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Transcript
00:00So today, I'm going to review iOBD2, which is one of my favorite OBD2 readers for your
00:16car.
00:17I'm also going to show you how to connect to the car.
00:18This is my ELM327, which I got off Amazon for like 20 bucks.
00:25It's pretty cheap, not a big deal to buy one of these things, much cheaper than buying
00:28a code reader or going to the dealership and paying them to read your codes.
00:33And this goes into the OBD2 port in your car.
00:36So you need to find it underneath the dashboard, it's different in every single car.
00:39Mine's kind of over to the left, and there's a little thing covering it.
00:51So that goes in the port there, and your car has to be on.
00:57It has little lights that tell me when it's connecting.
01:01Sorry for the bad audio, by the way.
01:03I forgot my lapel mic at someone's house, so this is as best as it's going to get.
01:09So this is iOBD2.
01:14It's actually a really fantastic app.
01:15I'm a big fan of it.
01:17It is free, which is pretty awesome.
01:20I think there's a paid version, but as far as I can tell, this has most of the main functions
01:24that you're going to need.
01:25So I'm going to do a walkthrough of what I've discovered using it, and how good I think
01:29it is.
01:30The only problem for me is that it takes a long time to connect.
01:34So what you do is you go to your settings, go to your Wi-Fi.
01:39This is an iPhone, so I have to use Wi-Fi.
01:49Okay, and there it is there, Wi-Fi OBD2.
01:56You click on the little I, go to static, and you set a static IP address.
02:01You can just connect with the DHCP, but the problem is that your phone is going to think
02:07that is the internet.
02:09So if you set a static IP address, it can connect to this externally, and you can still
02:13have LTE or whatever, 3G, whatever it is your normal internet comes from.
02:19Okay, so this is what I have put in for my IP address.
02:22These are similar across most of these devices, 192.168.0.123, and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
02:31Okay, and that is all the information you need.
02:35So I've connected to that.
02:37So when you actually do log in the first time, this is what it looks like.
02:39You can look for your brand, and they've got cool little logos there for each of the
02:44different car brands.
02:45So it's a BMW, it is a 2003, 02, 2.5 liter, that's my little engine, save, ELM327, okay,
02:58so you pick your OBD2 dongle that you have.
03:06And now we wait for it to try and connect.
03:08Oh, see, look, you see up there, it says Bluetooth.
03:17You want it to try and connect to Wi-Fi, so you go to connection, select Wi-Fi, and now
03:24it is able to try and connect.
03:26There, see the Wi-Fi symbol up at the top?
03:37I got it to work.
03:38Okay, connection successful, as you can see.
03:40Let's go to the dashboard.
03:43So the main page reads up voltage, mass, air flow, instant fuel consumption, and ignition
03:48timing.
03:49This instant fuel consumption is awesome, I love that.
03:51My car doesn't even have that.
03:52Look how fast that responds.
03:55That's in liters per hour.
03:58That's absolutely fantastic, it's immediate, right?
04:02The RPMs are a little jumpy, but they're very, very quick to respond.
04:07I think it's absolutely fantastically designed.
04:09There's my coolant temperature, everything's on the main page.
04:11Now it has just cool basic modes.
04:13This is idle mode, so if you're just sitting at idle.
04:16In sport mode, I have my instant fuel consumption now in liters per hundred kilometer.
04:19Up in Canada, that's what I use here, you guys use miles per gallon in the States.
04:23But it is extremely quick in the same fashion as the first page, right?
04:29So take a look there at the liters per hundred kilometers.
04:32This road's a bit bumpy, sorry for that, it's a driveway anyway.
04:38It responds so quickly.
04:39I don't have liters, instant liters per hundred kilometers in this car, all I have is average.
04:45So that's a fantastic feature if you don't have that in your car, because my car can
04:48read it, it just doesn't display it.
04:50Thanks, BMW.
04:51But, so there it is.
04:53And look how quickly it goes.
04:54Look at that.
04:55And the RPMs are bang on right, too.
04:59I'm sitting at just two, it says just two.
05:02Perfect.
05:03It's a bumpy road, isn't it?
05:08Stop sign.
05:10All right, so this is the sport mode, so if you're looking for sporty driving, so it's
05:17got the front mounted tach, which is great, but I don't think that I would actually use
05:21this as my main tachometer if I was driving on the track or something.
05:25This seems to be working quite well now, it hasn't quit or hasn't failed yet since I've
05:29reinstalled it.
05:31This looks good enough and it responds fast enough that I would use this on the track,
05:35especially for the coolant temperature, that's super important so you can see just where
05:39your engine's at.
05:40Especially with a BMW that has the potential to overheat really quickly, being able to
05:43constantly monitor that is really good.
05:46All right, cruise mode is cool, too, gives you your speed as the main front mount, and
05:51your continuous running mileage and your travel time.
05:54So as soon as you start the app and it connects, that's when it starts on the travel time,
05:58which is really cool.
05:59Gives you your average speed, too, right?
06:00So I like those three modes, and then obviously there's a custom mode, it wouldn't be complete
06:04without a custom mode, where you can pick all of your own PIDs, right?
06:08And there are a lot to choose from, depending on what it can read from your car.
06:11So the way these things work is they send a request, the app sends a request to the
06:17ECU of the car, and then it attempts to pull the information from the sensor.
06:22If it can pull the information from the sensor, then it returns it back to the application
06:26and displays it for you.
06:27Okay, so it essentially sends a request to the ECU to see if the ECU complies, and then
06:31it can tell you what your, let's say, calculated load is, or fuel trim, right?
06:36So there is my short-term fuel trim, ST, short-term.
06:39Right, so that's telling me how the car is metering the fuel mixture and trimming the
06:47length of time that the fuel injectors are open for on each stroke, okay?
06:54So ignition timing, air intake, temp, mass airflow, throttle position, command second
06:59air, and all my O2 sensor.
07:01So on the main page, we also have graphing, which is really cool.
07:06Okay, so there's a bunch of different things on this page that can be displayed in a graph
07:12format.
07:14So once you put in your total weight of the car, it's going to give me a, almost like
07:20a dynograph, right, of torque and power, which is kind of cool.
07:24Not entirely accurate.
07:25I wouldn't trust this to give you some real numbers for your car, but, you know, it's
07:29kind of cool to see and to have.
07:39There is the little spike you see, all right?
07:42No, I did not break the speed limit.
07:48And then it goes back down.
07:50That's pretty awesome.
07:51I think that's cool.
07:52I'd just sit there and watch that all day.
08:00Okay, under performance, this is a very cool section too.
08:04So dash command has a zero to 60 calculator, and it also has a quarter mile calculator.
08:12This one, you can set a start speed and end speed.
08:15So that means if you wanted to measure your 80 to 120 time, or any of those other time
08:21chunks, you can input the start speed and the end speed, and it will time it, start
08:25the time right when you hit that speed, and then it will cut it off right when you hit
08:29your goal.
08:30So you can get a really good view if you were doing some, you know, power tuning and you
08:35really wanted to see what your high end horsepower is changing at.
08:37That's a real world example.
08:38You can look at those numbers and compare them.
08:43It also has a 400 meter acceleration test too, zero to 400.
08:50And obviously under any of these, any good one is going to have a diagnostic section,
08:55which is the main reason why you would be choosing this or choosing any of these.
08:59So you can read trouble codes, readiness tests, and just basic vehicle information.
09:05Now, the other thing that's really important here is live data.
09:08Let's take a look at that.
09:10Okay, so let's take a look at our O2 sensor, okay?
09:20I can select more than one at a time.
09:28Click data stream item to check the graph.
09:31Okay, so this is going to show me exactly what that O2 sensor is reading.
09:39And if you've done your reading on O2 sensors, you should see a series of spikes, okay?
09:52Just like that.
09:53That means that it's functioning properly.
09:55All right, so this is actually a fantastic app for real engine diagnosis, as well as performance.
10:14Okay, so again, trouble codes, obviously you need to be able to read those.
10:21God, my clutch is heavy.
10:23Foot off.
10:26No trouble codes, no pending codes.
10:30There it is, okay?
10:31So this is actually my favorite OBD2 reading app so far that I've tested.
10:38It's simple.
10:39The interface is good.
10:40Everything that you need is there.
10:42None of the extra stuff.
10:43And it doesn't give you too much information at once.
10:45You can choose the different parts that you want to display, as well as seeing incredibly detailed stuff like graphs, okay?
10:53So, so far, IOBD2 by XTool, I give two thumbs up.
10:57This is an awesome app.