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72 lines
5.2 KiB
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72 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 2031
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Title: HPR2031: A quick intro to OBD2 with Android
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2031/hpr2031.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:31:44
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---
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This is HBR episode 2031 entitled A Quick Intro to OVD2 with Android.
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It is posted by first-time post-prope 523 and in about 5 minutes long, the summary is
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introduced in Automobile OVD2 and Briefly Profile 3 available apps for Android.
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This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
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At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
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Hi, this is Joe Harris from Columbus, Ohio, recording my first podcast for HBR on the subject
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of using onboard diagnostics ports in your automobile with Android devices.
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The OVD2 standard has been required by American Lawsense 1996 and European Lawsense 2001.
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You'll find a plug beneath your steering wheel that you can connect to using wired or
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Bluetooth adapters available cheaply on eBay and from other sources.
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Some of these adapters can be very expensive but I'm not aware of what the difference is
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between the cheap ones and the expensive ones.
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As far as I can tell, the Bluetooth adapter is simply a serial over Bluetooth connection
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that allows you to connect to the car's computer and query it using AT commands just like
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with the old fashioned haze compatible modems.
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I'm going to talk about three different apps for Android that provide different levels
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of functionality.
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The first one's called Carista and it's a simple app that's used to check codes.
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When your check engine light comes on and you go to the mechanic or to the auto parts store
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and they plug the code reader in, they're plugging it into your OVD2 port.
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That code reader gets back a four digit code or codes that correspond to different predefined
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problems with your engine.
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Carista does that same thing basically and gives you links to explanations about the codes
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to give you more information about what it actually means.
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It includes an overheat alarm to let you know if your engine's overheating.
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It's a useful app for if you're buying a car, one automobile that I bought, the check engine light
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was not on but that turned out to be because someone did disabled the light but it actually had
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some engine codes that I didn't find out about until later.
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The second app is called Dash and it's advertised as a Fitbit for your car.
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The focus is on fuel efficiency.
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It has a configurable dashboard that will show you the battery voltage,
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your miles per gallon and some other basic statistics.
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A couple drawbacks that I found with it are every time you start your car or turn off your car,
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Dash speaks to you telling you that it's starting a trip or ending a trip and I found that
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rather annoying. I was unable to find any place to disable that.
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Another drawback is that it's not very technical. It's meant for people that want basic
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information but not really for hackers. It uses acceleration and braking to give you a score
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out of 99 points to see if you're accelerating too hard or braking too quickly to tell you how
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efficient your drive was. The third and final app that I have to talk about is called Torque.
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Torque QUE. It comes in a free and pro versions. Honestly I don't remember what the difference is
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between the two but I've been using the pro version for a long time now. It's extremely powerful.
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It gives you a set of screens that you can configure with your meters and set up dashboards
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with all the statistics that you can get from the computer. It's very configurable,
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it's skinnable so you can customize the way all of your gauges look. You can use plugins
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like the scan tool plugin which will scan through all the AT codes to check for any unlisted
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that might be supported by your car. Some of the displays that it offers, it'll tell you
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your fuel flow, how many gallons per hour or per minute, your miles per gallon or kilometers per
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gallon. The fuel trim level, it tracks misfires and tells you which cylinders are having misfires.
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Engine temperature, engine RPM. In several cars it'll tell you the level of fuel in your fuel tank
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if it's supported which it's not in my car unfortunately. It gives you an instant fuel efficiency
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so it'll tell you how many miles per gallon you're getting at that specific moment
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or it'll give you a long-term fuel efficiency rating over time. It'll also tell you your battery
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voltage, the engine airflow, the air intake temperature, and it can be configured with
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US or Imperial or metric. It has powerful logging features that will allow you to log the values
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from any of the PIDs that it's probing and you can configure it to upload it to Torx own servers
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with GPS data so you can keep track of your drives and your car's statistics during those drives.
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So that's all I have for this episode. I hope that it's been informative for you. Thanks and I'll talk
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to you next time.
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HECA Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dove Pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club
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and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com. If you have comments on today's show
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please email the host directly leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself
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unless otherwise status. Today's show is released on the Creative Commons
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Attribution ShareLight 3.0 license.
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