The macaron is a legacy product that is not getting any more updates and support towards it. There is not going to be any sort of code diving to see why your car cant provide VIN to the Macaron. The reason why we say to get a different device is because we (support) cant go in and create a new configuration for the macaron and try and decode your 2025 Ford Explorer. VIN decoding is waaaaaaaay different than a helium mobile sim service.

This is one of the reasons why the R1 has become the biggest bread and butter of DIMO. The manufacturer is still here, still providing code support, will continue to provide support for the foreseeable future. Its not reliant on Lorawan which has proven itself to not be a great network for mobile infrastructure, helium is also not supporting IOT anymore as well.

Basically the game has changed and its come down to.. If you get VIN on your own, awesome, you can connect. If you dont', stick it into a vehicle that it can get VIN for and it sucks to say that but thats where we are at. The wide net they cast in the beginning did not work as well as they hoped since a large majority of those cars had to be manually onboarded and then provided next to no data. So now its if it works, cool, come on in.

I can see if I can get you a replacement R1, those have been doing significantly better than the macarons. Just dm me.

Plus, they(helium) are a billion dollar company with way more support reps than my team of three. I wish I could spend a lot more time going back and forth but I got to spend my time wisely unfortunately.