Since when is a CD-ROM an integral part of any product, save a CD-ROM itself?
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My old VW camper has a red âbad shitâs happeningâ light. If that thing turns on, you gotta pull over NOW.
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I bought a similar, cheap diagnostics tool from Amazon for about the same price, since I wanted to objectively find the most optimal commute.
It worked OK, but I was mostly disappointed in the Android apps that use it. I paid the extra money for Torque Full edition, but the GUI on it could generously be described as being as horribly-designed as any app Iâve ever used. Also bought a couple other apps that either didnât work right or functionality was poor.
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I donât care if itâs one of these accompanying the purchase of a banana; if a company is shipping malware/trojans/viruses with their product, Iâm not buying.
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For the casual user, places like Autozone will hook up their fancy diagnostic and give you the error code and look it up so you can find out what is wrong. For free.
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Iâm using this same basic setup (obd dongle+ torque pro) and can attest to it inability to access any ting but basic emissions monitoring systems. The OBD system and check engine light only relate to emissions control. Your motor could be currently chewing itâs valves to dust and youâll never get a CEL so long as the temps and flow rates stay within tolerance. These dongles are made on the cheap and just donât have to required Com ports populated to allow access to the entire CAN bus. If they did I wouldnât be shelling out the money for a dedicated Volvo diagnostics and communication hardware/software package. These things are great for data logging Temps or MAF/MAP values, or high level trouble shooting. To claim these dongles grant some blackhat backdoor access to you entire car is vastly overselling the capabilities of a $10 Bluetooth antenna.
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Yeah, Torque is pretty impressive, but ooof that UI is not so good. (Weâve used it recently in a friendâs car to see if certain automatic tests are being performed before taking it for inspection.)
Hereâs a question on iOS in conjunction with the WiFI ones - you connect to the WiFI server on the device, and then need to send data to an outside source (say youâre logging to Evernote or something like that). Does iOS know enough to bridge between the WiFi for data collection and the cellular connection for WAN access, or would I have to switch manually?
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The ELM327 and STN1110 are merely microcontrollers with CAN interface and some software for sending/receiving messages via UART, using AT commands for control. No surprise their capabilities are limited.
For a quite higher level of control, you may like to go the way of e.g. CANpi,
âŚthough it is reportedly not optimal and Beaglebone Black is said to be better.
Reportedly you can use two modules at once, for dual-bus CAN or âCAN-in-the-middleâ.
Linux has a kernel module for talking with CAN bus directly at the bit level.
Could be handy for sniffing the bus.
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I believe even the cheapie $3 AliBaba-purchased ELM327 chipset ODB readers will do CAN just fine in a recent car, though I personally have only experimented with a Roadtrek van and a relatively late model Mercedes.
Iâm not sure what cost-cutting Chinese clone makers would care to do here since it appears that other than minor passive components, there just isnât a whole lot to these ODB adapters. Maybe two ICs,one for bit-banging I/O over ODB and one for Bluetooth radio.
So yes, you do not want to leave one of these plugged into your ODB port in your car and forget about it. The chance of someone using this is unlikely but itâs still easy for someone to carry an Android phone around a parking lot looking for the telltale hardware PID/VID and automatically trigger some common CAN door unlock codes.
If it ships with virus-infected software, I donât think Iâm too inclined to plug their product into my car. Iâd rather be slightly less cheap, and get something more reliable.
Besides, a lot of auto parts store chains will loan you one for free.
If you donât want the whole Bluetooth devilâs bargain of convenience + open-up-your-engine-control-to-anybody-nearby, you can buy a cheap simple OBD scan reader with an attached LCD display and buttons for about $20. Anybody who has a car should own one of these, if not the former.
I carry one of the cheap Autel OBD readers in my car. That + Google has saved me a number of visits to mechanics over trivial stuff, and a couple times has allowed me to identify something as a more serious problem and get it taken care of immediately before it became worse. To me the value is in having it on hand so you can always check it right away, and the $20 price-tag means for less than a tank of gas, even a complete novice can keep their car out of trouble.
Iâm sure if youâre beyond oil changes, spark-plug changes and basic tune-ups and are doing serious engine work on your car, the more expensive ones will do more, but that doesnât apply to most drivers.
On the flip side, if youâre so broke that you canât swing $15 or $20, maybe itâs worth borrowing one from an auto parts store, but come on - in that case how the hell are you affording to drive the car, let alone repair it?
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Yes, we CAN!
really? iâd buy the bananas just for the floppy disc full of malware! I used to collect viruses on floppies.
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This thread has had me wondering something that maybe my fellow BBâers can shed a light on.
Cars arenât really my thing so Iâm admittedly ignorant on this subject.
I get that cars have these built in computers and are producing all this useful data.
My question is, then why are we stuck with the totally non-helpful non-specific check engine light on the dashboard? Why are we kept in the dark when all this useful data is already being generated?
Why do we need to plug some third party reader into a plug under the dashboard to get this information?
Shouldnât we be able to access all this helpful info in human readable results right on the dash?
Shouldnât new cars have phone apps that allow the reading of all this data from any device that you specifically pair with your car using some sort of security sequence?
It seems crazy to me that if a car can tell you exactly which O2 sensor is starting to fail that it wouldnât. Or that youâd have to buy a third party reader that had to reverse engineer the codes to their meanings it even know it is an O2 sensor in the first place.
Also, beyond failure/repair scenarios, wouldnât such data allow you to adjust your driving to optimizing gas mileage (hyper-mileing) etc. and have lots of other really helpful info? Iâd like to know actual engine and liquid temps, especially since the dashboard temp gauge stays pegged in the middle even over a high range of temps and is worse the useless except in extreme scenarios. You even theoretically could see which brand of oil or coolant kept things running cooler or whatever.
Am I nuts? Or is there some reason Iâm not considering that all this helpful data is kept locked away from the owners of the vehicles?
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For a similar reason, perhaps, that we get a swarm of spinning dots on a starting computer display instead of messages about what processes are being launched?
Because the Plebes want their illusions of things being simple, of Apple-style round edges and a single light they donât have to think about that much?
Because the manufacturers are assholes who hire asshole designers with more art school degrees than brains?
I actually have no clue, I just hate these things.
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Theyâre like CD burners. When they came out, they cost as much as a car. 10 years ago, they were a few hundred dollars. Now, you can get one for the price of a hamburger.
Trickle down theory may not work for economics, but it does work for technology.
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I had the basic Palm III. I canât begin to describe how awesome it was.
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Because a huge amount of the auto industry is built on consumer ignorance and locking the customer into proprietary systems.
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that makes sense but is sad. I hate that way of thinking but it happens all to often these days.
Iâm surprised that they havenât taken a page from the ink jet printer manufactures if they are thinking along those lines. Your car only accepts oil replacement âcartridgesâ with X DRM, and tires with approved embedded RFID tags.
(crap i shouldnât give them any ideasâŚsorry)
Thatâs pretty much it - equal parts consumer apathy, manufacturer lock-in (if you want anything more complex than changing the oil, you have to go to an âauthorized service centreâ) and brain-dead designers.
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