OBD II Bluetooth Scanner: worth the money?

[Lorenzo Candelpergher]

Dear Deser Wanderers,

I've been looking around for a good OBD II Bluetooth Scanner to use with my Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. I ended up aiming at Blue Driver OBD II Bluetooth Scan Tool which for approx 500 aed seems to be one of the best options. 

The original idea was to find out why I get so often get an error light from the Electronic Stability Control System which tends to appear when I happen to do a lot of wheel spinning. Jeep were not able to figure out the problem, reset the system and said it was OK, but when tested in the sand, the car had again and keeps on having the same issue. 

Later on I developed a further interest to know more and understand better how my car behaves with or without the "Off-road+" mode activated and other stuff, especially what is the sweet spot for performing  "almost WOT" downshifting by feathering the throttle, as real WOT (Wide Open Throttle) downshifting seems to be electronically prevented in the 3.6L Pentastar engine, which is the only real issue I see in my new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited coming from a V8 400hp 5.6L Nissan Patrol Y62 which would perform WOT downshifting without any issue. 

Any recommendations? Any experiences worth sharing? Is an OBD II Scanner a tool worth having or is it wasted money? 

[Mario Cornejo]

@Lorenzo Candelpergher I use an OBD to better monitor the coolant and air intake temperature in my car, the device I have is obdlink mx+.   During our last drive in Area 53 I recorded the whole drive using Dash Command, almost 2GB of data, which I still have to analyze.

The Patrol Y61 seems to have limited sensors, other cars like yours probably have more and an OBD will be a good addition to your tool box.

[Frederic]

1 hour ago, Lorenzo Candelpergher said:

Dear Deser Wanderers,

I've been looking around for a good OBD II Bluetooth Scanner to use with my Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. I ended up aiming at Blue Driver OBD II Bluetooth Scan Tool which for approx 500 aed seems to be one of the best options. 

The original idea was to find out why I get so often get an error light from the Electronic Stability Control System which tends to appear when I happen to do a lot of wheel spinning. Jeep were not able to figure out the problem, reset the system and said it was OK, but when tested in the sand, the car had again and keeps on having the same issue. 

Later on I developed a further interest to know more and understand better how my car behaves with or without the "Off-road+" mode activated and other stuff, especially what is the sweet spot for performing  "almost WOT" downshifting by feathering the throttle, as real WOT (Wide Open Throttle) downshifting seems to be electronically prevented in the 3.6L Pentastar engine, which is the only real issue I see in my new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited coming from a V8 400hp 5.6L Nissan Patrol Y62 which would perform WOT downshifting without any issue. 

Any recommendations? Any experiences worth sharing? Is an OBD II Scanner a tool worth having or is it wasted money? 

Most budget OBD scanners are made to read out  and reset faults that create an Engine Check Light. Diagnostics like the one you are describing will most likely need more advanced OBD readers that are equipped with historical trending based parameter sets. I think these are more in the 3-4000 AED range to start. 

I have a DragonMart one for basic fault resetting and also a Bluetooth chip that works with the Torque Pro Android App. 

[Zed]

Dear @Lorenzo Candelpergher, 500aed seems expensive, double that and you will probably get the Autel brand which most professional garages use 😂 I suggest to use the reverse-engineer approach from the software to the hardware instead: I asked my Jeep friend and he said to use JScan software. Once you know which software you want to use, look for the "supported scanners" page. The "Highly Recommended" scanner for JScan which is iCar Pro is only 100 dirhams on Amazon ☺️

http://jscan.net/supported-and-not-supported-obd-adapters/

As for the original idea to get it, the tool will help towards it but not the root cause: the car ECU will gladly handover the scanner all the diagnostic error codes that it currently has. Next you need to download the Jeep Maintenance Manual to find out what Jeep dealers need to do when diagnosing the codes. Sometimes 3 errors are caused by just 1 error: I had multiple ABS errors and 1 wheel sensor, turns out replacing the wheel sensor eliminates all the ABS errors too 😁 It could be fun, it could be frustrating, nevertheless you'll learn something about how your car works ☺️

[Niki]

@Lorenzo Candelpergher I second @Zed advice - JScan software and then work back from this to identify the OBD2 sensor to use.  I recommend going for a Bluetooth v4 module as a min (i preferred to avoid the wifi variant as you can have concurrent bluetooth connections vs a single wifi).  The BlueDriver you linked is a great unit and fast - just check it is compatible with JScan. 

That said - I don't think this will solve your original issues of the warning light - however will allow you to reset it yourself. 

Sometimes this sensor can trigger if the steering column is off center? however if it was that i suspect the garage would have corrected immediately (link)

There's a separate group on Carnity for OBD2 fans where folks have helped me setup up the dials and what useful (and what isn't).  Below is my current dash during drives and every few weeks i just run the scanner to see if any error codes have been picked up.

[Zed]

Just to add on @Niki's already sound advice: Bluetooth doesn't work with iPhone, as a developer I find it painful that Apple does not support the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile mechanism (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204387) .  If your main devices are iOS ecosystem (iPhone, iPad), then you need to buy the Wi-Fi version of the OBD dongle.

Otherwise, Bluetooth works fine for Androids... if you're multi-platform person and uses both iPhone and Android, then you need to buy the dongle that supports both, or buy 2 dongles for each device 😁

[Niki]

@Zed i am actually using an iPhone (12Pro Max) running OBD Fusion App (paying a  small add on for the Toyota calcs) plus a Bluetooth OBD2 Dongle (Veepeak OBDCheck BLE+ Bluetooth 4.0 adapter bought from US Amazon as the UAE didn't have this specific model). 

It is working great and no issues sending data to the App - maybe i am missing some functionality (but i haven't found that limit yet).

[Zed]

49 minutes ago, Niki said:

@Zed i am actually using an iPhone (12Pro Max) running OBD Fusion App (paying a  small add on for the Toyota calcs) plus a Bluetooth OBD2 Dongle (Veepeak OBDCheck BLE+ Bluetooth 4.0 adapter bought from US Amazon as the UAE didn't have this specific model). 

It is working great and no issues sending data to the App - maybe i am missing some functionality (but i haven't found that limit yet).

@Niki love it when a thread turns a bit more technical 😄, so I'm assuming the Bluetooth dongle you used is this Veepeak OBDCheck BLE. This one probably has an HM10 chip that allows Serial over Bluetooth Low Energy. Apple is more lenient to BLE, notable because of its iBeacon devices, so they allow more things than the Classic Bluetooth. The caveat is: Serial over BLE is capped at 2 KB / second data transfer rate (see experiments & performance charts here)  while the Classic Bluetooth Serial Port Profile Specification says data is available at 128 KB / second  .  The usage will be:

1. If you're just checking for Diagnostic Code and Clearing the Check Engine Light (CEL) signals, using the BLE dongle with iOS is fine. I would be cautious using this dongle if a Jeeper is calibrating his speedometer after changing tire size using JSCAN . The data transfer is capped at 2 KB / second, and the calibration takes 5 minutes... if things go wrong, well, someone may break their Jeep's ECU 😅

2. If you have bigger bandwidth, you can send one time a data of size 128 KB in just one second. If your bandwidth is capped at 2 KB / second, that same 128 KB data chunk (e.g. real-time engine temperature, transmission temp, oil pressure etc.) will take 64 seconds to travel from car to phone. Besides delay, this is what we call a "chatty application" in software development, and thus instead of achieving Low Energy, your phone will drain more battery 🙂

[Niki]

@Zed this is incredibly useful (and impressive!) - i have a spare older Samsung Galaxy 8 and now you have me considering switching my setup!  Thank you for this technical Mic drop moment!  

Edited July 5, 2021 by Niki