The iphone + obd2 = sweet fe instrumentation possibilities?

[SVOboy]

They're already doing it for non-fe things: iPhone OBD-II app - Hack a Day

I'm interested, would be nice to have the processing power and display.

[lyd]

I'm just planning to put an old laptop in the car. The display is awfully nice on my ipod touch though, true that.

The thing about that app talked about in your link is that the interface doesn't exist yet, and when it does it isn't likely to be cheap.

[dcb]

I think the hardware is a combination of a obd-serial reader and a bluetooth modem, but they were a little sheepish on the hardware details

Note, the mpguino now outputs useful data on the serial port (as of .74). It should be easy to wire it up to a laptop/cellphone.

Or you can hook up a bluetooth modem (like $65) from a place like sparkfun, or maybe the $40 smd module will work? I haven't really looked into, or used,
bluetooth much so I don't yet know the difference. Wire is cheap

[lyd]

The iphone/ipod app is going to use wifi for its interface, not bluetooth, according to the product page. (such as it is)

[dcb]

Ah. I was looking into why they might make a choice like that:
"Neither Bluetooth nor USB-based serial interfaces are available to
developers from the iPhone SDK."


Don't know why usb/bluetooth should be off limits, but there it is. Maybe you have to pay money or something to develop for those ports?

[lyd]

Oh, man, don't even get me started on Apple's insane lock-down of these devices. There is a long, long list of things that third-party developers are not allowed access to. That's what the whole "jailbreak" thing is all about, and why a lot of the App Store apps suck in various ways that they shouldn't have to.

[dcb]

Hmm... well here is another idea on how to talk to an iphone wirelessly from a simple microprocessor device:

1. figure out how to record voice , only from an application that just examines a small portion at a time.
2. hack a wireless headset so you can send different tones from your microprocessor to relay the information you want to send.
3. interpret the "voice" data to make sense out of it in your application
4. use pretty graphs/drawing api to wow people with your new fangled speedometer

[KJSatz]

Would I be able to play music at the same time? That would be really really cool.

Wtf is a wifi obd-ii dongle?

[ecoxantia]

If you need more processing/display how about using a windows mobile device? I have an acer n50 pda, it has bluetooth, serial, usb, nice big touchscreen...

[dcb]

Well, this was a iphone specific thing. It's weird though, if you HAVE to use 802.11 to talk to an external device, then you might well consider giving the external device enough power to serve up a "web page" and be able to use it with anything that has a browser and 802.11 support.

[i_am_socket]

That crazy lockdown nonsense is the #1 reason I don't have an iPhone. #2 is because I'm not on AT&T. I'll stick with my Guino (once I receive the parts and build it that is).

If I was going to go through the effort of building that kind of power into an odb interface, I'd just put a PC in my car and be done with it. Cool idea, though, from a "what if" standpoint.

[gerhard]

Hi you guys,
there should be given some clearance about iPhone or iPod Touch and OBD-II.
Bluetooth or serial data transfer does not work. WiFi is used however and it has the fastest data transfer available nowadays. Therefore the Rev software makes use of an WiFi OBD-II device which you might see at OBD-2 Homepage the hardware developper for this device. Of course such things are not for free.
Gerhard

[dcb]

I think we've figured that much out, problem is the cost of going that route vs a building a dedicated display device is very disproportionate. There are plenty of handheld devices that DO allow serial port access too.

I wonder what the iphone does with it's bluetooth/serial port though. maybe there is some built in synch-up routine that you can use to get data to a file on an iphone or something?

[dcb]

It seems like it could be possible to utilize one of those inexpensive usb adapters as well.

D-Link WUA-1340 USB 2.0 Wireless Adapter - 54Mbps, 802.11g (Recertified) RB-WUA-1340 at TigerDirect.com

[gerhard]

Any other way like Bluetooth or USB is not as fast as a direct transfer via WiFi. Any other adapter on the data way will become a bottleneck to slow down everything. Keep in mind also there are several Bluetooth services. The SPP service is not supported by an iPhone. For any other handheld you may use such a cheap solution and you must be satisfied by the poor performance also. Better performance has its price however.

[dcb]

I don't see the need for a wide bandwith for obd, we are not talking about videos here, just some sensor bytes. Those rad folks said they were addressing the price issue soon, so maybe they have come up with something. Direct wifi is definately overkill for this application and direct usb should blow its doors off performance wise.

And there's plenty of other devices that can interface with the real world without making you spend hundreds just on the interface. That is the stupid part here. Rad says they may have a low cost solution though, so stay tuned I recon.

[gerhard]

Obviously you have not seen this application in real live working. So you don't know the difference compared to other devices. Even some vehicle manufactures switches to wifi now because they cannot handle the data flow in modern vehicles with plenty of ECUs otherwise.

[dcb]

Sorry, I gotta call BS on that.

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by dcb

Sorry, I gotta call BS on that.

I agree

[gerhard]

Who or what is BS?