Budget Battery Capacity Readout

Regarding impatience - me too. I have an Autel AP200 ordered, but I just ordered the same Vgate adapter that you are using with success. I was startled today, though, to read in the Choosing OBDII adapter section of the Car Scanner app documentation, the statement: "Bluetooth 4.0 adapters are not supported by Car Scanner on Android.", which seems to preclude the use of a BLE 4.0 adapter, but I also found another entry, in the Google Play description of the app: "The app requires a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth LE) OBD2 ELM327 compatible adapter (device) to work.", which seems to directly contradict the first statement.

I sent the developer a note asking them to clarify if it truly supports BLE 4.0 adapters, or not, but I just found your post, which seems to offer a solid confirmation that it does actually work. I'm hoping you can tell me that you are using an Android phone, which would give me confidence it will work for me.

 

BLE support is patchy in Android. To get around this, the iCar Pro is dual BLE and Classic BT. For Android, you should pair it to Android-Vlink, which is for Classic BT. It works reliably this way. There is a BLE setting in Car Scanner, but it didn't work w/ the iCar Pro when I tried it.

iOS, on the other hand, only works w/ BLE, so they provide the separate BLE interface, called "iOS-Vlink"

 

Thanks for that explanation. That gives me better confidence the app will work with my Android, and it's great to know the proper pairing choice in advance. There are so many variables at play in this adventure - which app/which smartphone variety/which level of Bluetooth to select/which adapter to use, etc.. It really shows the value of this community, with help from experienced users, and the experts, especially @MrFixit.

I think I'm looking good so far. Looks like the adapter I ordered is the right choice, and enough info to get me started when it arrives tomorrow.

 

Yes, I am using an Android 64 bit phone. After using the Autel Ap200 and the Vgate BLE 4.0, I think I like the Vgate best. Both give me the same reading, but the Vgate has much faster response time and is much easier use. I'm using Car Scanner and had no problems using it with the Vgate.

 

I got the Vgate today. Apparently, my car is sitting at a 50.2 with 23k miles.
Thank you to @MrFixit for finally coaxing out a way to track this number.

 

I saw multiple screens of output when I ran the overflow test yesterday, but I must have screwed up (again). I ran the test again just now and saw only this:


I will send this $12 dongle back and get the iCar Pro as you suggest. Do I need the BLE4.0 or will the $10 cheaper BT3.0 work?

Before I went out to run the buffer test, I tried importing the 2021-03-09 09-01-20.cbz file into Car Scanner again. Should I have seen the [Clarity] sensor entries in the Sensors list after importing the cbz file and restarting my phone? Does not seeing the [Clarity] sensor entries mean my phone can't even handle Car Scanner?

I sure appreciate all the support I'm getting on this forum, but regret being such an incompetent--apparently the only incompetent. If only I wasn't a cheapskate and had a 64-bit phone, I could have faked being competent because the Autel dongle would have worked in the first place.

 

The iCar Pro on Amazon comes in a BT3.0 version for $19.99 and BLE4.0 version for $29.99. @lincomatic, perhaps the BLE setting in Car Scanner didn't work because you have the BT3.0 version? Or does the BLE4.0 version handle both BT3.0 and BLE4.0?

I was happy to read Android-Vlink works reliably with Classic BT, so I ordered the BT3.0 version. The third dongle's a charm, as I always say.

 

No, I have the BLE4.0 version, because I wanted to use it w/ iOS, as well.Tthere are 2 possible reasons that BLE mode doesn't work well w/ Car Scanner: 1) the BLE interface to ELM327s isn't standardized, so apps have to support each device separately. I used a BLE sniffer on my iOS phone to sniff the LELink^2 and iCar Pro, and send commands to them... the interfaces were slightly different. 2) AFAIK, BLE support for devices such as these w/ non-standard profiles is wonky in Android.. a lot of the apps want you to pair the device instead of using BLE, and all of the BLE ELM327s I've seen that purport to work with both iOS and Android support both BLE and BT Classic.

So, if you only want to use Android, you don't need the BLE model (assuming that the underlying ELM327 side of the circuit is identical).

 

There are several lines below "Minimum":
I have these values but I get an overflow error using VEEPEAK BLE+

Minimum: 0
Maximum: 100
Offset: 0
Units: Ah
Priority: 1/1
Role override: None
Start diagnostics commands (separated by "\"): no value
Stop diagnostics commands (separated by "\"): no value

Are these values OK? If so my adapter is not working for this PID (overflow error).

Thanks in advance,

 

@insightman, sorry, I didn't look closely at your capture yesterday. Your ELM clone was behaving badly. It was borking the data w/o displaying any errors. The first line of output is truncated (it should end the line with <DATA ERROR), and it lost all the data in the beginning, but somehow, got all the data at the end (the line ending with 555555 is the last line of the response). It should have flagged BUFFER OVERFLOW, but instead, silently failed. Here is what proper output from the 22202a looks like:

>22202a
18DAF10110F662202AFFFF3F
18DAF10121FFFFFFFFFFFFE7
18DAF10122FFFC03FFF2B33F
18DAF10123FF33333333FFE1
18DAF1012400000000000000
18DAF101250061002D000041
18DAF101264C000000000000
18DAF101278100C100034320
18DAF1012854002318F2003A
18DAF10129141418F0FF8814
18DAF1012AD2FA202F54E30C
18DAF1012B1ADF1A7A4A4F4A
18DAF1012C1E00004A610000
18DAF1012D4A0D01200305AA
18DAF1012E00E6006EFF1C03
18DAF1012F02000014163782
18DAF1012039083101F30030
18DAF10121003A1919038300
18DAF1012200000000000000
18DAF1012319341100271037
18DAF10124FA7F007F007F00
18DAF1012500000100010027
18DAF1012610000001F40000
18DAF10127F640F00C630007
18DAF10128CC0015149E00D0
18DAF10129000000C8000018
18DAF1012AF10000002F0000
18DAF1012B4A5000004A1200
18DAF1012C001AD800001A6B
18DAF1012D000000D000C801
18DAF1012E90008200000000
18DAF1012F01042E042E0000
18DAF1012000000000000000
18DAF1012100000000000000
18DAF1012200000000000000
18DAF1012300005555555555


Not incompetence on your part.. you couldn't have known

 

I tried the terminal commands in Post #32 and got buffer full error. I guess we can add VEEPEAK BLE+ to the list of bad adapters. Thanks for your help!

 

I'm very happy to have been able to get good results with the Vgate iCar Pro BLE 4.0 adapter on my Pixel 4a 5g (and on a Pixel 2XL), using the Car Scanner app. I was able to get on the Car Scanner beta, and updated to the app beta Version/Build 1.76.5/400765, in order to utilize the configuration files that @MrFixit provided in Post #44.

The only glitch I had was that I messed up with the Backup/Restore Backup UI in Car Scanner, and managed to get 4 or 5 copies of the Clarity Sensor PIDs loaded into the app. I finally uninstalled and reinstalled the app and properly went through the routine of selecting <Backup>, then <Import from File>, then highlighted the file name and selected <Restore Backup>, and got a clean configuration install.

I also disabled the Auto Sleep feature in the Vgate adapter, using the procedure by @lincomatic, in Post #42, to avoid the need to frequently unplug and reinstall the Vgate. I expect it will cause the 12v battery to exhaust more quickly, but I'm tracking the voltage on it very closely, and hope to avoid any battery failures. I have seen a 0.11v drop on the battery level in the first 11 idle hours since the disable, which is higher than I had been getting, but I'll keep watching it, and report back if it seems excessive over a longer period. The good news with all of this testing is that the battery gets a nice 14.x V boost while the car is turned on in EV mode.

All in all, it's been a very good experience, and I appreciate all of the work that @MrFixit and @lincomatic have done and the contributions of other users to make this a possibility. I am awaiting delivery of an Autel AP200, and I hope I won't be too late to be able to get registered to use the beta firmware. I will probably end up on the Super Stragglers list.

 

@MrFixit, thanks to you and @lincomatic, I finally saw my number! Here's what I entered into the spreadsheet a few minutes after Amazon delivered my 3rd dongle--a Vgate iCar Pro BT 3.0 (one cell enhanced for enthusiasm):



Our Clarity PHEV was built 10/17 and delivered 11/17.

 

Yes, I believe that is true. In retrospect, I think my problem with duplicate sensors was that I was in <Sensors> and selected "Import from File", rather than in <Backup>, and not seeing any response to my selection to Import from File, hit it multiple times in frustration, causing the duplications.

That's helpful to learn what the trash can button does (although I just noticed that your explained that in your Post #44 and I missed it). I considered hitting it, but backed off, fearing that it would give me more confusion, and opted to just uninstall and reinstall the app. Fortunately, after the reinstall, I used the Backup section properly, and ended up with a good, single set of the Clarity sensors.

Your comment about the release of new Sensor Sets is interesting. I used the files extracted from the link on your Post #44, and the app shows all of the functionalities you listed in that post, but have you released any updates since then?

 

I noticed the .cbz file from post 44 is larger (97K) than the .cbz from post 100 (93K). Did you remove something?