ELM327 ODB-II Scanner/Reader Microchip Review
| Category: Electronics By on 2008-07-23 | Digg it! |
ELM327 is an ODB-II reader supporting any car from 1996 up to the newest standards. It has a serial connection that has been adapted to work with USB and bluetooth, although USB is prefered. You can connect to it via Hyper Terminal or Putty using the proper COM Port to send the commands, all commands are documented well. The cost of one of these is $35 for the chip itself, although ebay sells the entire circuit and the chip for that price, those are knock offs. Scantool sells them for a lot more, however amazon has them for a lot cheaper at the time of this writing.
So I managed to get a few of these from their Beta Testing program, this being version 1.3 However I do own one of the knock off of 1.27a I bought from ebay. I am pleased to say that both work fine, although the clone is missing a few things. It doesn't stop it from working fully in conjuction with PCMSCAN software that I managed to get a hold of. I have tried this chip in a PWN car and an ISO car. Although the ISO did not have the baud rate properly set it still reported all the stats fine.
So far with the product i've been able to:
- Read/Set/Clear Check Engine Codes (and interpret with PCMSCAN)
- Get realtime RPM and Speed
- Get realtime temperature of Engine, coolant, etc
- Get frames of error when the Check Engine goes off
- Get fuel efficiency
- Read O2, and other Sensors depending on the car
The product supports far more than I have listed, but i've been able to do all of these with PCMSCAN, the free software given by ELM is not too good.
One thing I can say though, is that ScanTool is a rip off for the amount you have to pay. Unless you really want a Bluetooth ODB-II reader. They claim that ebay ones don't work nearly as well, and granted it does not work with the latest software because they break it themselves so that it doesn't work. They'll add a command or two or check for something that the knock off's have not implemented. Sorry ScanTool, but I am perfectly fine with my Chinese knock off at 1/4th the price.
In conclusion, whether you want to make a car computer with this, or just simply read ODB-II from your car for Check Engine Light codes, this is a great product, both the knock offs and the real ones. I am hoping I can make a car computer out of this at some point in the future when I can afford a touch screen. I think it's a great tool versus the commercial ODB-II readers that cost 100$+ and don't even allow you to save data, granted they don't require a computer to be around, but chances are you will have one around if you're reading the codes.
