Car Code mini-review
Still working with it. It's pretty nice. Probably a bargain for the money. I probably bought more than I needed. (I bought a connector that would work with any car, not just a European ISO connector, so paid close to $200 total).
I wish it did Mercedes Enhanced codes, but alas, like anything less than thousands of dollars, it only does Generic OBD-II for imports.
I also wish the graphing was much better, as a child window that could open to the size of the available screen space. Car Code's graph window is fixed for a 640X480 screen. Kinda archaic for today and someplace it greatly trails the competitors.
Otherwise, I am also beginning to understand limitations of OBD-II. I though the limitation in aquisition was due to Car Code, as I was only getting updates every 5 seconds. But I'm beginning to realize it is the inability for the car's computer to feed data faster than just a few codes per second. ...far from the "live-data" I was hoping to acquire. After optimization, if I scan for only one code, the maximum frequency I can get is about 4 to 5 updates a second. Scanning for 6 types, frequency was 0.7Hz (7 data values in 10 seconds).
....however, plus side is, I believe the MAF I was going to replace is working as it should ... and the problem lies instead in two faulty Oxygen sensors. Not only were two OBD code faults read of slow oxygen sensors, as well as a couple of fuel trim malfunctions read, but the slow reaction of two of the O2 sensors can even be seen on the graph intermittently from a scan I did on my drive home from work.
So, as the cheapest PC based OBD-II Scan software I found, it's well worth the money. I've seen others for $100 to $300 more of similar function (of course the ones for $1000's have even more). Will I get as much added functionality to make up for $100 to $400 more? Will it scan faster? I don't think so; maybe. I'll be making some calls to those manufacturers to see. If they can't scan more values faster, then I'll stick with Car Code; probably will just have to export the data and graph with an external graphing program if I want to see a "wider view" than about 1 minute worth of aquired data at one time.
bye for now,
steve
Last edited by mbc43amg; 08-17-2003 at 01:36 AM.
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