Keeping your OBDII wireless scanner

[engineer2]

Tip of the day.
I have the bad habit of forgetting to take my scan tool with me when I'm done checking codes. Even left it in a used car one time, but we ended up buying the car so I got it back. I got this tag at an aviation trade show years ago. They give them away there. You could use anything that is long and brightly colored.

I might have to do this with 10 mm sockets too.

 

[bubinga]

LOL.................Good Idea!

 

[ddawg16]

Tip of the day.
I have the bad habit of forgetting to take my scan tool with me when I'm done checking codes. Even left it in a used car one time, but we ended up buying the car so I got it back. I got this tag at an aviation trade show years ago. They give them away there. You could use anything that is long and brightly colored.

I might have to do this with 10 mm sockets too.

That is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading it.

 

[2ndGearRubber]

If I go wireless, I figured I'd just use my obd2 extension cable on the wireless dongle. Then you can stick it somewhere obvious.

 

[pstemari]

FWIW, you really don't want to leave those plugged in. It took me a while to figure out that was why my battery was draining if I didn't start the car for a couple days.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[bubinga]

Even the little wireless adapters you you use with a phone app? I have been leaving my plugged in but I normally drive the car everyday Oh. I thought of that there was a friend of mine a girl he knew had one of those things in her car. And she was having battery issues. We were discussing the possibility that maybe the wireless adapter could be draining it. But that's what it doesn't make sense to me it's a little wireless adapter would draw the battery down. Unless you're talking about a regular OBD2 scanner?

FWIW, you really don't want to leave those plugged in. It took me a while to figure out that was why my battery was draining if I didn't start the car for a couple days.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[Bacon!]

FWIW, you really don't want to leave those plugged in. It took me a while to figure out that was why my battery was draining if I didn't start the car for a couple days.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

If it's important to you to leave it plugged in, you can either put a power switch on it or rewire the OBDII port 12V pin to be fed by a circuit with 12V only live in accessory and run vehicle states.

Those adapters can vary in power consumption based on the design but typically they're around 40mA in use and 20mA if idle, less than that if they go into a lower power state. That isn't much but combined with the normal vehicle draw and a weak battery, it can add up over multiple days.

 

[2ndGearRubber]

Even the little wireless adapters you you use with a phone app? I have been leaving my plugged in but I normally drive the car everyday Oh. I thought of that there was a friend of mine a girl he knew had one of those things in her car. And she was having battery issues. We were discussing the possibility that maybe the wireless adapter could be draining it. But that's what it doesn't make sense to me it's a little wireless adapter would draw the battery down. Unless you're talking about a regular OBD2 scanner?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using The Garage Journal mobile app

Wireless adapter has a short to ground, or keeps messing with the network as it's going to sleep by sending junk out on the CAN. Statistically speaking, it needs a battery. But crazy stuff happens with non-factory electrical gizmos.

No reason anything should be plugged into that, IMO, unless you're actively doing diagnostic work.

 

[pstemari]

Even the little wireless adapters you you use with a phone app?

Exactly the little $20 bluetooth adapter. I had left it plugged in since I have a phone app that will give you additional gauges driven from the OBDII data. It was taking multiple days, but the adapter was definitely draining the battery. Stopping having problems entirely once I removed it.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[Wrench97]

Even the insurance company devices that plug into the obd2 port to make sure you're a safe driver will drain the battery and reek havoc on GM com lines........................course GM com lines reek havoc on themselves.........................

 

[Garett]

I need that for my 10mm sockets

 

[richfinn]

On my scan tools "wireless dongle" it has a length of cable between the box and the 16 pin connector and it flashes different colours to tell you different modes of operation

Red = dead battery

White = powered up

Blue/Green flashing = communicating

Even then I put it on top of the dash so I can't forget it
(If we lose one it costs the company about $500)

 

[PelicanPines]

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Great Idea !!!!

 

[MikeF2316]

That's why I only buy wired ones. There's no way I'm not going to forget the dongle sooner or later.

 

[Bacon!]

I don't see the big deal. If I had an unexpected (for the age of the battery) low battery, I'd be thinking "why?" and would notice I had a dongle plugged in within minutes, if I had somehow forgotten about mine which I never have.

If I were going to do some custom setup where it's always plugged in to provide additional realtime info on a phone/etc, I'd just power it from a circuit not always live, same as the phone/etc host for it.

Anyway, panel mount switches can be had for $2. Let's not get into bulk chinese junk that's a dime a dozen. Drill a hole, mount the switch, wire through it, takes 30 minutes if you're slowwwwwwwww at it. That's if you can't find a wiring diagram to wire to an aux/engine-on circuit. If you can, do that instead.

 

[itwnexus]

Blue Driver is the only one I would use. The other brands can fry your ECU.

 

[Bacon!]

^ Pretty vague and unfounded statement. Yes some of the cheap chinese ones can suffer from QC problems, but there are millions of people successfully using dongles other than Blue Driver.

Since the majority of them aren't bluedriver, it is expected you might see some small % out of millions of the others, having some defect that causes damage but this is not at all typical. You might be more likely to get hit by lightning.

The more common problems with the cheapest ones are they're DOA, can't connect or stay connected over bluetooth, or don't really support the older OBDII protocols (only canbus) despite claiming otherwise. For those reasons I would buy from a place with a good return policy, though many Chinese located sellers on ebay, will just issue you a refund on the lower cost ones, without having to return it if it comes to that.