No elm327 BT works on any Apple product legally.They have to be registered with Apple and Apple doesn't support BT for this sort of application. It won't even be able to see it unless you "jailbreak" the Apple hardware and load on an "illegal" (jerks) third party interface driver . AFAIK there's absolutely nothing out there that will do this any other way if you're talking about BT.

If you've actually done this PLEASE let me know but if you're kust reading about it well ...

Dash command from Palmer Performance sounds like it might be enough for me but when I download they're trial version which is almost completely crippled it doesn't work reliably enough to make me spring for the real thing. It looks like it hooks up and indicates that certain functions will be available if you buy the full version and then it disconnects. Same issue on my WM 6.5 phone which makes me suspect the elm327 ...

But I don't know for sure if that's because of particular Chinese elm327 BT dongle or if the BT stack implemented by the guys aligned with the Jail Break software just don't have a reliable piece of interface software.

So I'm going to try getting a BT dongle for one of my old laptops and see if I can make this all work under either DOS or XP on an old laptop. It's a $5 gamble. If that doesn't work I'll just toss out the Elm327 and buy a legitimate one for more money and maybe stick with USB. That's a lot simpler.

Anyway, that's my experience to date. Not really good so far.

The free to use OBDII scanner at Autozone is a whole better!

 

For $99 and your bluetooth dongle you will get a whole lot more with Palmer's ScanXL standard. Dash Command doesn't do graphing, freeze frame information, O2 sensor tests or read calibration ID's. It's mostly for the pretty Dashboards you can make; though it will read and clear codes. And that's all bluetooth. So it depends on what you want out of it.

Pics show it's versatility.

Cheers,

 

I'm familiar with them. Still working on getting the elm327 BT dongle to work though.

I wasn't really looking for anything quite that extensive either. I won't be repairing the car or even doing heavy diagnostic work.

Almost had a shot at testing the windows stuff this weekend withy my wife's new Lenovo notebook (from the office) but it has no BT built into it. I was amazed by that but then they really don't want you listening to or watching any sort of entertainment media on it. It's pretty locked down.

 

Just bought a "dongle" Looks like it might work on my old Fujitsu Tablet pc running XP. So If a package can run on XP then I can try this cheapo dongle & elm327 combo out.

 

Cool! I bet that will work pretty well. Let us know how it goes.

Cheers,

 

The Movi stuff is actually on the iTunes website but I agree with the comment that the cost is high. I'll likely just get a handheld but it would be nice to have something to interface with our MacBooks.

Cheers

 

Not for Ipad or Iphone though.

Download the demo and then check it out on your Macbook. I seriously doubt it works with a generic elm327 BT. They have to pay Apple for that right. Some people have done that and theny sell you their "blessed" adapter and the software. I've seen USB and WIFI but not a BT?

$49 is too much?

I found one for my WM6.5 phone that's pretty detailed ($15) but until I know that my elm327 BT works I'm not wasting any more time trying to get that to work.

That would allow for an easy check because I wouldn't have to drag out the old laptop, hope it's charged and then boot Win XP etc.

The display and info was good enough for my purposes.

 

My under $4 dongle arrived!
It automatically installed in my PC, my old XP tablet and even my wife's office laptop!

Then my tablet gave up the ghost while trying to load the freebie OBDII software so I won't even get a chance to test this out! ARG!

My wife's office laptop is locked down so no software installs allowed.

I't always something ... LOL

Just once in a blue tooth it'd be nice if stuff just worked!

 

Got my elm327 the saga continues here

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...working-68386/

 

Bob has a different era car with different OBD details (not to mention BT and Apple kit). His car does have CAN and so on.

 

Well I tried out putting the BT dongle in my PC and linking up with the elm327 this time with the Ford product (2001 Mercury Sable) and it's having trouble staying connected it's really rather flaky.

I'm using Scan Master demo version as supplied with the elm327BT and it has a lot of configuration parameters for datacomm. On auto select it doesn't work.

It hooked up with the BT paortion on my PC XP and took up two ports.

One time, only once, I was able to hard select the port and then I picked one of the protocols manually and it finally did find and link up with the elm327. I got a battery voltage indication and then it dropped out again. I could not repeat this though

It was doing similar things with the Ipad but I wasn't getting any of this detail logged as to how it was trying to handshake and what the result was.

I'm 25-30 ft away from the car going through a wood wall and the car's body with the one on my PC whereas the Ipad was right in the car.

Looks like old tablet isn't going to cooperate gents.

I'm not sure it's a bluetooth handshaking thing because the data message log seems to indicate that the car, elm and software aren't understanding each other in elm-speak. Just guessing for now though.

 

I thought BT was like 6 feet and no metal etc?

 

I would have liked a wireless interface to my Macbook but with the apparent headaches I just went out and bought an Actron scan tool instead.

 

Depends on the bluetooth class the device was designed to meet. The little half-moon job I think straatof bought is a class 1 device. Should be good for about 300 feet.

Cheers,

 

He seems cursed by BT, Apple, you name it, then

 

I suspect it might be the particular elm327 I purchased????

It seems to do the BT portion just fine as everything discovers properly.

The dongle I bought "seems" to be working properly too though I haven't tried anything else via BT as I don't really have any other such devices except my phone so maybe I'll verify via that later today. I "supposedly" got the longer range version though how anyone can sell something like this and ship it for under $4 is dubious at best.

Remember, this whole project is being done as a complete el cheapo project. I know where to go to get the normally priced stuff that probably would have all worked in the first 5 minutes so I' just a victim of my own screwy experiment here. I thought it would be interesting and it has been. Frustrating too!

Going to be busy fixing a broiler and self clean function on the kitchen stove as a first priority today. A new process control board arrives in a couple of weeks for the also broken microwave so yes you could say we're on a roll of broken stuff at the moment. The Jag is mostly OK though

RRT it may just be my particular elm327 but getting an unauthorized BT device to work in Apple land isn't for the faint of heart. I'm almost a complete Apple noob but I do have a lot of years of software experience and some things really aren't all that different at their base design so having had to interface a few devices over the years via telecomm and watching the dataflow with tools like hyperterminal or even more primitive that you begin to get a nose for these things. Right now it smells like it's not a BT issue but something about how the elm is trying to talk to the application on the software running under Windows XP. It could just be me not selecting the proper option so I'll post the log a bit later. At least I can see something of what's going on now whereas with the Apple (Ipad) and Windows Mobile 6.5 phone it was all hidden from view. But all three environments are exhibiting a somewhat similar set of symptoms. Too early to be sure yet. It could be a bit of both.

So a legit (properly licensed) Apple BT device or better yet a WIFI one should
work I think. Having it on the Ipad would be nice for us casual users but all the serious tools are on other platforms it would seem. God the old Toshiba tablet PC seems like a dinosaur when compared to the Ipad except ... I have a lot more control with the tablet it's just acting old and cranky at the moment.

The software I tried under Windows XP logs the Elm327's BT & "elm speak" stuff while it's initiating so I'll try getting a copy of that fun stuff on here so that if anyone else comes along to follow this thread they can possibly learn from my situation (errors ).

to be continued ... (sporatically)

 

Well I got one of the demo pieces of software to connect last night after finding a way to load it onto my wife's office laptop. It connected twice while sitting in the car. This software has the automatic discovery and protocol determination mode so it just keeps trying every combination it can and it worked. The demo only shows RPMs whoopee!

I could not manually set the port or anything else and make it connect.

This same setup did not work from my PC which is 30 ft away and has a wall and car body in between. That suggests to me that signal problem may be the issue?

None of the other demo software packages would work. One is a DOS oriented package and none of them can deal with a port number above 5 to 8.

Every time I added the elm as a BT device it bumped the assigned port numbers up till I was in the 14 & 15 range. I'm not sure what that's all about?

Until I can reliably get this thing to work it's still a no go with me though.

At least it connected this time with no errors.

That was with a product called Scanmaster.

I never got this far with the Ipad though at times it seemed to connect, show some information and then drop out again while I was sitting in the car.

Same for the Windows phone WM6.5

Scanmaster seems to be more sophisticated in it's link-up capabilities than the other tools. I'm using the Demo version 1.4 and I see that there's a newer version so I'll try that as well.

So some progress.

Figured out my oven broiler as well today!

 

I don't know whether this is any good or not, since I only got mine today & I'm still waiting for the BT ELM327 to arrive. My 'laptop' is an ACER 1712SM 17" (4/3 ratio) SXGA screen about 8 to 10 years old, the only thing I have done is to upgrade the RAM, and until it actually dies completely, I don't intend to waste money on replacing it. It may well be a very long time. (If you've always got to have the latest & greatest, be prepared to pay for it - there ain't no such thing as 'free lunch').

But this guy has a few interesting points to make, and since the software is only $40, I figure it has got to be worth a 'punt'.

Cheers,

Languid

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330684600142

 

If it works out it'll be a steal at $40. Sounds too good to be true.

 

JagV8,

Time will tell, and it will take a little time. I'll keep you posted. The ELM 327 hasn't turned up yet, so I haven't focused on installing the software. I'd greatly appreciate if you had a look at the link, and voiced your opinion.

Cheers,

Languid