Gen2 OBD2 app review

What does PID stand for? I've seen it many times but without any info on it. Sorry. I'm new and I'm trying to get as much info as I can before I buy scanners and cables to try and diagnose the problem I have with my '07 Prius.

 

Parameter ID, I believe.

 

Thank you

 

(How) did you forward this to the developer to correct?

How do the other scanner measure pump rpm (likely same PID) could help this lone polish soul.

 

For any PID, a scan tool has to know several things:

• The network address of the ECU that should be asked for the value
• The parameter ID to send to the ECU when asking (the ECU's response may include values for more than one parameter if they fit in the width of a response)
• The offset and width in bits of the value in question, in case it's just one of several values in the response
• The arithmetic that needs to be performed on the raw response value to get a displayable value in some recognizable measurement unit, and
• The name of the measurement unit you end up with after doing the right arithmetic.

I haven't tried out Car Scanner myself, but you can make some guesses about what might be wrong based on the exact behavior you see. Does it show a number for pump RPM that just never changes, no matter what the pump is doing? Then maybe the parameter ID or even ECU address is wrong, or the bitfield offset/width are pointing to the wrong place in the response.

Does it give a value that changes, but the changes don't seem to have anything to do with what the pump is doing? Again, then, maybe the wrong address or PID or bitfield.

Does it give a value that repeatably changes, and changes when you expect it to as the pump RPM changes, but seems like a bogus number for RPM? Then maybe the arithmetic formula is wrong (though this also could happen if the bitfield offset/width are wrong, picking up some but not all of the response value).

So, a bunch of details go into properly retrieving and displaying a PID. Toyota doesn't freely publish those details; they are built into Techstream, and the non-free scantool vendors can get the details from Toyota by paying a license fee.

Everybody building free alternatives has to laboriously reverse-engineer those details one way or another, which is hard, and easy to get wrong. Somewhere on PriusChat there's a big XLS spreadsheet with all the successfully-reverse-engineered gen 3 PID details, but last time I checked, these water pump PIDs weren't there, suggesting no one had succeeded yet, and that's probably why the Car Scanner dev hasn't got it either. If anybody does work out the details that are right, they can be passed along to the Car Scanner dev and should also get added to that spreadsheet so others can benefit.

 

In the app

 

That these pid details are withheld are the definition of why Europe in my mind rightfully condemn this concept.

Why would anyone want Toyota to force me to hack techstream?

Right to repair and analyze OR entice reverse engineering - for the win?

 

A little holiday spirit, if you please. Lawyers have boat payments too, y'know.

 

I love pleasing. But…. Holiday spirit should include sharing, right?

Toyoda, deliver to us what is requested by... us non-revenue-creating-after-market-nerds.

Pleeeeease! ​

 

Twenty years ago if a tail light went out one would replace the $5 bulb.

In many modern cars it is a single unit which cannot be serviced. The only option is to replace the entire unit for hundreds of dollars.

Same principle applied all over the car.

The trend line is clearly towards less and less serviceable cars, and the only thing that is likely to turn that ship around would be laws banning the practice. Are those likely? Not in the US. Even if one somehow passed the current Supreme Court would rule that these were an unconstitutional infringement on the corporations' free speech, or some such nonsense.[/QUOTE]

 

Not everyone lives in the US fortunately and hence are not bound by this social structure of prioritizing corporate profits over citizens rights.

But I think and hope them US courts will be smarter than governments and stay on the people’s side.

The main bad concept here is indeed that corporations in the US have been given the same rights as humans.

It will be a long battle…

God bless the EU? Never heard about it.

 

Bought an AP200 recently and finally had a chance to try it today. Installed the software on a second hand Pixel 7a phone which does not currently have a phone number or data but can communicate through our home WiFi. The installation instructions in the package were not particularly helpful, and the pictures of what the app screen was supposed to look like in the manual (inside the App) didn't agree with what it finally looked like. In the end figured out that it wanted to be in communication with both the dongle and the WiFi to set it up. That is, first it wanted a VCI connection (over bluetooth I guess), then on going to "Diagnose" it needed to use the WiFi to download the EOBD and the Toyota specific package. Sadly the driveway is just outside the range of the WiFi, so I ended up standing next to a window on the lawn, midway between the car and the router, with a phone in my hand, like some deranged peeping Tom. Anyway, once those two extra software packages were installed it was able to connect to the car and run the full scan over all the ECUs, which only turned up the sun sensor error. Looking at live data it mostly made sense. For some reason the app was reporting the 12V battery as 13.9V while the voltmeter plugged into the dash was reading 14.1V. I don't recall Techstream doing that. I know the voltmeter reads the same as at the jump point or on the battery posts when the car is in Ready (which it was).

Not a fan of the dongle LED. It faces down and towards the pedals, so to see what color it is I had to stick my hand down there and observe the light reflected off my fingers.

The AP200 has a bunch of service options, including the brake procedure. However, while it would show the HV Pack fan speed I didn't see any way to change the speed. That's a useful test to verify that the fan isn't failing.

 

I think the car's J1962 connector just snaps in to a rectangular cutout in that dash trim piece, so you might be able to pop that out and snap it in the other way, and then the LED on the dongle would face up. (And the next time you went in to a dealer, the dealer tech would try a few times to plug in their tool the usual way and wonder why it wasn't going.)