very nice… at that price I might build one of these for each of my cars.

Posted at 11:45 am on May 12th, 2009 by twistedsymphony

i think it would be much better if there was some original work done. for example if they dove deep into the manufacturer specific codes that live below OBD-II.

Notice how they state “any car” that’s because OBD-II standard isnt quite standard when it comes to heavy duty trucks that have obd-II. (try to scan a F-250 powerstroke 99-03). The physical specs are complaint and some of the symbols are. nothing else is though.

Other than those gripes, nice project.

Posted at 1:11 pm on May 12th, 2009 by Steve

Original work? Looks pretty good to me; I don’t see homemade OBD code readers of any kind just floating around. Quit your griping, what do you want for $15.00 worth of parts?

Posted at 2:10 pm on May 12th, 2009 by original-green

dont bitch too much steve, you might hurt yourself

Posted at 2:31 pm on May 12th, 2009 by anon

Just want to make sure that you guys realize the $15 one is a different project entirely.

Posted at 2:51 pm on May 12th, 2009 by Caleb Kraft

Uses the ELM interface chip which does all the OBDII interfacing for any protocol, USB units are available on ebay for about £20 UK (I bought one, works OK).

Posted at 3:00 pm on May 12th, 2009 by James

having built the same for the ISO/VPWM/PWM/CAN/KW2000 protocols, let me say that using the ELM chip is cheating. Takes all the fun out of it (and difficulty). But glad to see people playing with this stuff.

Posted at 3:25 pm on May 12th, 2009 by reza

what i meant by original work was not using a an elm chip which does most of the work. Not using someone elses code lib to control the screen. Not using a prefab pcb. Not much is original. obd-II readers already exist, there are plenty of AVR based OBD-II projects, some even use the 90scan models. There are bit-bang versions which use standard 339’s tied to the parallel port. etc.

Maybe i’m old school but for a univeristy project i would expect more than plugging parts together.
i think it would be more impressive from a 15 year kid not someone in a university.

I’m with reza- it seems like cheating.

Posted at 4:10 pm on May 12th, 2009 by Steve

they are undergrads

they arent going to be able to do much more than plug parts together

Posted at 7:17 pm on May 12th, 2009 by anon

At the 400 level in ECE, they’d better be able to do more than plug parts together. On the other hand, if they were going to reinvent the wheel for every project, I’d suggest finding a new career path. Given the time constraints of a project like this (other coursework to do, beers to drink, etc), I think they went about it the right way.

I don’t like how they didn’t list a per-unit expected price, though their budgeted costs are listed as $59.54. ATMEGA644 ($4.58), MAX233A ($6.26), and ELM327 ($35) they sampled are a significant portions of the costs of building your own.

Posted at 8:58 pm on May 12th, 2009 by tw

@tw: Did you look at the bottom? I see an itemized list there.

Posted at 2:58 am on May 13th, 2009 by Evan

Steve, I agree with you. I did a project for my senior design very similar to this but added a GPS receiver, blue tooth radio, accelerometer, gyro and my own GUI. Even with the addition of all that the project was still not very original.

Posted at 10:28 am on May 13th, 2009 by kurf

This is a pretty cool project for a semester’s worth of work (3-months from start to finish) considering all the other stuff that’s going on when you’re at school. Low on the innovation scale, but so what? It seems the project is very well documented and it actually do something very useful, unlike a lot of school projects.

Posted at 11:03 am on May 13th, 2009 by joeku

So they built an OBD reader using a reference board/schematic freely available on ELM’s website, using a prefab chip that does 99% of the heavy lifting, and added a few buttons and an LCD?

A “hack” indeed.

Posted at 12:08 pm on May 13th, 2009 by octelcogopod

Ok, so they’re just students, but this project is a bit of a joke really. They bought an off the shelf chip (the ELM327) and wired it up to an LCD display ?

My 12 year old niece could do this on her own…

Posted at 8:56 am on May 14th, 2009 by disappointed

this looks like a neat project. great price too. I bought a ScanGauge a while ago that does all this and more, but it was $150..

Posted at 6:27 pm on May 14th, 2009 by drew

You Can check Carplugs (http://www.carplugs.com/obd2usb.html) for the naked interface version that run with a PC.

Just my two cents,

Padu

Posted at 1:45 pm on Jun 1st, 2009 by Padulo, NY

OBD II interface for iPhone sounds very interesting :D

Posted at 2:10 am on Jun 4th, 2009 by Enigma

Great mini project, very cheap and useful for a few applications.

Posted at 11:38 pm on Jun 24th, 2009 by David

Nice post! Very complete and detail information. That’s what i need! Well done!

Posted at 11:03 pm on Oct 10th, 2009 by car accessories

It look like Pentium II case. I have 2-3 piece on the basket.

Posted at 12:12 pm on Nov 7th, 2009 by car wraps advertising

If I’d like to download the data to my computer, Can I do that?

Posted at 11:03 am on Nov 8th, 2009 by computer today