Confession time. Fault codes from OBD connection

[gwatpe]

Have just returned from the dealer to clear some persistent fault codes. These included the Check Engine, EV service required, ACC service, ABS service, power steering, and others. Had some red flashing warnings on the dash that eventually went after several power ON/OFF cycles. Total of 23 errors were cleared. It seems as though these adapters can send corrupt codes to the computer and trigger all sorts of nasty errors. Car has still been driveable, but eventually may end up with a dead as a door post PHEV. Have seen some conflicting connection sequences. Are there any known connection sequences to avoid for the OBD adapter, when plugging in?

I had not seen any errors with the Torque app when operating. Will be monitoring this more closely, and running the barest minimum PID's in the future.

 

[anko]

Had a similar experience, when retrieving my car from service, last Thursday. As I have seen some of these errors as well. Mostly, if not all, caused by me letting the aux battery run flat, while testing my stuff with the car parked in the driveway. Running the aux battery flat will get every bit of electronics in the car screaming. Just before it dies out, due to lack of power.

 

[Oscarman]

Do you leave OBD adaptor permanently connected?
Took delivery of icarsoft WiFi adaptor about a week ago. I haven't yet determined out the right start up process. The adaptor goes to sleep after 30 minutes inactivity.
Sometimes I can wake it up by trying to connect but mostly I have to disconnect and reconnect in order to get a WiFi signal.
I am coming to conclusion I would be better removing the adaptor after use.
The adaptor starts up when I plug it in without touching the power button and I can connect to the WiFi signal but I need to power the vehicle to connect an app to the adaptor.

 

[anko]

I have the same adapter. For me, the good thing is: you cannot turn it off, only on. So, you just push a button to turn it on. Don't need visual confirmation, which is a good thing in bright daylight. As it shuts down automatically when there is no activity for 30 minutes, it is okay to just leave it in there.

When it comes to being able to connect when the car is turned off, I think it depends on the app you are using.

TP for example has two icons, one for "connected to the adapter" and one for "connected to the car". Connecting to the adapter will work as long as he adapter is powered up and the phone is connected to the iCarsoft WiFi. But then it tries to establish a connection to the car (which by itself is mor or less stateless), by requesting specific PIDs. If the car is off, these requests may not result in a proper response, which is interpreted by TP as the car is not accessible. Once TP thinks it is connected to the car, I believe it stops checking for these specific PIDs, so perhaps you could turn off the car once connected and still stay connected and submit requests to the OBC (OnBoardCharger) to monitor the charging process.

Mentioned this once or twice, but I build a little piece of SW that sits in between TP and the adapter, allowing TP to request PIDs from PHEV specific ECUs as well. When the program cannot connect to the adapter in 10 seconds or so, it will go into emulator mode, sending made up responses to TP. This allows me to test my setup, even when the car is away from home. But in order to get it to work, the emulator had to be able to give proper responses to a fairly large set of standard requests before I could convince TP that it was actually connected to the (a) car and it would start doing its sweeps.

 

[zzcoopej]

I switch the car on, then plug in the OBD. I usually pull OBD out after switching the car off, however occasionally I forget (read stories about the bad old days when it would flatten your ICE starter battery).

The only time I've seen faults was in my iMiEV using a $100 Scantools bluetooth with either Torque or Dashcommand. All sorts of faults started appearing on the car dash (abs failure etc). At first I didn't even think of the OBD, however when I pulled over to investigate I made the connection. I completely shut the car down and powered up and all the faults cleared from the car dash. I never went into the faults history to investigate so they are probably still there.

 

[anko]

The Torque Pro app was updated a day or to ago. After the update, my solution with my proxy program, which allows me to have real time PHEV specific data on screen, does not work any more. some protocol issue. Is being worked on.

But this morning I got bored while driving because I had nothing to look at. So I fired up good all DashCmd. Hmmm, new version too. So I accept the conditions and try to connect. Within seconds, every little light on my dashboard started flashing. Every little piece of equipement suddenly needed servicing. Then all of a sudden, I had a feeling the cars steering was a bit heavier than normal. Guess what ..... Yep. Power steering switched off.

After a restart, all was fine again, but still .... be advised stuff like this can happen !

 

[Neverfuel]

The Torque Pro app was updated a day or to ago. After the update, my solution with my proxy program, which allows me to have real time PHEV specific data on screen, does not work any more. some protocol issue. Is being worked on.

But this morning I got bored while driving because I had nothing to look at. So I fired up good all DashCmd. Hmmm, new version too. So I accept the conditions and try to connect. Within seconds, every little light on my dashboard started flashing. Every little piece of equipement suddenly needed servicing. Then all of a sudden, I had a feeling the cars steering was a bit heavier than normal. Guess what ..... Yep. Power steering switched off.

After a restart, all was fine again, but still .... be advised stuff like this can happen !

Hi Anko

Don't know whether you got the programme over there -Red Dwarf. In series one, episode one, Rimmer (who was a vending machine technician), obliterated the ships crew, including himself by fiddling with the Hyperdrive. You have drawn so many parallels for me - I am properly laughing out loud.

If you have not seen the programme - give it a go, it's pretty addictive though and it ran to 10 series!

I need to go wipe my eyes now :lol: :lol: :lol:

You probably need to get into ETACS now so MMC engineers don't get a smell of what you are up to!

 

[anko]

 

[Neverfuel]

Don't ever be ashamed, or embarrassed, I think it is great what you are doing.

Looking forward to your next test phase. Turn off auto updates on your device so that when you get it sorted it does not happen again (depends on the device, I suppose).

 

[gwatpe]

So I must NOT update Torque PRO.

I have not had any problems since I don't leave the adapter plugged in, and I only connect the adapter after the PHEV is up and running with the READY light.

 

[anko]

Don't ever be ashamed, or embarrassed, I think it is great what you are doing.

Haha. No worries there.

 

[anko]

So I must NOT update Torque PRO.

Perhaps not. As long as I do not use my extended PIDs it seems okay, but yet there are reports of TP being slower in the new version. More 'lagging' .

 

[anko]

A new version of TP was release today. first dry run (from the couch, my little proxy running in Emulator mode) seems very promising. TP no longer reports my adapter being faulty.

 

[gwatpe]

What version of TP do you have? my version is 1.8.62

 

[anko]

Mine is now 1.8.70 and that seems stable. Second road test tomorrow. According to the forum of TP, Ian Hawkins (the maker of TP) actually rolled back a code change that he did earlier this week, of which he believes it had bad impact on my proxy program. And now it works again. Isn't that amazing? So happy with that.

 

[gwatpe]

I have a new OBD WiFi adapter coming. It has a power button, so hopefully I will be able to leave it connected, and just press the button when I want to use it.

Still looking for a tablet. May just go for the latest with lollipop, V5.?? android. Will need to be more than just a car device, so the screen size will play into it. Some apps have fixed size fonts with no zoom function and over 40 eyes just don't cut it on a small screen.

The very first OBD HUD I connected brought up error codes when connected when the car was already powered ON. It seems as though devices with higher power, display types, are different again. I suspect that the PHEV OBD port may not be a very robust design. MMC with the MUT3 tool may have taken some short cuts in the design standard.

 

[anko]

Does the design standard for OBDII ports specify in any way that these ports should support a HUD device?