Using your laptop as a automotive scan tool

In this article I am going to be covering the in and outs of using your lap top as a scan tool

The first and most appealing thing about doing this is the cost. You can purchase the hardware needed to use your lap top as a scan tool for as little as $15.00 on ebay and you can go up to around 500.00 for the very best ones.

The question is do they really work?

well for this test I purchased a 15 dollar unit from ebay this unit took around 2 weeks to arrive because it was shipped from china. When I received this item it looked to be pretty sturdy and well built. The software that came with the item was outdated and only trial shareware that had very limited functions.

The laptop I will be using for the test is a Compaq with windows vista home edition.

The first thing I needed to do was find some software for the computer I did a quick search on the internet and found that there are several different companies that are producing software for these type of applications.

I was preferably looking for a free or very low cost software to start with because I didn’t want to spend very much money because I want to keep the cost way down for this test and plus I don’t really know how well this thing is going to work so I don’t want to make a large investment only to be disappointed by very limited capability.

That being said I have decided to go with wobd v1.4 which is totally free of charge,adds,and spyware/malware. You can download free it’s only 2.5 mb www.obd2crazy.com

I downloaded this software, then I plugged the hardware unit into the car first and then into the computer, windows automaticlly found the correct drivers from the internet. After that was complete I started the software and noticed that I had many options to choose from on the “com ports” there were 8 to be exact and then two different setting for bps speed.  So not being a computer expert I just used trial and error method and simply went down the list and then tried to read the vehicles data. The first 7 times it said com port closed then I reached the last one which was com port 8 and running 384000 speed wah lah!! it works!

I am actually pretty happy with the results. For only 15 dollars and a few minutes on the set up end of this I have found that using the generic elm scan hardware that I purchased off ebay and the free wobd software I am able to not only read stored and pending dtc codes I can also clear them. So just that alone is a great savings from any scan tool you can purchase even the little crappy one from harbor freight which is 60 dollars and is very cheaply made.

Upon further inspection of this setup I found that I can read many other functions of the vehicle by going to the polling screen on the wobd software I can look att everything from long term and short term fuel trim to o2 sensors voltages!

So now this 15 dollar investment is doing as much as a 500 or more scan tool can do, I dare you to find a scan tool that is capable of reading live data from a vehicle that is under 400 dollars!

All and all I am very pleased with this. It works good on the vehicles I have tested it on so far and has many very very helpful functions that you cant find in a less expensive scan tool.

I will be testing many more software options and many more different vehicles in the future I will be posting more right ups as I learn more about this very valid,useful and most importantly extremely inexpensive option of scan tools.