Thread: New OBDII scantool - Beta testers?

Hi All,

I have developed an all in one OBDII scantool similar to the ELMScan and OBDAll in one offerings. I have been testing it for the past 1 month against all kinds of cars and it works pretty well.

It has a couple of neat features such as allowing you to automatically change the baud rate (The ELMScan only offers fixed baud rates of 9600 & 38400).

Anyways I was wondering if there would be any interest amongst users to beta test this product? Since I do not have a huge budget I cannot give it away for free but would be willing to offer it at an extremely low price $ 60. or so for a unit that includes all the necessary cables, hardware etc, and you can return it within 30 days for any reason for a full refund (I will make it $ 55 so you can use the 5 bucks to ship it back if you want to ).

I will do this for the first 10 folks but I would like to have a mix of cars so let me know what you would be testing on.

Let me know if anyones interested and I will follow up with them.

Thanks
Paul

Sounds interesting. any more info or pics?

I will be setting up a website etc to share more details give me a day or two I was just trying to gauge the interest here. Will provide more details in the next couple of days.

beta testers is a bit of a misnomer since I have extensively tested the unit on all kinds of cars, but I want to be absolutely certain that there will be no issues and getting a crossection of the power users to do some independent testing would be very informative hence the post

Thanks
Paul

I have a 2000 Blazer I could test it in. What kind of support will you be offering on this product if we find bugs and such? What software does it work with? What makes this product better than the competitors?

Any bugs will be fixed via a chip swap. I will provide a socketed board so the micro can be swapped out if anyone uncovers any bugs. Support will be via a website that I will set up and if you need I will also provide phone support via callback. (I am working on finalizing the website will send out the link - hopefully in the next day or two)

Main advantages over the existing products

1. Supports fully variable baud rates 9600 - 128000. Also it does this without having to open up the interface each time you want to change speeds.
2. Fully compatible with the ELM327 command set
3. Has a double buffered message queues for the OBD II messages from the vehicle so less likely to run into the BUFFER OVERFLOW issue that happens with the ELM327 chipset.
4. Lower cost compared to the ELM327 chipset.

The interface will be compatible with the all existing software that works with the ELM327 products. Some of the software examples

Scanmaster ELM v.0.4.0.0 - http://www.wgsoft.de
Digimoto Lite - http://www.digimoto.com/
wODB - http://www.werner-digital.com/obd/software.html
ScanTool - http://www.scantool.net/?mode=browseSoftware
OBD2Spy - http://www.obd2spy.com/
EasyObdII_v2 - http://www.easyobdii.com/downloads.php
OBD Logger - http://pages.infinit.net/jsenk/obd.htm
OBD Gauge, PalmOS, Pocket PC - http://www.qcontinuum.org/obdgauge/



Thanks
Paul

Originally Posted by michbound

Any bugs will be fixed via a chip swap. I will provide a socketed board so the micro can be swapped out if anyone uncovers any bugs. Support will be via a website that I will set up and if you need I will also provide phone support via callback. (I am working on finalizing the website will send out the link - hopefully in the next day or two)

Main advantages over the existing products

1. Supports fully variable baud rates 9600 - 128000. Also it does this without having to open up the interface each time you want to change speeds.
2. Fully compatible with the ELM327 command set
3. Has a double buffered message queues for the OBD II messages from the vehicle so less likely to run into the BUFFER OVERFLOW issue that happens with the ELM327 chipset.
4. Lower cost compared to the ELM327 chipset.

The interface will be compatible with the all existing software that works with the ELM327 products.

Thanks
Paul

Sounds like a worthwhile investment. I would me more than happy to try this out for you.

Originally Posted by tsiedsma

Sounds like a worthwhile investment. I would me more than happy to try this out for you.

Thanks tsiedsma, let me get the website all setup so you will have all the details and then I will contact you seperately. The website will offer the product at a higher price but just ignore that since you will be testing the interface.

Your trailblazer most likely uses the J1850 VPW protocol and I have extensively tested that so you will not run into any issues, but then I just want to be cautious and ensure that I get a good diverse test group validating the interface rather than just me testing it on different cars.

Paul

Originally Posted by michbound

Thanks tsiedsma, let me get the website all setup so you will have all the details and then I will contact you seperately. The website will offer the product at a higher price but just ignore that since you will be testing the interface.

Your trailblazer most likely uses the J1850 VPW protocol and I have extensively tested that so you will not run into any issues, but then I just want to be cautious and ensure that I get a good diverse test group validating the interface rather than just me testing it on different cars.

Paul

Sounds good. It is actually a Blazer and not the newer Trailblazer but I am sure the interface is identical.

Paul, if you send me more information I will purchase one and test it in house against our emulators (all protocols) and I'll have some of the devs take it for a spin. I'd be interested to see what the hardware can do.