Your Smartphone, a little device that stays always with you all the time and let you connect to the world. But it can be much more than that. You will be surprised to hear that most of the Smartphone in the market are having way powerful processors than Apollo 11 which flew to moon with few men.
So it’s a shame to use it to make few calls, send SMS, go on Facebook or browse web pages. You should do much bigger things with it. Today I’m going to explain you how to access the on board computer in your car via OBD II connector and display status of engine in an Android app.
You might say its repair technician’s geeky stuff and not my cup of tea. But after reading this article you will figure out how easy it is and how important it is to know your ride better.
What is On Board Diagnostic (OBD)?
Most of the modern automobiles are equipped with on board computer system. It controls most of the engine activities and keeps records about them. In order to collect data about engine status there are array of sensors in different parts of engine.
When you take your vehicle for repair to a technician, you might have seen that he plugs a computer like device to a port under the steering wheel. What actually happens there is the OBD scanner access the car computer via OBD II connector and gets all the information about the car which are collected by above mentioned sensors.
Using them, the technician can get clear picture about the status of engine and its systems. If there is a known error in engine, OBD scanner will receive a standard error code through OBD connector. Then you can fix it straight away.
We don’t have expensive OBD scanners to do the same at home. But your Android phone is a way powerful device. All you need is the right application. However there has to be some way to plug your phone to OBD II connector. Easiest way is OBD Bluetooth dongle which you can buy for about $10 in eBay.
Getting Started with On Board Diagnostic with Torque
- As the first step purchase an ODB Bluetooth dongle and plug it in to OBD II connector, which you can usually find under steering wheel.
- Once you plug it, the status will be notified by different colored LEDs.
- Now go to Google play, install Torque app. For the initial setup free version would be enough.
- Now you are in good shape. Switch on Bluetooth in your phone, search and pair OBD connector. You can find relevant information about that in your OBD connector manual.
- Now open Torque app in your Android Smartphone.
- It will ask you to enable GPS, go ahead with that. Torque needs GPS to accurately measure vehicle speed and trip distance.
- Within few seconds Torque will connect to car computer via Bluetooth. You will be able to see all the details about connectivity in status bar.
- In order to get more accurate details from Torque you have to set vehicle engine displacement and weight. For that go to options -> More -> Settings. There you can set measuring units as well.
- Now you are geared up! By default Torque screen is having several dials and displays. Tap and hold them to access menu. There you can delete, move or add new.
- There you have 7 screens. Make sure you add all the required displays, dials and graphs to get all the information you need to know about the engine and systems. There is a wide array of displays, dials and graphs.
Now it’s all set. Fire up the engine and have a ride around your neighborhood. The status of engine will be displayed in Torque real time. In my Torque dashboard I have Displays for revs, engine load, speed, trip distance, coolant temperature, and fuel consumption etc.
You can always add or remove displays to capture exact set of information you need. There is a toggle logging feature to record all the error codes. When you go to options -> Actions you will be able to find all the relevant logging options. If you like more displays, dials and graphs with ad free dashboard, purchase Torque Pro.
Torque is a very useful Android app which is letting you do some serious work. Now you can know your ride better and do on board diagnostic by yourself using your Smartphone. Next time you visit your repair technician, you can tell him what’s wrong with your car straight away.
Tags: #Android