Tunnelrat Electronics

A note about Forscan and Elm327 devices

Forscan was originally developed for use with low cost Elm327 devices to assist the home mechanic save money on diagnostic costs. 

Since its release, the Chinese have been flooding the market with lower quality devices that either do not work or do not work very well with Forscan.

For this reason the latest versions of Forscan will now give a warning when it detects ANY Elm327 device regardless of how good the product is.

This warning may state that the adapter is not compatible with your car.

Tunnelrat Electronics has been supplying high quality devices from the very beginning and although the markets have changed over the years we have still managed to work with the same manufacturers and our products are of the same quality if not better than when we started supplying to the Ford community many years ago. 

For this reason our products are still as compatible with Forscan as they always were. 

When you see the warning telling you that your device may not be compatible it does not mean your product is faulty, and It certainly does not mean you have received a sub standard device!

It means that an ELM327 has been detected but you can be rest assured that the device will still behave as it always has, and be as compatible as it always was, and most importantly, you can safely ignore the message knowing you have the best quality Elm327 based product available.

If you still have problems accessing parts of the software then we recommend downloading an older version of Forscan (before versions 2.4.x) to see if this fixes the problem.

 Going forward, Forscan realises that Elm devices have limitations and as new features are added to the software, elm devices are struggling to keep up.

This is why it is now preferred to use a non ELM327 device such as the Vlinker FS.

This device works much faster and can access HS / MS CAN simultaneously making it a far better choice for your vehicle. Unfortunately better products come at a higher price and so we would say if you want to do lots of module programming and be future proof with Forscan then the Vlinker device is what you need. If however you just want to check and reset fault codes, look at live data and maybe activate the occasional tow bar or DPF regen etc. then our Elm327 device is still the best low cost solution for the home mechanic. 

 If you have any further questions please use our contact us page.