Hi folks:

I am new here and I got here just by casualty becuase I was looking for ODB-II info. This looks a nice site for info, unfortunately I dont own a blazer but I want your help still on OBD-II. I am from Costa Rica (central america) and we have a small repair shop for car's electrical stuff. I am new on the team and I am engineer on electronics. I got background a hardware design not much on cars (I am getting started) and software design for testing equipment (ATE). So my task is to look for an update in our garage on OBD-II equipment. I ve been reading a lot on OBD-II and I think I pretty much understand the OBD concept, however, I still have some critical questions, for example:

There are many DTC readers on the market but they said they can read only P0 and P1 codes. However, there are some other codes like chasis U, etc that those equipments can't read.

Do you guys have idea why? Is this a software limitation? I think yes becuase the electrical standard for ODB protocol is the same, I haven't read anything saying that depends on the hardware.

So if that is the case, it is just a software limitation, do you have an idea why some software are not able to read those codes? Is it becuase people doing development dont have access to specific info?

There are some DTC reader software based on ELM327 chip that can read some codes but not others than P0 and P1.

Do you know a powerful software that be able to read all those codes?

I ve been reading a lot from autoenginuity and looks they have an amazing software to get acces for basic DTC's and get data from most of the sensors on the car. However, their interface does not work with any other software, so if you buy their product you are attach for the end of days with them. So if they want to overprice their product and updates I wouldn't have any option.

So I was looking for an open hardware that could be able to use generic software.There is an interface called OBD2in1 which uses generic software from third party vendors but software is really light just for P0 and P1 codes.

We are stuck with a snapon MT2500 scanner which is obsolete and upgrade is really expensive and you are still attach to snapon. We dont want that, we want a cheaper solution, an adapter, a laptop and a good software.

Any help on this is welcome and thanks for letting me join

Regards,

Jonathan

 

Pretty much any package you buy will require maintenance. I myself own the AutoEnginuity scanner and love it. Money well spent in my book. I paid for it after a few brake and airbag sensor problems on my Bonneville, it was more than paid for. Those are systems which the generic scanners cannot access.

If you wanted to go all out, GM Tech2 scanners come up on eBay every once in a while, but expect to pay $1500+ for one and then you still have to pay for the service contract to keep it up to date...