told you i was sad
Still glad it helps explain it a bit for those wondering why it happens and thinking it's just a Land Rover thing.
Canyon, It's not like it happens every day or every week, just at the worst possible moments :doh:
And its so quick and easy to use there really is no need to have it permanently connected at all.
YouTube - BBSP38's Channel
Still glad it helps explain it a bit for those wondering why it happens and thinking it's just a Land Rover thing.
Canyon, It's not like it happens every day or every week, just at the worst possible moments :doh:
And its so quick and easy to use there really is no need to have it permanently connected at all.
YouTube - BBSP38's Channel
JohnP38
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- Alton Hampshire UK/Cape Town SA
bigneil
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hi, if its any help, i bought a syncmate about 8 weeks ago from tawpark, and it did exactly as they promised, from delivery to my door, i had the car running in less than 10 minutes.
Irishrover
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No..there is not a backup battery fitted. Not needed.
magictiny
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Cos the Range Rover battery never goes flat! :banplease:
jwaldron
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The explanation let me get my head around the potential problem.
When it was said that it didn't need to be permanently plugged in as it doesn't happen every day, but also said that the failure was due to read/write failure. I assume (and this is where my knowledge may let me down)... won't the issue become more frequent as time goes on? thus being able to permanently have it plugged in would be an option... this would lead me to asking if an additional plug could be wired in (knowing that you also may want to plug in the EAS software at some time )
When it was said that it didn't need to be permanently plugged in as it doesn't happen every day, but also said that the failure was due to read/write failure. I assume (and this is where my knowledge may let me down)... won't the issue become more frequent as time goes on? thus being able to permanently have it plugged in would be an option... this would lead me to asking if an additional plug could be wired in (knowing that you also may want to plug in the EAS software at some time
)
