Hey everyone,
Got a Foxwell NT530 for xmas (thank you wife!) and have been playing with it a bit. I could now answer some of the questions I had with the device, and I wanted to provide a little info on activation as well.
First off, activation - mine came from Amazon, and the Porsche software was already loaded to it (showed up on the screen). The first step is activating the reader, and updating it if needed. There are no instructions provided on this, so I just tried a few things to get it done. There's probably a manual online, but you'd think such basic stuff would be included on paper or something... it wasn't in my case (though there was a "VERY IMPORTANT" message paper in there, which basically said to contact them for support. Yeesh.
For activation, I don't recall the exact steps, but You need to get the FoxAssist software, create a login, then you get to its main screen. Once there, connect the reader via USB to a computer, then put it into "Update" mode... this seems to simply allow the computer to access the SD card. Once connected, you can then run the update process which basically updates the SD card with new files via their software.
Somewhere along the way, I did have to "activate" the device... I think I did that before the above. When connected, the device's serial number popped up on a screen - I basically copy/pasted that into the activation section, and that made it happy. The software ought to do this automatically, but whatever... it wasn't too complicated to figure out.
Regarding the device itself, I had some questions about what it could do, so here's what I found out. First off, these options are all found within the Porsche section of the reader. Once there, I use the SmartVIN function to identify the vehicle, then I can go into the Diagnosis or Programming subsections. I apologize if my breadcrumb-mapping to the entries is not perfect - they're easy enough to find once you're in the right area, but I'm happy to correct if needed.
Here's what I've done so far:
1) I wanted the car to lock the doors when you started moving - this can be done in the "key" section (Programming/PAS)... each key has it's own settings. I enabled the setting for "locking when speed >5 kph" (about 3mph)... this works great and locks the doors (you can hear it and the red LED on the central locking lights up. One downside is that there doesn't appear to be a way to auto-unlock when you pull the key... so it can be a little surprising when you try to open the door handle and nothing happens (pull again, or you can press the button to unlock). Does anyone know of an auto-unlock feature I can enable?
2) I saw some questions about whether you can read oil temperature over CANBUS. On my 2010, you can... and this is seen on the NT530 as well. Go into Diagnosis/Control Modules/DME/Live Data/Temperatures. In there you can show the sensor voltage and/or the actual converted temperature. Very cool... I've always wondered how long oil takes to come up to temp (relative to the coolant temp, for example)... now I can find out. You can also plot a short graph of the data in this screen (only about 24 seconds total from what I can see, though there appears to be a SAVE function which may save data to the SD card?) Anyway, the reason I care about this is because everyone says to wait until the car is warmed up before getting on it... but no one can tell you how to know if you're warmed up or not! I hope to figure this out and report back...
3) I was hoping to enable a horn when I locked the doors. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem possible (unless someone can point me in the right direction?). I saw a few posts where people went into the rear module, then set the "acoustic alarm output" to "Siren" instead of horn/none (default on mine)... but this can throw an error and cause the REAR module to lose comms with the NT530, which has to then be "fixed" with Durametric... so I didn't want to try that. In subsequent findings, this didn't work anyway... but I'd love to be able to have a horn to know I locked the vehicle (since we only have one lock/unlock button on the FOB). I know there's an aftermarket device that does this, but it seems crazy that we can't do this by programming.
4) I disabled the seatbelt chime on the drivers side. I always wear my seatbelt, but when I go from my mailbox to the garage (about 400 feet) the incessant, loud dinging is annoying... disabling the Programming/POSIP entry for "Belt Buckle Driver Side" prevents the car from even looking at that sensor, which disables the ding.
5) Since everyone asks, yes this device can read overrevs. They are located in Diagnosis/Control Modules/DME/Special Function/Vehicle Data. While in here, you can see the vehicle's "total distance" in kms. Mine is within 132 miles of the odo, so I figure I'm fine... but it's a good thing to check on a used car, I'd imagine. In my case, it showed 127788 km = 79404 mi, odo shows 79536, for reference.
6) I tried to enable the mirror lowering function on the passenger mirror (Programming/Passenger Door) but it doesn't seem to work. I think I read that this only works if you have seat memory and/or mirror memory enabled. Is this something I can enable myself (and it will just work?) or does it require hardware I don't have (I don't have memory seats)? I didn't want to just turn it on and have it fail to communicate (like the REAR module can do as noted in #3 above).
So, I have a few questions. To repeat the ones above:
1) Is there an auto-unlock feature I can activate, so when the key is pulled the doors unlock automatically?
2) Is there a way to get a horn sound when you lock the doors with the key?
3) Is there a way to get mirror lowering to work without memory-seats?
4) New question - while looking around in there, I went into Programming/PAS/Coding Adaptations/Basic Coding and saw that my car is showing "Automatic Transmission" here. Everything in the car seems to work, but this seems odd... any ideas on what this does or why it might be wrong?
5) Second new question - in a few places, the vehicle type shows "---" instead of the Boxster 987 that I have... is this normal? I can dig into where this was again (I forget at the moment)... but it seems weird?
Got a Foxwell NT530 for xmas (thank you wife!) and have been playing with it a bit. I could now answer some of the questions I had with the device, and I wanted to provide a little info on activation as well.
First off, activation - mine came from Amazon, and the Porsche software was already loaded to it (showed up on the screen). The first step is activating the reader, and updating it if needed. There are no instructions provided on this, so I just tried a few things to get it done. There's probably a manual online, but you'd think such basic stuff would be included on paper or something... it wasn't in my case (though there was a "VERY IMPORTANT" message paper in there, which basically said to contact them for support. Yeesh.
For activation, I don't recall the exact steps, but You need to get the FoxAssist software, create a login, then you get to its main screen. Once there, connect the reader via USB to a computer, then put it into "Update" mode... this seems to simply allow the computer to access the SD card. Once connected, you can then run the update process which basically updates the SD card with new files via their software.
Somewhere along the way, I did have to "activate" the device... I think I did that before the above. When connected, the device's serial number popped up on a screen - I basically copy/pasted that into the activation section, and that made it happy. The software ought to do this automatically, but whatever... it wasn't too complicated to figure out.
Regarding the device itself, I had some questions about what it could do, so here's what I found out. First off, these options are all found within the Porsche section of the reader. Once there, I use the SmartVIN function to identify the vehicle, then I can go into the Diagnosis or Programming subsections. I apologize if my breadcrumb-mapping to the entries is not perfect - they're easy enough to find once you're in the right area, but I'm happy to correct if needed.
Here's what I've done so far:
1) I wanted the car to lock the doors when you started moving - this can be done in the "key" section (Programming/PAS)... each key has it's own settings. I enabled the setting for "locking when speed >5 kph" (about 3mph)... this works great and locks the doors (you can hear it and the red LED on the central locking lights up. One downside is that there doesn't appear to be a way to auto-unlock when you pull the key... so it can be a little surprising when you try to open the door handle and nothing happens (pull again, or you can press the button to unlock). Does anyone know of an auto-unlock feature I can enable?
2) I saw some questions about whether you can read oil temperature over CANBUS. On my 2010, you can... and this is seen on the NT530 as well. Go into Diagnosis/Control Modules/DME/Live Data/Temperatures. In there you can show the sensor voltage and/or the actual converted temperature. Very cool... I've always wondered how long oil takes to come up to temp (relative to the coolant temp, for example)... now I can find out. You can also plot a short graph of the data in this screen (only about 24 seconds total from what I can see, though there appears to be a SAVE function which may save data to the SD card?) Anyway, the reason I care about this is because everyone says to wait until the car is warmed up before getting on it... but no one can tell you how to know if you're warmed up or not! I hope to figure this out and report back...
3) I was hoping to enable a horn when I locked the doors. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem possible (unless someone can point me in the right direction?). I saw a few posts where people went into the rear module, then set the "acoustic alarm output" to "Siren" instead of horn/none (default on mine)... but this can throw an error and cause the REAR module to lose comms with the NT530, which has to then be "fixed" with Durametric... so I didn't want to try that. In subsequent findings, this didn't work anyway... but I'd love to be able to have a horn to know I locked the vehicle (since we only have one lock/unlock button on the FOB). I know there's an aftermarket device that does this, but it seems crazy that we can't do this by programming.
4) I disabled the seatbelt chime on the drivers side. I always wear my seatbelt, but when I go from my mailbox to the garage (about 400 feet) the incessant, loud dinging is annoying... disabling the Programming/POSIP entry for "Belt Buckle Driver Side" prevents the car from even looking at that sensor, which disables the ding.
5) Since everyone asks, yes this device can read overrevs. They are located in Diagnosis/Control Modules/DME/Special Function/Vehicle Data. While in here, you can see the vehicle's "total distance" in kms. Mine is within 132 miles of the odo, so I figure I'm fine... but it's a good thing to check on a used car, I'd imagine. In my case, it showed 127788 km = 79404 mi, odo shows 79536, for reference.
6) I tried to enable the mirror lowering function on the passenger mirror (Programming/Passenger Door) but it doesn't seem to work. I think I read that this only works if you have seat memory and/or mirror memory enabled. Is this something I can enable myself (and it will just work?) or does it require hardware I don't have (I don't have memory seats)? I didn't want to just turn it on and have it fail to communicate (like the REAR module can do as noted in #3 above).
So, I have a few questions. To repeat the ones above:
1) Is there an auto-unlock feature I can activate, so when the key is pulled the doors unlock automatically?
2) Is there a way to get a horn sound when you lock the doors with the key?
3) Is there a way to get mirror lowering to work without memory-seats?
4) New question - while looking around in there, I went into Programming/PAS/Coding Adaptations/Basic Coding and saw that my car is showing "Automatic Transmission" here. Everything in the car seems to work, but this seems odd... any ideas on what this does or why it might be wrong?
5) Second new question - in a few places, the vehicle type shows "---" instead of the Boxster 987 that I have... is this normal? I can dig into where this was again (I forget at the moment)... but it seems weird?
