Free Piston Engine Linear Generator (FPELG) is a modern engine and promising power generation engine. It has many advantages compared to conventional engines such as less friction, few numbers of parts, and high thermal efficiency. The cycle-to-cycle variation one of the big challenges of the FPELG because it is influence on the stability and output power of the engine. Therefore, in this study, the effect of ignition time on combustion characteristics is investigated. The single-cylinder FPELG with spark ignition (SI) combustion type by using compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel type was set to run. LabVIEW is used to run the engine and control of input parameters. All experimental data have been collected and processed based on LabVIEW and Macro tool. The analysis results of the experimental based on ignition time show that the in-cylinder pressure with double peak shape was produced when the ignition delay after Top Dead Centre (TDC). On the other hand, the in-cylinder pressure and output power with ignition before TDC is higher in approximately (33.8, and 17.8 respectively) compared to the in-cylinder pressure with ignition after TDC. Though investigate the influence of ignition time on the combustion characteristics but with further study and investigation for such as the combustion during expansion, exhaust gas temperature, and emission under various ignition time could be achieved in our future work. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.