The wife and I took a trip in the Avenger last week to southern Mississippi and I used the OBDuino, as usual. I have grown rather accustomed to having it in the car, monitoring data inputs as I drive. First things first:
I ordered it from Magister because it was CAN, and figured it would be easier to get working in the car than the MPGuino that I put in my truck. Magister asked me what color LCD I wanted, and I asked for white because it will match the dash lighting. It is spot on, so kudos to Magister! The OBDuino took a little more than a week to arrive, but I figure that is not bad considering it has to go across the Canadian border. Well packaged and protected for the journey too. It comes with a right angle OBD connector that I see most sites charge extra for, and the other end plugs right into the OBDuino.
It differs from the MPGuino in that you do not hardwire it into the vehicle; you can however VIN lock it so it cannot be used in another vehicle (nice touch). You must turn the ignition on to power it up, as it gets power from the CAN bus. This was a little hard for me to get used to as I had expected it to be just like the MPGuino in my truck, which is powered up all the time. It displays fuel flow, BIG inst mpg, BIG current mpg, tank mpg, miles to empty, idling fuel burnt and other parameters like an MPGuino. HOWEVER, it also shows you outside temp, coolant temp, ignition advance, calculated engine load and other parameters that are available BECAUSE it is using the CAN bus. Quite handy for me on this last trip, as my Tstat seems to be getting weak and opening early. Car would only hit 175* on the highway...I could not tell by just watching the "temp gauge." (With an Ecomodder inspired grill block, it stayed at 183*.) NOTE: not all of these parameters are shown as it reaches you...you need to go into the second display editing option in order to choose what parameters you wish to see on which gauge display. I learned it is best to remember which parameters you want to change, not which corner you want to change, as I ended up switching the wrong ones more than once with the latter method. The BIG inst mpg is what I tend to leave it on for my wife, but when I drive I set up the first "quad" screen to show inst mpg, current mpg, tank mpg, and miles driven (to check the odometer against mile markers). The second quad screen I modified to display inst mpg, ignition advance, coolant temp, and calculated engine load. I figure these are good for me to monitor as I cruise down the road. They also help me maintain better fuel economy as I drive up hills...foregoing the cruise control. I should also mention that Dodge vehicles do not have a MAF sensor, so the fact the OBDuino displays inst mpg despite this is one thing I was looking for. There are 3 buttons. First once does the screen cycling, the second gets you into the adjustment menus, and the third button is basically a screen intensity adjustment.
Things I have noticed:
1. the device froze on our drive into Dallas last week...for about 30 minutes. I let Magister know today, but do not know if this is an isolated incident or not. The unit seemed to wake up after that stall, and worked as advertised after that.
2. I wish I had asked for an SD card daughter board, as that would have been useful to record data for testing purposes.
3. Ethanol fuels skew the fuel measuring. I have noticed this affects my MPGuino as well as the OBDuino. I figure if you can determine what the fuel blend is, you can figure out the compensation values for each, and just make the adjustments based upon what you put in the tank.
Would I recommend it? YES. IF you have a CAN bus vehicle, and want a less expensive alternative to the Scangauge, YES. It works well and gives 90%+ of us the info we need to help monitor the vehicle and modify our driving habits while saving fuel. The remaining 10% will want something much more robust or a combo tuner/gauge setup... Also, since Magister has some LCD color options, you can customize it to a degree for your interior. It is as small as the MPGuino, so you have man options for mounting the device in the vehicle. See the enclosure thread for some ideas:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...-off-6873.html
I should also add that I mentioned earlier I had to set the OBDuino to 103% for mileage because my car's odometer is that far off when I measured it against mile markers. Set at 100%, it is within 1% of the odometer. So, I am actually getting a more accurate mpg result from the OBDuino than I get from the car!!
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