jdbob Posted February 14, 2015 at 10:18 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2015 at 10:18 PM Been playing around with OBS Fusion, but of course it doesn't have the specialized Ford PID's. Downloaded Forscan for Windows for the laptop and then noticed that they have a "Forscan Lite" version for the iPhone. Installed it on the iPad and it seems to work fairly well although it just runs in emulation mode, they say they will have a version optimized for the iPad in the future. Was able to show things that I didn't have PID's that I could add to OBS Fusion such as Battery Energy to Empty and TPMS readings (which I don't have in my winter tires but might be useful when I put the OEM tires back on). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 14, 2015 at 10:34 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2015 at 10:34 PM (edited) The iPhone/iPad require a WiFi OBD II scanner. I would use caution when using any of the cheap OBD II scanners from Amazon or eBay. They interfere with communications on the HS-CAN bus, causing various system failures. The only adapter that I trust is the OBDLink MX. I'm not sure if the WiFi version of the adapter is available yet. ForScan advertises that it will be available for Windows (WiFi/Bluetooth), Android (WiFi/Bluetooth), and iOS (WiFi only). Note that ForScan attempts to also communicate with modules on the MS-CAN bus when you have an adapter that is capable of communicating on the MS-CAN bus. However, that feature doesn't appear to work properly on the Energi. It instead causes system faults (cross traffic and blind spot) the first time that you run it. For subsequent runs, it no longer attempts to communicate on the MS-CAN bus. Edited February 14, 2015 at 10:43 PM by larryh Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 14, 2015 at 11:36 PM Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2015 at 11:36 PM I bought this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MTH73O8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 no problems so far with either OBD Fusion or Forscan Lite, or Forscan on the laptop. There are cheaper ones on Amazon but they seem to be shipped from China. When you first connect to the car Forscan asked if you had a switch to talk to MS-CAN bus, I just answered no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 14, 2015 at 11:54 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2015 at 11:54 PM (edited) Yes-you can avoid the system faults by requesting ForScan not attempt to scan the MS-CAN bus. To determine if there are problems with the scanner, you would need to monitor for adapter errors. I don't think ForScan provides that capability. Torque Pro does provide that capability. If you see adapter errors, I would not use the adapter. Many of the cheap scanners from eBay and Amazon are from China. They are definitely suspect. Make sure that the displays on either side of the steering wheel do not go blank and then are reset. Edited February 15, 2015 at 12:10 AM by larryh Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybridbear Posted February 15, 2015 at 05:24 PM Report Share Posted February 15, 2015 at 05:24 PM Do you have screen captures of how it looks on the iPhone/iPad? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 15, 2015 at 10:19 PM Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2015 at 10:19 PM Do you have screen captures of how it looks on the iPhone/iPad? Here's a few. Seems like you can only display the values from one module on a screen. The program definitively needs a lot of work, but it does have the very deep database of PID's built-in which sets it apart from OBD Fusion. A good alternative for those of us who already own IOS devices and aren't about to go buy an Android device. In-car temperature of 95C? I think not :) Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 15, 2015 at 11:39 PM Report Share Posted February 15, 2015 at 11:39 PM (edited) There should be some way to change the unit of measure for the gauges. Tire pressure in kilopascals is not the measurement standard used the US. The Windows version allows you to change the unit of measure. Also, it seems strange that they don't use a round number for each tick mark in the tire pressure gauges. Each of the tick marks is 22 kilopascals. It would be easier to read of each mark were 20 kilopascals. ForScan had errors in several of the PIDs in the Windows version that I pointed out to them. They appear to have errors in the iOS version too. Why is there a Bluetooth symbol at the top the screen by the battery? I thought the adapter was WiFi. Edited February 16, 2015 at 12:14 AM by larryh Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 16, 2015 at 12:34 AM Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 12:34 AM The minimum and maximum of the gauges can be changed, I haven't looked at most of those gauges to see what is configurable. I spent more time on the iPad and pretty much just threw things together on the iPhone from which the screenshot was done. I have my Energi set for metric display so stuff like that doesn't bother me. I fill my tires to 3 Bar (300kPa) :) There are multiple selections for what seems like would be the same measurement, such as interior temperature, guess I just picked the wrong one. The bluetooth was set to on in the phone although it wasn't used for anything, nothing to do with OBD which is connected via Wifi. Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 16, 2015 at 12:59 AM Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 12:59 AM (edited) If iOS supports Bluetooth, I wonder why ForScan and the other apps don't support Bluetooth OBD II adapters. The Bluetooth adapters are cheaper and more secure than the Wifi adapters. ForScan is only supposed to allow you to select valid PIDs. Every PID that you select should work. Edited February 16, 2015 at 01:05 AM by larryh Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybridbear Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:23 AM Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:23 AM The program definitively needs a lot of work, but it does have the very deep database of PID's built-in which sets it apart from OBD Fusion. A good alternative for those of us who already own IOS devices and aren't about to go buy an Android device.Thanks for the screenshots. What does OBD Fusion do? I thought I read somewhere that it allows customizable PIDs now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:37 AM Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:37 AM OBD Fusion does allow customizable PIDs, the problem is finding out what those PIDs are. The FORScan guys must have a database of PID's that they build into their products, but I doubt they are going to give that information up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:39 AM Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 01:39 AM If iOS supports Bluetooth, I wonder why ForScan and the other apps don't support Bluetooth OBD II adapters. The Bluetooth adapters are cheaper and more secure than the Wifi adapters. Apple doesn't allow custom Bluetooth stacks in their products, that's what I heard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybridbear Posted February 16, 2015 at 09:37 PM Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 09:37 PM OBD Fusion does allow customizable PIDs, the problem is finding out what those PIDs are. The FORScan guys must have a database of PID's that they build into their products, but I doubt they are going to give that information up!Would OBD Fusion allow you to input the custom PIDs used by Torque Pro? Does the app cost money? Does it require a WIFI OBDII scanner or will it work with the OBDLink MX BlueTooth scanner? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 16, 2015 at 10:50 PM Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 at 10:50 PM Would OBD Fusion allow you to input the custom PIDs used by Torque Pro? Does the app cost money? Does it require a WIFI OBDII scanner or will it work with the OBDLink MX BlueTooth scanner? Yes, you use basically the same procedure as Torque Pro, the only exception is if you need to specify which module in the car you want to receive the response from. In that case you need to add 8 to the module address (i.e. 7EC instead of 7E4). OBD Fusion is a $10 app (ForScan Lite is only $5 but that's probably because they don't have it optimized for iPad yet). They are both Wifi only because of Apple's restriction on 3rd party bluetooth communications software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 17, 2015 at 01:12 AM Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2015 at 01:12 AM Made some changes to which PID's to display, changed some default units and limits, and increased the gauge size to "Medium". Looks like 6 is the max that can be displayed at that size on my old iPhone 4. From the PCM: From the BCM (these are remembered values from when I had the summer tires on): From the BECM: Wow - Looks like I need to change the min and max range for the HV battery temperature! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 17, 2015 at 10:24 AM Report Share Posted February 17, 2015 at 10:24 AM I think ForScan only allows you to select PIDs from a single module at time for speed. I assume that the iOS version of ForScan allows you to record data. ForScan can record data at a faster rate when only gathering PIDs from a single module. But the recording rate will vary with the adapter. The better adapters read PIDs at more than 2x the rate of the cheaper ones. It would be nice if ForScan would also allow you to combine PIDs like Torque Pro. You cannot directly display the power from the HVB with ForScan. To compute HVB power, you need to multiply current by voltage. ForScan does not allow you to create a display that shows the power from the HVB by multiplying voltage and current. You are going to have to compute it in your head. Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdbob Posted February 18, 2015 at 01:22 AM Author Report Share Posted February 18, 2015 at 01:22 AM FORScan for iPhone is definitely beta-test at this point. Will be interesting to see how it progresses. For instance I found it will crash when trying to delete some PID's from the dashboard. Which is especially frustrating due to the lengthy connection time, at least on the iPhone. I agree, the ability to create new gauges that combine inputs from multiple PID's would be a good idea, although considering how little information was available to me before I had FORScan, that doesn't seem all that critical :) Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryh Posted February 18, 2015 at 02:15 AM Report Share Posted February 18, 2015 at 02:15 AM I have problems with the Windows version too. Occasionally it disconnects from the adapter and I have to reconnect. Hybridbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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