Comments on: OBD-II Automotive data logging

By: computer today

computer today — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:03:44 +0000

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

By: car wraps advertising

car wraps advertising — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:12:17 +0000

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

By: car accessories

car accessories — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:03:42 +0000

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

By: David

David — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:38:47 +0000

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

By: Enigma

Enigma — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:10:23 +0000

OBD II interface for iPhone sounds very interesting :D

By: Padulo, NY

Padulo, NY — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:45:38 +0000

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

By: drew

drew — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:27:47 +0000

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..

By: disappointed

disappointed — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:56:51 +0000

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…

By: octelcogopod

octelcogopod — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:08:46 +0000

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.

By: joeku

joeku — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:03:51 +0000

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.

By: kurf

kurf — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:28:28 +0000

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.

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:58:49 +0000

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

By: tw

tw — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:58:26 +0000

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.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:17:09 +0000

they are undergrads

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

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:10:06 +0000

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.