Thread: Trying to get USB OBD2 interface to work...

Originally Posted by chunkyks

Yeah, it'll be blank when you first open it. Hit enter to see something.

Also, I forgot to mention that you need to hit Ctrl-a, k to exit from screen.

Make sure when you do that that your ftdi device is plugged in and that you're sure obdftdipty is running and that you have the correct pty

Gary (-;

I can confirm the device is plugged in, and no troubles running obdftdipty to create /dev/pts/1 (although, I have to run sudo obdftdipty -V 0x0403 -D 0xCC4A to create the /dev/pts/1 each time).

screen /dev/pts/1 results only in a blank screen. CNTRL A just says "no other screen". I am not able to type in ATZ to get any feedback.

I thought maybe my compiz desktop effects were causing the screen terminal to be blank, so I disabled them, still no luck.

Does this help any?

Code:

unsung@unsung-desktop:~$ sudo obdftdipty -V 0x0403 -D 0xCC4A
Found ftdi device with productid 0x0
obdftdipty successfully opened pty. Name: /dev/pts/1

Code:

unsung@unsung-desktop:/dev/pts$ dir
0  1  2  ptmx

In screen, the first time you push ctrl-a, nothing will happen; that's good. Hit ctrl-a, then k, to exit it.

Perhaps your device needs the baudrate set? Try passing --baud=38400 ? Off the top of my head, 38400 is the most likely candidate, but it's not the only one. [Other likely candidates: 115200, 57600, 19200, 2400, 4800. There's more, but it's likely to be one of those, in roughly that order]


<ten minutes pass. penny drops>


... ok, so, looking at the device, I begin to fear I may have been wasting some [but not all!] of your time. It's not an actual ELM327 device, it looks like a simple CAN-to-USB connector - which would explain why it suggests evoscan rather than regular OBDII software.

So, taking a couple steps back, some problems right now [a little perfect storm of brokenness]:
1) The ftdi driver on your system [the regular one, not obdftdipty] doesn't work.
2) evoscan is trying to get a real USB port and not just a COM port. COM ports are serial devices [and that's what wine is trying to proxy in], wheras evoscan may be looking for the actual USB device to talk to.
3) obdftdipty might still be workable, so long as you can convince evoscan to "just talk to the damn COM port" rather than "go looking for USB ports"
4) Alternatively, if you could tell wine to proxy in the USB device [rather than as a COM port, which is what that symlink you create does], then you might have more success... if only #1 didn't hold [ie, USB broken], and if it were possible [wine may not allow such things, I do not know]

I'd lean towards seeing if you can convince evoscan to work against the right com port - it'll be a case of futzing with evoscan preferences. Even if you can, it's possible you need to set the baudrate in obdftdipty. evoscan *may* be trying and failing to communicate on that com port [hence the error]. See if you can

Sorry, this is all taking more time and effort than you'd really hoped for - hopefully it'll be one of those things that once it's working, it'll just be magically set forever.

If it gets to the point where obdftdipty is working for you, then there's a little bit more witchery to make it really easy [notably, make hotplugging work then get the correctly symlink set up for you automatically each time]. obdftdipty does actually make that fairly easy, so I'll gladly help there, too.

Gary (-;

Bummer, I guess its back to the drawing board! Although I haven't given up, it sounds like I have a lot to learn and research. Hopefully some one else will come along and contribute.

Interestingly I found that VW owners were able to get a similar program/cable to work in wine:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=2725554

No, no! I haven't fully precluded the possibility that this will work; can you show screenshots of the evoscan preferences dialog? If you can connect it to COM1, it may still work out

Gary (-;

if anybody is interested, i got evoscan installed using playonlinux. i just installed evoscan like any game in playonlinux. then just install .net2.0 from the presets that come with playonlinux.

i have no ideas of how to get usb working, though. i just thought this might be an easier route for some people.

i could not get winetricks to work. it failed first because of the hd volume bug and second because of an "unimplemented function msi.dll . . " error

Originally Posted by chunkyks

No, no! I haven't fully precluded the possibility that this will work; can you show screenshots of the evoscan preferences dialog? If you can connect it to COM1, it may still work out

Gary (-;

evoscan 2.6 will not let you select anything for a com port. It literally says "ComPort devices are not supported by EvoScan, OpenPort USB cables are faster"

i cannot speak for any older versions.

evoscan 2.6 will not let you select anything for a com port. It literally says "ComPort devices are not supported by EvoScan, OpenPort USB cables are faster"

Closed source *and* hardware lockin. What's not to love?

Gary (-;

i will try to get ahold of evoscan versions 2.5 and 2.7 beta and see what they can offer.

evoscan version 2.5 does have settings for choosing a com port! if anyone needs a copy, let me know.