Episode: 3375
Title: HPR3375: Car ODB2 Fun and Fail
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3375/hpr3375.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:20:24

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,375 for Friday, 9th of July 2021.
Today's show is entitled, Car ODB 2 Fun and Fail.
It is the 70th show of operator and is about 10 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is, I try to figure out ODB 2 stuff again.
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Hello everyone, welcome to the episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operator.
Today we'll be talking about ODB sensors and troubleshooting, maybe your car, diagnostic
stuff, using an app called Torque for Android and a cheap ODB 2 sensor.
Now, when I first originally said I was going to talk about this, I thought I knew more
about the whole thing than I did, but apparently there's kind of cheap ODB 2 sensors and
there's more expensive ones.
The one I have is the cheaper one where you can only read certain range of codes or something,
and then you have other ones that can read ABS codes and some other codes.
The one you get when you go to the hardware store to get your car checked, they can do more
extensive tests.
It's like a $2,000 thing.
I don't know how much the fancy ones are, like the cheapest fancy ones are, but the one
I have is just a Bluetooth ODB 2 sensor that goes for my maximum, but I use it on my
infinity now.
It's a little tricky if you are new to cars and new to, I don't know, just how ODB 2
works.
I haven't done any research about it, I just installed app and try to make it work.
As far as being a person that knows a lot about this, I don't.
I just know that there's a difference between the cheap little ODB 2 sensor, it's like $15
that I bought or $60 or whatever, that I bought in the real ones that can do ABS stuff.
So you plug a cheap ODB 2 sensor in there, you turn it on, you run it, you drive your
car and you don't have any error codes.
That doesn't necessarily mean that something is not throwing in error somewhere because
there's other ODB 2 stuff, so I'm going to find my infinity crap audio.
If you Google infinity crap audio, you'll find my post online about the infinity cars base
model has really bad audio, no auxiliary input or anything.
So I found my post, I've recently, first thing it was used for troubleshooting my maximum.
And this time it was used for troubleshooting my VCD, which is like the traction control vehicle
dynamic control, kind of like traction control and other stuff like ABS and all that.
So I put a post on here where I performed a reset, I provided a CSV of all the information
I could possibly log while I was driving and I did all these things to try to figure out
what's going on.
I have lights coming on for the traction control and all that.
But I really, I think I really need a one that shows like ABS and like any like VCD type
of issues and I don't think the one I have has that.
So this guy says you may want to scan the ABS module for codes, which I thought I could
do that with torque.
I think you can do that with torque, but the ODBT sensor I have is not picking anything
up.
So I guess it kind of scans or brute force scans the pits looking for data there.
I want to say it feels like a SNMP walk from a coming from a computer background where
you're walking some kind of numerical sequential tree of numbers.
So the way SNMP works is like there's 1.2.3.4 and then 4.4.5.6.7.8.9.10 and then maybe
it goes up to 30 and then the next one next number is 2 and that goes up to 5 and it's
kind of a tree structure separated by dots and decimals.
So it feels like it's kind of like that where there's like a range of numbers that have
that have to do with ABS on all cards or and it scans for these codes or whatever.
And I had the enhanced diagnostics and enhanced advanced, you know, infinity modules.
There's like two of them actually that are installed and it didn't pick up anything.
I took a screen shot and stuff of it scanning for pits on the ECU and never found anything
good.
But I think it's, you know, torque pro with the infinity plugins only show and hit ECB.
So that isn't going to help with ABS of ECB.
Okay.
So torque pro with the infinity plugins only show enhanced ECU pits data so that isn't
going to help with ABS BCD issues.
ODB fusion with the enhanced diagnostics scan can clear and show live data like individual
wheel speeds and plus 40 other ABS module related items.
So what he's saying here is basically either my scanner or my app is from what it looks
like he says the app isn't going to cover what I need and I need to get some other app
and he suggested ODB fusion and enhanced diagnostics.
So for $14 plus $7 I can get this enhanced diagnostic thing.
So anyways, you know, if you're looking to try to troubleshoot what's wrong with your
car and, you know, you think buying an ODBT sensor will help with that.
You know, you're better off just one off going to a hardware store and having them plug
in the fancy one and scan on your codes for you and if you want to have them scanned
for specific areas, I guess, of the pits for certain stuff.
I haven't really honestly gotten a whole lot of use out of it.
I think I had, I kept having gas issues like, you know, a lot of times if you have an
aftermarket gas cap or something like that or you don't screw your gas cap in all the
way there's a bad seal, you'll get errors from the ECU about gas pressure or whatever it
is.
And I was getting a lot of those with a maximum I think and that's why I bought it originally
to try to troubleshoot why I was getting that and I think it ended up being just after
market gas cap that I had on there because I had left mine off, you know, on the thing
and then drove off and I think that's what it was or I just wasn't screwing it in tight
enough anyways.
I think that's the only reason it's really, ever really helped me most of the time.
I just used it to clear codes on the dash when I know I fixed whatever the problem is.
But the great thing, what I'll say on top of that is I've got some stuff from NICOClub.com
NicoClub which has infinity, infinity documentation or the mechanics guide or whatever.
So there's the book that you get when you buy the car that's absolutely useless, it tells
you what kind of gas you get, that's about it and then there's the actual manual for
your car that shows like straight up, it shows like everything, like the pinouts of your
head unit and how they work and which one, which wire goes to what, which from my background
and computers usually you don't get that detailed information about how a device works,
you have to kind of hack it and figure it out yourself and that's what I was trying
to do in my car and I believe like three fees and that's probably why I have some error
codes on the ECU and I wouldn't be surprised if I had to replace the ECU because I melted
something important in there.
So I'm not looking forward to that repair but I used it to help to these PDF versions
of the documentation or the manuals or whatever mechanics guides for fixing stuff in my
car.
The cool thing about them is that when you get the PDF versions, at least with infinity
in this website, when you go to a section it'll have like troubleshooting guides and you
click it and it takes you, it's like a bookmark that takes you to the part, steps you need
to follow.
Oh, if it's lights on then do this, do that, do this.
If you see this light on then do this, do that, do that, if this light's not on then
do this, do that, do that and it shows you kind of how to figure out what's wrong with
your car just by reading this manual.
So I thought it was kind of interesting that it had troubleshooting steps in there and
it was bookmarks and it just had a tons of information about all the connections in
your car and the electronics and how everything works.
So I was actually surprised, I'm not a car person, but I was actually surprised to see that
I could just download the manual of my car and legit, like if something's wrong, I could
kind of figure it out myself to be honest, but then again, you know, you've got stuff
like computer stuff that starts to get to complicated.
Anyways, that's my experience with ODB2 stuff, obviously not an expert, but it has come
in handy a couple of times trying to troubleshoot something, but for the average Joe, you know,
just take it to the shop or take it to the hardware store and they'll do the fancy scanner
on it and give you some more information and you can come back and say, oh, I want you
to do a PCV scan to try to find, you know, some issues with that section of the PCU or
whatever.
Anyways, hope that helps out and you'll all take it easy, have a good one, stay safe.
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