OpenEuphoria

OBDII Interface

• Posted by Jonas Temple <jtemple at yhti.net> Mar 03, 2003
• 429 views

I thought this might be of interest....

I've been doing some research on writing an interface program to read 
the OBDII information (on-board diagnostics) from cars sold in the USA 
starting in 1996.  There's several commerical versions of such software 
(mostly in Windows, there's also a Linux version being worked on) but 
they're fairly pricey, which I can only assume it's analagous to the 
amount of time needed to write/perfect the software.  The only thing a 
programmer needs is a piece of hardware that connects to the pc's serial 
port and connects to the OBDII port usually located close to the 
steering column.  From there it's just a matter of writing a serial 
communications program to talk to the hardware/car.

I've even found a free Windows dll that handles the serial communcations 
(since you can't access the serial port directly in Windows) at 
http://www.geekhideout.com/iodll.shtml.

A friend of mine is a mechanic who really knows car repair and OBDII but 
doesn't know yet how to program.  I, on the other hand, don't even 
change my own oil but know how to program.  Together it should work!

FWIW,

Jonas