Review: TouchScan OBD-II Software

**VegasGuy** · 10-04-2009, 09:08 PM

[QUOTE=drewbp;1347188]

Originally Posted by VegasGuy

unless you have a virtual port setup so you can split the OBDII signal out to two programs. I have that and it does work./QUOTE]

Would love to know what program and settings you are using to split the obd2 between 2 programs. Thanks.

What I meant to say was "I'm an idiot, don't pay any attention to what I type."

I was thinking about Xport and got to thinking it worked with OBD. Of course, it doesn't.

What we really need is something a little like that though. It reads the OBD pids and presents a standardize API to work against. Oh well....

VegasGuy55

**drewbp** · 10-04-2009, 10:15 PM

Bummer. I really would like to split OBD2 to a couple of programs.

**sviyer** · 10-05-2009, 07:17 AM

I am also interested to know if such a program exists as well !! or a way to use the OBD data with more than one application.

**Curiosity** · 10-08-2009, 07:30 PM

XPort should be able to handle it, but then no GPS. I also have an app that manages shared OBD-II requests as well.

**mezz64** · 10-09-2009, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by mjo151

TouchScan 2.2 has just been released. Anyone with an existing license is eligible for a free upgrade, just visit the website to download.

New features include:
* Freeze frame support
* Additional PID support (over 90 PIDs supported)
* Ability to customize day and night skins
* Two new methods of calculating MPG - Mass airflow sensor no longer required
* Continuous/non-continuous monitoring test results
* Multiple bug fixes

Wow, can't believe it took me so long to see this. As soon as I get my carputer back in action I will be sure to check out the new MPG features.

**drewbp** · 10-16-2009, 12:02 PM

i have tried other virtual splitters and not been able to get the OBD to connect at all to either split.

Curiosity I would love if you could make a seperate app so that there could be a GPS split and an OBD split running together. Just renaming the process, so 2 instances of XPort running would work for me although I don't know if that works for Windows.

**Curiosity** · 10-16-2009, 12:35 PM

OBD-II is bi-directional, and there's a lot of data going both ways. Most GPS splitters are read-only so they probably won't work. If you could get XPort to work (with the read-only 2-8 enabled) then I could rewrite all the names so it could run a second one, and take out the GPS specific code. I doubt it would work well though. Each app wants different information. The main one would have to issue all the PID requests needed for all of them, and then there's the problem of most apps sending a request and waiting on that specific result. Hmm, maybe an emulator of some sort would work.

**drewbp** · 10-16-2009, 12:46 PM

I kind of knew that was the case. It is just some programs are better than others. I would like to use Dashcommand as my main gauges in the car, and that program works really well, but there are other programs such as the OBDMPG plug in for RR that does the mpg really well, but gauges are like watching a slide show instead of a movie, and then I noticed that you now have a webcam program that can take an OBD input to track speed etc along with GPS, so that is at least 3 splits that would be cool to have.

I think this is the only kind of instance where this would work though. I believe that OBDMPG polls for each individual PID that it is looking for, where DashCommand is streaming all at the same time, hence the speed of the guages. Trying to connect 2 full bore OBD programs will probably always be impossible.

Maybe the splitter needs to take the inputs from the diferent software and manage what gets sent when to the OBD device.

**mjo151** · 10-26-2009, 08:53 PM

TouchScan 2.3 has been released and is now available on the mp3Car.com store

Version 2.3 now supports customizable dashboards!

More information about the new version can be found here: TouchScan 2.3 Released