Just bought this ODB II interface, you guys might be interested. - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

lyd · 10-01-2008, 12:51 AM

AllPro Adapter

In kit form, $46 shipped and supports every protocol including CAN. Don't see how you can go wrong. I haven't seen it mentioned here so I thought I'd post this.

cfg83 · 10-01-2008, 02:03 AM

lyd -

Coolio, I'm looking forward to hearing how it works.

CarloSW2

RH77 · 10-02-2008, 01:19 AM

Wow, yeah -- same here! Getting laptop-direct tracking and monitoring would be great.

lyd · 10-07-2008, 09:12 AM

I got this kit yesterday, and started to build it last night.

Initial impressions were sort of meh. Complete contents as shipped was just a bunch of loose parts in a zip-lock sandwich baggie. No schematic, no assembly instructions, no nothing. Not the best presentation I've ever seen. On the other hand, the price for this compared to anything else that I've found out there with the same features is very low, so I'm not going to gripe too much. Just note that you probably shouldn't make this the very first electronics project you ever take on. The board is decent quality with nice, legible screening though, so I don't think a beginner will find it too difficult to puzzle out from the parts list on the website.

I forgot to take a pic when I first got it, but here's one shortly after I began assembly.

There are two SOIC surface mount chips on the backside of the board. Luckily, I have a good iron and a small tip for it. I still may have cooked the damn things. In retrospect, I should have let the chips cool down fully after soldering each pin, rather than go bang-bang-bang like I did. Just have to wait and see on that. I probably should have looked up the thermal tolerances in the data sheet for those chips before I tried to solder them, to determine how careful I needed to be with them. If anything is going to cause trouble for the inexperienced in this kit, it is these guys.

I'll post further pics and a report on functionality once I get time to finish up.

Funny · 10-07-2008, 12:15 PM

looking foward to see where this goes, it may become a better option than AutoTap for me. Good luck with the surface mounts, they can be a pain if you aren't careful.

lyd · 10-07-2008, 02:38 PM

Was able to grab a few minutes to slap some more components in this morning. Not that this is terribly fascinating, but I figured what the heck, I'll post a pic. With any luck I'll have time to finish it up and test it tonight.

mtgeekman · 10-07-2008, 02:46 PM

I am interested to see how well this works. I was considering buying a kit a few weeks ago.

Good luck!

RH77 · 10-07-2008, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mtgeekman

I am interested to see how well this works. I was considering buying a kit a few weeks ago.

Good luck!

Welcome to EM by the way

RH77

mtgeekman · 10-07-2008, 03:04 PM

Wow, I didn't realize I had not posted before... Considering I signed up almost 6 months ago!

Thanks though

lyd · 10-08-2008, 10:42 AM

Finished the interface and did some preliminary testing. Here's pics of front and back of the finished board (yes, I am putting my dodgy soldering technique out there for all to see). Last pic is the thing cabled up and encased in my usual temporary enclosure. I'd like to clean the flux off that thing, but I seem to have lost my solvent in the move to WI. *shrug*

The good news is that the interface appears to work. The bad news is that both ScanMaster and EasyOBDII have gone over to a "we don't support ELM clones" or, in some cases, a "we only support the interfaces we sell" attitude in their latest revisions, and older revisions are not available for download. ScanTool.net does not support "clones" in its current revision, but does in the previous revision and that is available for download. The ostensible reason given for this is increased support overhead due to close-but-not-quite emulation. This is no doubt true in part, but I also suspect a bit of arm-twisting and carrot/sticking on the part of the ELM folks.

The second good news, however, is that two other packages in addition to ScanTool.net seem to work. (I say seem because I have verified that they recognize the interface, but have not gotten out to the car with them yet.) They are the free version of Digimoto and WOBD. I have not fully exhausted the list of free apps to test yet.

Using ScanTool.net, I had no problem reading the codes (saw my old friend "EGR Malfunction" there ;-) and reading all the sensor data in real time.

Digimoto is the snazziest of the three that seem to work, and I'm looking forward to testing that next. It has the added interest of being only about $45 for the full version. I don't know what the difference is between the free and commercial versions yet, but if there is something missing that I want that price doesn't sting too much.

So, the summary for now is: I'm happy, you may not be. This is going to do what I need it to do without having to spend any more money on software, may do some fun things I want it to without having to spend any more money on software, and will do those sorts of things if I do spend some more money on software, or get into the code of one of the OSS projects like ScanTool.net.

All for now. Questions?

lyd · 10-09-2008, 01:05 AM

Got a chance to play around and do a little more testing this afternoon. All three of the apps I mentioned above seem to work fairly well, although some seem to see more sensors than others. This could be a configuration issue, as I admit that I haven't read the docs for any of them. Too busy pressing buttons and going "ooh, neat". ;-)

I hooked the rig up to my parent's '07 Explorer, and the interface worked just as seamlessly. A lot of sensors on that thing!

I also did a quick test to see how easily I could, in the most bare-bones way possible, just log data indiscriminately and then, still in the most bare-bones way possible, parse and view it later. Pretty easily, was the answer, which is cool. I made this fairly illegible graph, just by way of experimentation.

Digimoto seems to have some pretty nice graphing and logging options for the $45 version, if I decide to go that route, but it is nice to know that I can collect this data and munge it around without a lot of overhead. I'd like to eventually get a more robust logging setup going, where I am collecting information from OBD as well as GPS and the MPGuino and integrating it all into a single file for later use.