DIY Smartphone Scan Gauge - OBD Fusion

[lx200inAR]

Ah, well he used hte radial gauge that has the 1 in it but then overlayed another gauge on top of it. So the only thing you see is the "blue light" because the gauge is full.


He just posted this picture. The halo around the 6 for the current transmission gear is the indicator that his TC is locked. If you look closely you can kind of see how its circles stacked on circles, the TC gauge is slightly bigger than the gear gauge so you can still see it when they are stacked.

 

[TeCKis300]

Yup to everything @lx200inAR posted.

Gotta give credit to @linuxgod as I borrowed what was originally his work and riffed on it.

 

[linuxgod]

Yup to everything @lx200inAR posted.

Gotta give credit to @linuxgod as I borrowed what was originally his work and riffed on it.

Definitely a group effort. Someone else explained to me how to get the TC lockup PID and make that ring light up.

My main complaint with the OBD fusion dashboards is that they don't scale. When I moved from an iPhone 7 to an iPhone X I had to rejigger them to look sensible.

 

[TeCKis300]

Definitely a group effort. Someone else explained to me how to get the TC lockup PID and make that ring light up.

My main complaint with the OBD fusion dashboards is that they don't scale. When I moved from an iPhone 7 to an iPhone X I had to rejigger them to look sensible.

The scaling thing was what drove me to rejigger it all.

 

[lx200inAR]

So i take it no one has figured out a PID for the oil temp? Seems strange that something so obvious would be excluded.

 

[grinchy]

I haven’t found it yet. I have a gen 1 Lx

 

[TeCKis300]

So i take it no one has figured out a PID for the oil temp? Seems strange that something so obvious would be excluded.

Would be nice but I don't believe there is an oil temp sensor onboard. There's an oil pressure and oil level sensor, but no temp.

 

[lx200inAR]

I wasted a bit of time on this today. Learned a few things along the way. I mostly ripped off @TeCKis300 dashboard. But added a few more displays. I don't really know how to interpret the knock values but included them anyways. Those are very easy to modify or remove. I added the misfires gauge, where I wanted the oil temp gauge, although in 20 minutes of driving my truck never reported one... I guess that is good. The app does say that it's getting a response for the value.

One thing I found is you don't want any PIDs in your dashboard that the ECU fails to return a value for, as it causes the other PID updates to lag quite a bit. I'm assuming this is a timeout waiting for a response to the bad PID that is slowing everything down. Along with that thought, the more PIDs you have on a dashboard the slower all the updates will be, so it wouldn't be the worst idea to not include things on the dashboard you don't actually care about. Supposedly it might be possible to improve this with a nicer OBDII dongle, but I couldn't find anything definitive in the little time I spent looking. Most of the cheap dongles are based on ELM327 chip, so they all probably have about the same call/response rate.

While on the topic of dongles, I know a few here have been posted, but in digging a little deeper it should probably be pointed out, that if you want the easiest most seamless set up, you want a BLE or BLE+ dongle to interface with your phone. If you look in the settings of OBD Fusion, there is a list of example BLE dongles. With an iPhone you can configure the phone to connect to the dongle with almost no interaction after the initial setup. I assume its similar with Android, but the directions seem to suggest that with Android you still have to pair in your bluetooth settings. But maybe this happens automagically like headphones do when you turn them on near your phone.

So either way, here's my dashboard and stg file. It could use a bit more tweaking, but I'm done with it for now. Also, I took the screenshot before I realized I had the TC oil and pan oil PIDs backwards. The stg file above has it corrected, but it is wrong in the photo. This one is set up in portrait as well. It almost turns into landscape fine except for the instant MPG gauge. That gauge isn't square, so when the screen flips it gets wonky. I bet that if i built that gauge using the half radial gauge, it would fare better in landscape mode.

 

[TeCKis300]

^Like the vibe. Sports chrono style! The reset total fuel economy button, if that's a button is trick!

 

[lx200inAR]

The button resets the MPG display. I don’t know if that display is a per trip calculation or if it continues to track across multiple trips until you hit the reset again. I’ll have to play with it some more to find out.

I changed a setting in the app that tells it to continue counting a trip as long as you restart within 60 minutes. It will be interesting to see what affect that has on things.

 

[AnyMal]

I wasted a bit of time on this today. Learned a few things along the way. I mostly ripped off @TeCKis300 dashboard. But added a few more displays. I don't really know how to interpret the knock values but included them anyways. Those are very easy to modify or remove. I added the misfires gauge, where I wanted the oil temp gauge, although in 20 minutes of driving my truck never reported one... I guess that is good. The app does say that it's getting a response for the value.

One thing I found is you don't want any PIDs in your dashboard that the ECU fails to return a value for, as it causes the other PID updates to lag quite a bit. I'm assuming this is a timeout waiting for a response to the bad PID that is slowing everything down. Along with that thought, the more PIDs you have on a dashboard the slower all the updates will be, so it wouldn't be the worst idea to not include things on the dashboard you don't actually care about. Supposedly it might be possible to improve this with a nicer OBDII dongle, but I couldn't find anything definitive in the little time I spent looking. Most of the cheap dongles are based on ELM327 chip, so they all probably have about the same call/response rate.

While on the topic of dongles, I know a few here have been posted, but in digging a little deeper it should probably be pointed out, that if you want the easiest most seamless set up, you want a BLE or BLE+ dongle to interface with your phone. If you look in the settings of OBD Fusion, there is a list of example BLE dongles. With an iPhone you can configure the phone to connect to the dongle with almost no interaction after the initial setup. I assume its similar with Android, but the directions seem to suggest that with Android you still have to pair in your bluetooth settings. But maybe this happens automagically like headphones do when you turn them on near your phone.

So either way, here's my dashboard and stg file. It could use a bit more tweaking, but I'm done with it for now. Also, I took the screenshot before I realized I had the TC oil and pan oil PIDs backwards. The stg file above has it corrected, but it is wrong in the photo. This one is set up in portrait as well. It almost turns into landscape fine except for the instant MPG gauge. That gauge isn't square, so when the screen flips it gets wonky. I bet that if i built that gauge using the half radial gauge, it would fare better in landscape mode.



View attachment 2887219

Looks nice, glad I was lazy.

I did get that BLE veepeak I posted earlier, will report on how seamless it is soon.

This looks like it would be a good way to monitor regular 87-89 performance in the lx under load if that is something people are trying to get away with. Didn’t know it had those modules. Still don’t know anything about spark advance though and all that was to be of concern for lower octanes.

 

[linuxgod]

So i take it no one has figured out a PID for the oil temp? Seems strange that something so obvious would be excluded.

There is one. I use it in my dashboard. It’s part of the enhanced Toyota PID pack that OBD Fusion offers. Search for “oil” in the Toyota-> engine section

 

[lx200inAR]

There is one. I use it in my dashboard. It’s part of the enhanced Toyota PID pack that OBD Fusion offers. Search for “oil” in the Toyota-> engine section

I did this and couldn’t locate one. I checked all sections under the Toyota advanced pack.

 

[AnyMal]

Am i stupid?
Im trying to import custom PID, have added both of your files into the OBD app file structure subfolder in finder and it keeps prompting for a CSV file in the import page.
Am i adding a PID or dashboard here? Sorry i did zero research since buying the app and veepeak.

BTW the BLE is great, connected immediately through the app alone. Vehicle identified all things working.
Toggled the auto connect setting and use last connected protocol and will report back on how it behaves leaving it in the truck at all times and just opening OBD when i want gauges.

 

[lx200inAR]

You are importing a dashboard, not a PID. You will most likely need to have purchased the toyota advanced pack for the dashboard to fully work, as many of the PIDs are in the advanced pack.

It's not super intuitive where you do this. You go under settings, where there is a list of settings menu options, but then you hit the "menu" button at the top right and it prompts you to import or export a settings file.

 

[AnyMal]

For those pulling out your hair over this, its Settings>Menu. Its a button on the top right, not a ****ing label.
I just spent an hour in the app looking for import settings due to ios design language...

I knew i should never have turned off Button Shapes accessibility feature. For all those on iOS this underlines any contextual buttons.

 

[AnyMal]

Successful import of both Teck and LXs files, still no dashboards showing up at all?
Do i need to be actively connected for this to work?

Ive got the PID package as well... Giving up for today. I spent all my energy searching for a button that was right there.

 

[TCM]

Successful import of both Teck and LXs files, still no dashboards showing up at all?
Do i need to be actively connected for this to work?

Ive got the PID package as well... Giving up for today. I spent all my energy searching for a button that was right there.

Same here. Successful import of the dashboard files but they are not visible. Only the default dashboards are displayed.

 

[lx200inAR]

So you have to go to “Settings -> Preferences -> General” and enable the “Use Simple dashboard management” toggle.

Then you have to import the dashboard (I would only enable the dashboard toggle in that screen, but may not matter. After those changes when you hit the import button, you should get a screen that says “Dashboards [1]”, if it only says succeeded, then it didn’t work.

After that it may be necessary to link the dashboard to your vehicle. If the dashboard isn’t immediately displayed after you get the above message, you need to do a “manage dashboards” from the menu button on the dashboards page. Then use the + button and you need to link the dashboard to your vehicle.

 

[AnyMal]

So you have to go to “Settings -> Preferences -> General” and enable the “Use Simple dashboard management” toggle.

View attachment 2888026
Then you have to import the dashboard (I would only enable the dashboard toggle in that screen, but may not matter. After those changes when you hit the import button, you should get a screen that says “Dashboards [1]”, if it only says succeeded, then it didn’t work.

View attachment 2888030
After that it may be necessary to link the dashboard to your vehicle. If the dashboard isn’t immediately displayed after you get the above message, you need to do a “manage dashboards” from the menu button on the dashboards page. Then use the + button and you need to link the dashboard to your vehicle.

Damn. I browsed over that setting numerous times. It says (and I’ve tried) that it disables the manage dashboard option. Sounds exactly like it serves the opposite function I’m looking for by that description… why is s*** so buried in this app?