Wireless Haltech CAN Keypad Testing (Ford Falcon Anti-Lag)

I wanted to post this video from my social pages with some additional context here because even though video is only 11 seconds long, it shows a few important things at once. It is not just a bit of noise for social media. It is a good example of what OmniCAN is supposed to do when it is actually being used.

The main thing I wanted to prove here was that the keypad behaves like part of the ECU system, not just a phone app that sends a button press and hopes for the best. OmniCAN is integrated with the Haltech ECU CAN keypad protocol so it is not just firing buttons at the ECU. It is also reading back the state and showing the same feedback you would expect from a proper Haltech keypad.

The three-LED feedback is the part that makes this useful in the real world:

● Green shows the button state coming back from the ECU.

● Orange shows the function is actually active. That matters because a fan, for example, might be turned on by coolant temp, oil temp, or an override button. If the ECU says the fan is on, the orange LED should reflect that regardless of how it was triggered.

● Red shows a function error, which is the bit you want when something does not work and you need to know why.

Note: Pairs of keypad buttons can be setup in the Haltech NSP software to work as a multi position rotary switch. One button moves the simulated position up one click and the other brings it back down. Most often this is setup for systems like boost control levels. When using this functionality, the six LEDs across the pair of buttons act as a representation of the click position. Two on is position two, three on is position three, and so on.

The car in the background is my Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo with a Barra and a Haltech Elite plug-in ECU.

The first part of the clip is Party Mode 2 being pressed repeatedly to make the engine flare through the idle control system. Haltech NSP does not give you direct CAN keypad throttle control for obvious safety reasons, so the throttle body is being held open through the idle control setup instead. This was quick to set up on both the Haltech side and the OmniCAN side purely to show the app and gateway working together.

Then I enabled rolling anti-lag in NSP and mapped it to the keypad so it could be turned on and off with Party Mode 2. Even with a lazy 30 percent throttle opening, the engine responds immediately, the turbo starts to spool, and you can hear the crackle and backfiring straight away. When I release the button, the engine settles back down straight away as well. That is the bit I cared about most. Low latency, clean sync, and proper feedback from the ECU every time a function changes state.

I built OmniCAN because I could not find a keypad solution that allowed for remote control or for an install without interior modification. There are plenty of DIY setups that use generic CAN controllers and universal apps to send button states, but I could not find one that also handled the LED states properly. A lot of them fall out of sync with the ECU or do not track toggle state at all. That is fine if you only care about triggering a function once and can see the result another way, but it is not enough if you want the keypad to behave like proper hardware. The LED feedback matters just as much as the press itself.

That is also why I care so much about the wireless side being reliable. If you are the driver, in the car with gloves on, a mechanic in the pits, or standing beside the engine bay, the last thing you want is to fight reconnects every time you need to switch something on. I want this to behave like real hardware. Turn it on, use it, and trust that the button state and ECU state are doing exactly what they should.

There are a few obvious real-world uses for this sort of setup. A mechanic could turn on the ignition, electric water pump, or thermofans from outside the vehicle in a pit lane or workshop situation. A race team could crank the engine from the bay when checking valve clearances or trigger onboard airjacks without mounting a permanent keypad in an awkward spot at additional expense. A show car could use it for lights, air ride systems, fans, compressors, or ride height devices while it is on display and without interior modification to fit cleanly or hide a keypad. If you want the hardware side of the system, the OmniCAN gateway page covers that part of it. That flexibility matters because the app can run on Android phones, tablets, and compatible head units, so you are not locked into a single in-dash device or a permanent keypad install.

This was a controlled off-road demo only. The point of the video is to show that the keypad sync, BLE link, and ECU response all behave exactly as you would expect a hardware CAN keypad to. Instant response, proper state management, and LED status feedback.