Dear LCBers,

I am after a Good OBD/CANbus diagnostic device,
A lot of exp with National instruments and raw traffic on the bus...

But Flabbergasted with the shear choice and lack of clarity in these user devices.


So I need...

*A tool that will read engine fault codes of a maximum amount of cars post 2000 (numerical code will do)
-> including BMW, opel, merc :s
*Clear faults (most)
*Reset the check oil light on a e39 and e90 bmw

On all this for around 50 quid ?


Please your views, expertise and advice

[Edited on 1/9/14 by drt]

I've got one of these [ebay]19dd61558a[/ebay] NEW! OBD2 ELM327 V1.5 Bluetooth Car Scanner Android Torque Auto Scan Tool OBD-II and works well if you have an Android device and use the Torque program. Not sure about working with BMW Mercs but sure it will do as they are all pretty standard now, and for a fiver you cant go wrong

To do it for £50 you will need two devices one to clear the service light and one to read codes.

To clear BMW oil change light you need this tool I have one and it works very nicely Link to Ebay Item 360447095573


To read standard EOBD engine and transmission codes you have a wider choice:
Most devices on sale these days will read all protocols including CAN Bus and clear fault codes but be a 100% sure that what ever you buy reads:
(1) Live PCM Datastream ie live sensor readings.
(2) Freeze Frame data ie sensor reading when fault light initially came on.
(3) I/M readiness test results ie self test results on emission related item such as the O2 sensor and cat.


For a hand held scanner then buy either a genuine Autel (such as Autel AL319) or Memoscan (Memoscan U581) or Launch (Creader 6) as these are known brands.

If you have an Android phone you can use a Bluetooth OBDII dongle in combination with the Ian Hawkins Torque app, however a word of warning the very cheap dongles don't have a genuine Elm327 chip they have a general purpose chip programmed to work in imitation of the genuine chip and they only sort of work.
These very cheap dongles have three main problems:
(1) They are very slow to read data.
(2) They don't work with most Fords.
(3) The build quality is appalling and up to 25% don't work.
(4)On some I have seen the pins in the OBDII plug on the dongle are not correctly sized to make proper contact with the socket.
****However they are very cheap and generally work on most cars****

As the genuine ELM327 chip is quite expensive any dongle with a proper ELM327 chip such as the OBDLink LX is going to cost £40 or more.

If you have an Iphone then you need a dongle with a wifi connection rather than Bluetooth.

Note using Wifi dongle and Android phone isn't worth the effort as connecting Android on Ad-Hoc wifi isn't easy.

You can also get USB dongles for use with a Windows Laptop or Netbook.


However if you want to do more than just read basic OBDII codes then you need to look at something like an Autel EU702.



[Edited on 2/9/14 by britishtrident]

[Edited on 2/9/14 by britishtrident]

You are a hero!