For Bluetooth dongles, the cheapest that’s actually worth buying is the Bafx Products dongle for about $23 on Spamazon. Downsides are that it’s Android only and it’s fairly slow on big scanning tasks like live data streaming, but the upside is that it uses a real ELM327 OBD converter in it where the cheaper ones use a clone of an outdated version.
Avoid the really cheap (read: sub-$20) dongles, as they’re likely running a bootleg ELM327. Why this matters: the legit ELM327-based dongles just plain work for basic OBD-II on most vehicles, but the clones may or may not because they’re using a dumped copy of an old version of the chip’s firmware that hasn’t been maintained/updated and thus is buggy as all hell. The bootleg clones are notorious for misreporting, incomplete reporting, or just plain not working properly.
If you want to spend more in exchange for better, the OBDLink MX and BlueDriver are much faster, but cost much more ($70-100).
In all cases, these dongles require an app on the other end of the Bluetooth connection. If you want something oriented more toward making graphical gauges on a tablet than diagnosing your check-engine light, Torque is your best option. However, Torque isn’t well-suited to diagnostic use as it’s kludgy to use for that - if you want something for code reading and monitoring livestream data that isn’t trying to be a fancy customizable GUI, Scanmaster Pro is a better option.
(Source: I fix cars for a living and use the cheapie dongles for quick scans, and I have a few different ones so I know from actual real-world experience which ones are worth the money and which ones to avoid. I also have far more expensive scanners for when I need to get into more than just basic OBD-II, such as ABS. airbag/SRS, resetting EPB, programming TMPS, etc. etc. etc.)
Can confirm this. I’m working on an app that uses these BLE adapters to communicate and have been successful in abstracting my code to talk to most of them (VEEPEAK, VGate, etc.) The really cheap ones will still communicate, but the format of the responses aren’t as predictable.
The really cheap ones will still communicate, but the format of the responses aren’t as predictable.
Sounds like some of my projects when I2C or SPI decides to not work as expected. “Sent $0D, expected a four-byte response, got back twelve random bytes the first time, two the second, nine the third, and so on.”
I’m not as qualified as you, but have been working on my own cars my entire adult life. I have the BAFX dongle and torque, and also the bluedriver. For what it’s worth, I completely agree with everything you said about those.
For Bluetooth dongles, the cheapest that’s actually worth buying is the Bafx Products dongle for about $23 on Spamazon. Downsides are that it’s Android only and it’s fairly slow on big scanning tasks like live data streaming, but the upside is that it uses a real ELM327 OBD converter in it where the cheaper ones use a clone of an outdated version.
Avoid the really cheap (read: sub-$20) dongles, as they’re likely running a bootleg ELM327. Why this matters: the legit ELM327-based dongles just plain work for basic OBD-II on most vehicles, but the clones may or may not because they’re using a dumped copy of an old version of the chip’s firmware that hasn’t been maintained/updated and thus is buggy as all hell. The bootleg clones are notorious for misreporting, incomplete reporting, or just plain not working properly.
If you want to spend more in exchange for better, the OBDLink MX and BlueDriver are much faster, but cost much more ($70-100).
In all cases, these dongles require an app on the other end of the Bluetooth connection. If you want something oriented more toward making graphical gauges on a tablet than diagnosing your check-engine light, Torque is your best option. However, Torque isn’t well-suited to diagnostic use as it’s kludgy to use for that - if you want something for code reading and monitoring livestream data that isn’t trying to be a fancy customizable GUI, Scanmaster Pro is a better option.
(Source: I fix cars for a living and use the cheapie dongles for quick scans, and I have a few different ones so I know from actual real-world experience which ones are worth the money and which ones to avoid. I also have far more expensive scanners for when I need to get into more than just basic OBD-II, such as ABS. airbag/SRS, resetting EPB, programming TMPS, etc. etc. etc.)
Can confirm this. I’m working on an app that uses these BLE adapters to communicate and have been successful in abstracting my code to talk to most of them (VEEPEAK, VGate, etc.) The really cheap ones will still communicate, but the format of the responses aren’t as predictable.
Sounds like some of my projects when I2C or SPI decides to not work as expected. “Sent $0D, expected a four-byte response, got back twelve random bytes the first time, two the second, nine the third, and so on.”
I’m not as qualified as you, but have been working on my own cars my entire adult life. I have the BAFX dongle and torque, and also the bluedriver. For what it’s worth, I completely agree with everything you said about those.
Forscan is great for the stuff it works with. It says my BAFX is a fake, but I’ve never run into anything that doesn’t work.