DIY kit in Elektor next month

**tyRion** · 06-06-2005, 05:56 PM

Elecktor are doing a article on how to make your own OBD-II -> PC converter next month for those of you willing to make the board to save a few pennies,

**daxwert** · 06-15-2005, 03:53 AM

Hi,
Is this artikel the one about the sonsory of cars?
Is it usefull or not? I stay quite far from britain so i can't have a peak at the newsstand. Would have to purchase it via net.
Dax

**tyRion** · 06-15-2005, 10:54 AM

Its about making a OBD-II sensor for your car, instead of buying one, you'd buy the parts and make it yourself.

I'm thinking about sharing it with whoever wants it

**FociMan** · 06-15-2005, 10:58 AM

I would definitely be interested in giving this a go. Or at least letting my Dad have a go!! He's a retired aerospace engineer, so it would be nothing compared to jumpjet head up displays and autopilots!!

**scott_fx** · 06-15-2005, 11:19 AM

i'm def. interested in this. please keep me updated as well

**tyRion** · 06-15-2005, 06:13 PM

Its in the July/August issue which should be out start of July, I'll but it and scan it in, e-mail it to whoever wants it, PM me about it, seeing as talking pubicly about sending copyrighted stuff is bound to be breaking some law

**Machs_FueL** · 06-15-2005, 09:10 PM

you might find this interesting.. this fellow has worked out a simple circuit for odbii to pc comunication

http://www.planetfall.com/%7Ejeff/obdii/

as far as i can tell it works with the ISO obd interface, for most Germans and Jap cars

This page can tell you what interface your car has

http://www.obd-2.com/dlcnet.html

**tyRion** · 06-16-2005, 05:47 PM

That looks cool, the pic I saw in the back of the mag look'd like it had way more components though, I dont know if thats a good or bad thing

**julz** · 06-20-2005, 02:17 AM

sounds good, i was actually looking at building the OBDII-RS232 converter designed by Jeff. Very easy circuit, only hard (well not really hard) part is getting the opto isolators in Australia. I'd have to order them from RS Components (theyre in Australia) and pay $10AUD postage for ~$5 worth of components (i could goto RS components but its kinda on the edge of town, blah blah :P).

At the moment there are two types of OBDII circuits freely available on the net...

1. One like Jeff's which uses Opto Isolators - basically this is a K-Line box. These are really cheap to build, supposedly we have HEAPS of these where I work. These are just level shifters (ie from the +/- 13volts? of a RS232 port to 0-5v?).

2. One like Scantool.net which uses the ELM chip. This one is more expensive because it uses a proprietory chip. The Scantool.net version also seems to have a lot more software support and a lot of free software available for it.

I'm looking at making/importing either the K-Line or ELM type OBDII interfaces in Australia for those who are interested. It probably wont be for about another month or so when i get things finalised.

**cid_mcdp** · 06-29-2005, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by FociMan

I would definitely be interested in giving this a go. Or at least letting my Dad have a go!! He's a retired aerospace engineer, so it would be nothing compared to jumpjet head up displays and autopilots!!

hey hey hey... speaking of heads up displays...

that is like my ultimate, list of things to do before i die car modification- i'd LOVE to have a HUD in my car to display gauge readings and whatnot. this is actually a big part of the reason i'm getting into this whole carputer scene is to help me on my way to making a HUD.

any tips from your dad on how to do it?

data capturing and stuff wouldn't be a problem, it's display that i'm having trouble with.