Article
Vehicle Diagnostics Adapter (2)
Windows software for the OBD-2 interface
In the previous article we described the hardware necessary to enable a vehicle OBD system to communicate through the serial port of a PC. As we mentioned you can use a terminal emulator program to read this ASCII coded data or better still try this free Windows program, it not only allows you to talk with the vehicle in a more user-friendly fashion, it also interprets the ‘trouble codes’.Vehicle OBD systems only understand and speak using hexadecimal characters. If you are not equipped with a reference book detailing the OBD protocols it is difficult to make any meaningful communication with an OBD system with just a terminal emulator program to help you. What we need is a user-interface program that converts OBD-2 data into a readable format and likewise converts user commands into OBD-2 messages. It would also be helpful if the program could output a description of the detected fault and suggest possible causes of the problem without the user needing to refer back to a list of codes or the vehicle handbook.
Materials
Gerber file
CAM/CAD data for the PCB referred to in this article is available as a Gerber file. Elektor GREEN and GOLD members can exclusively download these files for free as part of their membership. Gerber files allow a PCB to be produced on an appropriate device available locally, or through an online PCB manufacturing service.
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