Is CF compatable with the OpenPort OBD-II cable?

**Lum** · 03-28-2006, 08:56 AM

I know ScanTool is the only officially supported one, but has anyone tried it with the OpenPort? I would prefer to use this cable as it has some extra pins wired up that allow me to backup and/or reflash my ECU (eg. I could keep an economy map and a performance map on the Car PC and knock up a quick plugin to switch between them)

Originally Posted by www.tactrix.com

What is it?
The OpenPort 1.2 is an USB interface between your computer and car engine computers (ECUs) that use a ISO 9141-2 compatible OBDII interface.
What can I do with it?
That depends on your car and the software available. You can communicate with any car that has an ISO 9141-2 type OBD interface. What these communications allow you to do depends on the capabilities of the car, what is known about the communication protocols it supports, and what software is available to utilize these features. Openecu.org's efforts so far have been focused on datalogging and reflashing of newer Subaru vehicles.
How do I access the hardware from my PC?
The OpenPort uses a FTDI232BM USB to serial interface chip internally which has drivers for Windows, OS X, and linux to allow the device to appear as a normal COM port on your computer. This means that the OpenPort is compatible with many pieces of software which already use RS-232 based ISO 9141-2 interfaces.

**raygun** · 03-28-2006, 11:01 PM

The Centrafuse OBDII plugin is designed to work w/ ELM32X based chips. Our OBDII support will be limited to general OBDII, nothing manufacturer specific at this point is in the plans.

Looks like a cool device though, I'm all about some WRX action...

I think if you're up for it, you should take a look at the Centrafuse SDK and build a plugin for the scooby crowd.
--raygun

**Lum** · 03-29-2006, 01:22 AM

But presumably that chip is just an RS232 <--> OBD-II converter, so if CF is just expecting to find the right protocols on a certain COM port then other cables stand a reasonable chance of working?

My skills don't stretch as far as .net unfortunately, but I might be able to make an app intended for embedding. I've already found a little open-source app that dumps log data from the ECU into a CSV file, and modified it to dump to stdout, so I should just be able to popen() that and turn the data into pretty gauges.