$21 OBDII Cable mini-review

**stonent** · 05-26-2011, 12:51 PM

I picked up a USB OBDII cable for a total of $21 the other day, it can do real-time data so you can read O2 voltage, charge voltage, MAF/MAP/MAT data, TPS, CAT temp, fuel trim, engine load etc.

http://www.ecrater.com/p/10763680/ob...diagnostic-usb

They forgot to include the driver disc with software but they e-mailed me where to get it, it runs an old version of Scantool.net, not one that has the fancy graphing but I'm checking into some other scan programs to get more info.

The application only reads the generic codes but some other programs may have vendor specific stuff.

I tried it on my wife's 2002 4G64 and was able to read the pressure in the intake manfold, but when I put it on my 2009 Jeep patriot it could also read outside barometric pressure.

If you want to see what it looks like when running, just look on youtube for scantool.net videos or ELM327 (the type of cable)

What I'm interested in is messing around with intake to give a more free flow into the engine, and with that I could read the intake pressure and intake temp.

My jeep, like the galant has the air intake on the edge of the hood, but it shrinks the hose down and is more restrictive. So I took that part off and it now pulls in air from the engine bay, (albeit higher temp air) but since I can read the pressure and temp I can decide on the best combo of temp and free-flow.

**MI_SPRAWLIN** · 05-27-2011, 07:44 AM

Will the software work on a Mac?

**stonent** · 05-27-2011, 10:09 AM

The software I got was freeware for Windows. I googled ELM327 Mac and there are programs out there for capturing the data on a Mac. I don't know if there are free ones.

Alternately if you're really good, you can download the ELM327 data sheet PDF and it gives all the commands. You can open a serial terminal up and speak directly to the ELM327 and issue it commands.

**finald8ta** · 05-28-2011, 01:09 AM

i picked up the same tool for my uncle and its a great tool to have wondering if theres a better tool besides scantool. let me kno what u find. the one i got was from ebay elm327 as well

**stonent** · 05-28-2011, 07:44 PM

There's another one called ProScan that works with it, it's not free but it can do things like real time MPG, fuel consumption, fuel cost (enter in wheel size, vehicle weight etc) and you can time your drives and it will give you the dollars you've spent. It looks like it has a lot of logging features.

I've downloaded a few free ones but most won't work because they won't let you change from 9600baud to 38400. There's one called obd-diag that I downloaded but haven't tried yet. It has guage clusters.

On my jeep I had scantool running and I was trying to unplug the MAF while running to see what happened but I couldn't get the MAF plug to release.

However I did find out that by putting the air snorkle back on, I lowered my intake temp by 2 degrees.