DashCommand App for Android - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

awcook · 01-06-2015, 02:16 PM

Hello all,

I recently bought DashCommand for Android and wanted to do a quick review on it. Along with this I got a cheap ~$15 ELM327 Bluetooth Adapter. The adapter works really well, only problem is that it stays on when the key is off (just a flashing light, bluetooth isn't on).

Why I chose this app:
I chose this app because Torque for Android took too long to boot up whenever you turned the car on, so it just wasn't worth it. The reason that Torque was taking so long was because everytime it booted on, it had to do the OBDII diagnostic tests. So I found DashCommand and the free trial worked much faster than Torque, so I stuck with it. I bought the pro-version of DashCommand so I could get unlimited app use.

Setup:
This app works extremely well and is surprisingly accurate. There really isn't much calibration that you have to do on this app to make it work, just put in your engine size and fuel tank capacity and it is ready to go.

I have this app setup for two cars on my phone, my Civic and my parents' Odyssey. The Odyssey got lots of use this past week, since we went down to Mississippi, so I got to see how the car was doing the whole way down. Fully packed with 5 people + luggage, the Odyssey got a whopping 21 MPG! This was with my father speeding (9 over most of the time, resulting in speeds ranging from 69-90 MPH). This app displayed the MPG very accurately. The average MPG on the phone was the same as the actual MPG from the fillup.

Performance:

This app has the ability to display performance and how much HP / lb/ft your car is producing. Obviously I can't test the accuracy of this test, but I can say that the results of the app are similar to what the car really produces.

Here is a picture:

During the trip, we had to go WOT to get on the highway a few times. When these times came, the HP / torque reading was similar to the cars HP / torque specs (app was higher because it reads the engine outputs and not the wheel outputs).

MPG:

The MPG graphs in this app are very customizable. I can choose what to display and the default displays are really all I need. The instant MPG is accurate (speed divided by gal/h). The graphs look like this:

I really like this graph layout because I can see how I've been doing and the places that I need to improve in. For example, when I'm driving in the city, I probably shouldn't accelerate up to speed when there is a red light right in front of me.

For Manual Transmissions:

Manual transmission cars get special privileges with this app. You can upload your BSFC numbers in the advanced settings and the app will tell you when it will be economically feasible to make an upshift. Or if you are sporty, it will tell you where you should shift to get the most power. I'm not exactly sure how that works, since I don't have a manual transmission, but it is a pretty cool feature.

Summary:

This is a really cool app that I recommend to anybody that wants to get cheap instrumentation without getting a Scangauge. There are so many more features that are in this app that I didn't go over, but this is a free app so you can go ahead and check it out for yourself!

cptsideways · 01-06-2015, 03:23 PM

Great review, I have Torque, its very annoying with fixed size dials as no matter what size I choose they wont fit my screen. This looks much better.

Shall have a go with it

awcook · 01-06-2015, 03:39 PM

I haven't fiddled around with making my own page of gauges (which would be like customizing your gauges in Torque) but I do know that you can make different sizes of gauges. The pictures that I showed were from the Dashboards section, which doesn't allow you to customize it that much. But you can get user-built dashboards that have different styles of displays and all that.

Tell me what you think!

dongs · 01-17-2015, 12:59 AM

What's the latency like with these bluetooth apps? I'd imagine it probably isn't too bad but probably not as instantaneous as being directly plugged in to the obd port.

dirtydave · 01-17-2015, 06:28 AM

About the same as the scangauge.
But the more you do the slower it will be.
Also the number of PID's you are logging can impact the speed of the screen too but only older/cheaper phones are affected. My Huawei Glory has this issue but my Samsung galaxy4 clone does not.

Xist · 01-17-2015, 08:09 AM

CaroO shows me my instantaneous miles per gallon and has a screen of detailed information, but I really just use it for the dash cam feature, and Black Box for Torque does not do a good job of that. Unfortunately, I have some problem with my OBD-II reader, which was one of the more expensive ones, costing sixty-five dollars. Sometimes it seems to work fine, on other occasions my phone says that it cannot connect, but my adapter is flashing lights like normal. Then there are the times that the dongle just has one red LED. Sometimes adjusting it helps. On other occasions, I need to unplug it and put it back in. I bought the cheapest dongle, but could not even get it to connect to my phone.

awcook · 01-17-2015, 02:23 PM

The reader is pretty instantaneous in my opinion. It changes faster than the OEM gauges in the Accord, so I think it goes pretty fast. I'm not sure how the speed will compare to a Scan Gauge, but I'd estimate that they run at about the same speed, since the phone's processor is much faster than the SG's processor.

I got the cheapest dongle as well and it works amazingly well. When I had the Torque app the bluetooth didn't want to connect, but when I started using DashCommand it connects almost instantly. Once you click the connect button and the key is in ACC then it will connect.