I think I might wire up the LCD in parallel and try to cut out the SoftwareSerial completely if I can.
Actually, I might be able to test without the LCD. Once the ELM has established a connection with the ECU, it will send a signal ever second or two to keep the connection alive and the OBDTX light flashes. If I run the code without software serial or an LCD, I should be able to see that light flash and the ELM maintain a connection even though I can't view the data.
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