Connect your device

Applies to: IOcan · Standalone controller. What this means

Connecting is a permission, not a driver install. You click Connect Device, pick the device in the port dialog that appears, and allow it. In the browser that grant is held by the browser and can be withdrawn from it at any time.

Before you plug in

  • Power the device. USB alone does not run it — the device needs its normal supply. See the pinout for the standalone controller, or IOcan's pinout.
  • Use a data cable. A charge-only USB lead enumerates nothing, and the symptom is an empty port list rather than an error.

Connecting

  1. Open the application and go to Home.
  2. Click Connect Device, top right.
  3. Pick the device in the browser's port dialog and allow it.

The device slot in the navigation rail changes from No Device found to the connected device, and the status bar's left indicator changes from Not Connected to Connected.

The two indicators are independent

The status bar carries two, and reading them as one thing causes most of the confusion:

Indicator Means
Not Connected / Connected Whether there is a serial link to a device
Not ready / Ready Whether the configuration on screen is complete enough to write

Ready with nothing plugged in is normal — it is about the configuration, not the hardware. Connected but Not ready means the device is talking but the configuration in front of you is incomplete.

Read the device before you change it

Import from Device pulls the settings currently on the hardware into the application. Do this first on any device you did not configure yourself, and save the result before editing — it is the only copy of that state.

⚠️ Writing replaces the whole configuration. There is no partial write. Whatever was on the device is gone once the write completes, so the import above is the backup.

Do not interrupt a write

A write is not atomic, and there is no fallback to the previous configuration. The device erases the whole configuration segment, then the application sends the whole segment back. Between those two moments the old configuration no longer exists and the new one is not yet complete.

⚠️ If the device loses power part-way through a write, the configuration is left broken. Not reverted, not half-applied — broken. The recovery is to write a good configuration again, which is straightforward at a bench and tedious in a car.

Before writing: settle the supply and leave the cable alone. Do not write from a laptop that is about to sleep, over a loose USB lead, or with the ignition about to be switched.

This is the same failure mode as losing the supply at shutdown, for the same reason — an interrupted write to flash. The difference is what is lost: adaptations there, the whole configuration here.

If the device does not appear

  • Nothing in the port dialog — charge-only cable, or the device is not powered.
  • No port dialog appears at all, in a browser — that browser does not implement the serial API. Use Chrome or Edge, or the installed Windows application; see getting the software.
  • Connected, then dropped — suspect the cable or the supply before the device.