hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2031.txt

Episode: 2031
Title: HPR2031: A quick intro to OBD2 with Android
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2031/hpr2031.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:31:44

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This is HBR episode 2031 entitled A Quick Intro to OVD2 with Android.
It is posted by first-time post-prope 523 and in about 5 minutes long, the summary is
introduced in Automobile OVD2 and Briefly Profile 3 available apps for Android.
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Hi, this is Joe Harris from Columbus, Ohio, recording my first podcast for HBR on the subject
of using onboard diagnostics ports in your automobile with Android devices.
The OVD2 standard has been required by American Lawsense 1996 and European Lawsense 2001.
You'll find a plug beneath your steering wheel that you can connect to using wired or
Bluetooth adapters available cheaply on eBay and from other sources.
Some of these adapters can be very expensive but I'm not aware of what the difference is
between the cheap ones and the expensive ones.
As far as I can tell, the Bluetooth adapter is simply a serial over Bluetooth connection
that allows you to connect to the car's computer and query it using AT commands just like
with the old fashioned haze compatible modems.
I'm going to talk about three different apps for Android that provide different levels
of functionality.
The first one's called Carista and it's a simple app that's used to check codes.
When your check engine light comes on and you go to the mechanic or to the auto parts store
and they plug the code reader in, they're plugging it into your OVD2 port.
That code reader gets back a four digit code or codes that correspond to different predefined
problems with your engine.
Carista does that same thing basically and gives you links to explanations about the codes
to give you more information about what it actually means.
It includes an overheat alarm to let you know if your engine's overheating.
It's a useful app for if you're buying a car, one automobile that I bought, the check engine light
was not on but that turned out to be because someone did disabled the light but it actually had
some engine codes that I didn't find out about until later.
The second app is called Dash and it's advertised as a Fitbit for your car.
The focus is on fuel efficiency.
It has a configurable dashboard that will show you the battery voltage,
your miles per gallon and some other basic statistics.
A couple drawbacks that I found with it are every time you start your car or turn off your car,
Dash speaks to you telling you that it's starting a trip or ending a trip and I found that
rather annoying. I was unable to find any place to disable that.
Another drawback is that it's not very technical. It's meant for people that want basic
information but not really for hackers. It uses acceleration and braking to give you a score
out of 99 points to see if you're accelerating too hard or braking too quickly to tell you how
efficient your drive was. The third and final app that I have to talk about is called Torque.
Torque QUE. It comes in a free and pro versions. Honestly I don't remember what the difference is
between the two but I've been using the pro version for a long time now. It's extremely powerful.
It gives you a set of screens that you can configure with your meters and set up dashboards
with all the statistics that you can get from the computer. It's very configurable,
it's skinnable so you can customize the way all of your gauges look. You can use plugins
like the scan tool plugin which will scan through all the AT codes to check for any unlisted
that might be supported by your car. Some of the displays that it offers, it'll tell you
your fuel flow, how many gallons per hour or per minute, your miles per gallon or kilometers per
gallon. The fuel trim level, it tracks misfires and tells you which cylinders are having misfires.
Engine temperature, engine RPM. In several cars it'll tell you the level of fuel in your fuel tank
if it's supported which it's not in my car unfortunately. It gives you an instant fuel efficiency
so it'll tell you how many miles per gallon you're getting at that specific moment
or it'll give you a long-term fuel efficiency rating over time. It'll also tell you your battery
voltage, the engine airflow, the air intake temperature, and it can be configured with
US or Imperial or metric. It has powerful logging features that will allow you to log the values
from any of the PIDs that it's probing and you can configure it to upload it to Torx own servers
with GPS data so you can keep track of your drives and your car's statistics during those drives.
So that's all I have for this episode. I hope that it's been informative for you. Thanks and I'll talk
to you next time.
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