What is a Bi-Directional OBD2 Diagnostic Tool (Scanner) and Why Do You Want One?

so you've probably seen me use one of these OBD2 scanners uh a little green one a little a little Bluetooth dongle connects to my phone uh and I've done a number of things with it it was a recent video where I did some work on the Jeep here to do some reconfiguration for the larger tires and through a different app and and that was pretty you know pretty handy uh those little dongles are are you know if you don't have one you should get one cuz they are super handy to have around the shop maybe even just get a c you know they relatively inexpensive maybe you get one just leave it plugged into your car and you can you can pull codes and Telemetry and all kinds of stuff off your car whenever you want one I want to talk about today is what's called a bidirectional scanner it's a little different than that one uh I did a review on the other one before or at least I did a review on on those in kind of the how-tos of those in general what you can do with them the B directional scaners are a little different so we're going to talk about this one in particular because it's the one I have what does it even mean to have a bidirectional scanner what's the value of it would you even want one uh they're a little more expensive so do you want to spend the money on one and uh and we'll talk a bit about this particular one and kind of what I like about this particular one and there a few things I don't really like about them so let's get to [Music] [Applause] [Music] it so let's talk about bidirectional scanners in general well let me get the other one so there's a uh Port inside every car made probably after what 98 maybe 97 98 when they went from OBD1 to OBD2 has a port inside the car that talks to the computer and you can pull information out of the computer uh with a a reader of some sort so this is a standalone dongle it's a Bluetooth it works with an Android phone this particular one only works with Android at that time I've had this one several years and at the time it was this one for Android and it was a different one for iOS now the newer versions of this particular model this OBD link LX there's an OBD link MX I think it's called that's the upgraded model and it works with both um both platforms and I think also with Windows and there's wired versions of these two that have their own little display if you go to like AutoZone or whatever one of the big box part stores and have them do their free code scanning for you that's what they'll come out with they'll come out with a a box with a cable on the end of it read your codes give you those codes it does have some two-way communication with the phone and so like we saw with that jeep app that jcan app that I used to mess with the Jeep it had some input as well but very limited most of the time all you're doing is pulling information out but this one this uh xtool uh it's a D7 I've had this two three years now uh there is also a newer model of this one uh they've also gotten a lot cheaper I think I paid close to $600 for this I think they're right around 4450 something like that now maybe even below 4 depending on this deals on them all the time so they're coming down in price and adding features and some of the newer ones have different features that mine doesn't have but so let's talk a little bit about bir directional scanners what is that it's a Android based tablet has all kinds of interfaces and uh interfaces to certain Vehicles it can do the same things these can do with a regular app that comes with to pull stuff out but you can also input data and make changes you can do all kinds of things depending on the vehicle and what what they give you access to and over the years certain Vehicles don't give you as much access as they did um I think for instance the newer C8 Corvettes you have very limited ability to talk to the computer from from a tool like this uh but you can change you can pull active live data uh you can go back in and change something so it's it's sort of like a tuner in a way it does doesn't the tuner does certain other things like changing fuel air ratios and changing timing and changing this isn't going to do that this is more you can go in and like like we did with the Jeep here you can change uh uh warning lights you can turn things on and off which is actually the real for me that was the real value of the bidirectional uh tool is I can activate certain modules within the car from the tool so let's say for instance you've got a window that's not working what this tool will do it will actually tell the computer put the window down put the window up and the window will go down and go up and if it doesn't the problem is likely in the motor um versus in the switch right if it does go up and down when this tool tells it to do so but when you toggle the switch it doesn't something's wrong in the switch or the wiring for the switch somewhere so it starts to help narrow down where um where some of your where some of your problems are we'll go through some of the different features what you can do we'll we'll do a little test run on here on the Jeep uh some of the fancier cars have some fancier widgets you can turn radios on and off some of them you can even reprogram radios it's different for every vehicle though so when if you're thinking about this and you're thinking this might be of value to you check out the reader look at its vehicle support and and do a little bit of research on what what can you change with that vehicle with that reader and is that something you know if you going to be able to do the thing you need to do you don't want to go spend $500 on one of these readers and find out it's no better for you than one of these you know $30 ones so let me show you real quick what's in this one uh this again like this was a few years ago and they come a little bit different now than they did back then uh this is the reader there's a little pad here that keeps it protected keeps the screen protected from all this other gear on the other side all right we'll boot that up here takes a little minute you get a cable so this is basically an old school like a computer serial cable and one end connects to the the reader and the other end connects to this adapter that adapter has the serial connection on one side and the OBD2 connection on the other side does come with a nice little strap to keep it together and then the charging cable regular micro USB kind of an old school USB plug nothing particularly special gives you a rather weird plug with a US plug on it but also gives you a European style plug um other that it's just a USB like a charging brick so we'll grab this and we'll grab this and we'll grab this and let's go get in the vehicle and uh kind of show you different options and what it what it can do for us all right let's get our cable put together here uh I don't normally when I'm just doing Diagnostics and stuff I don't normally screw these things down they just get to be kind of a pain but for the demo here and kind of in and out and fiddling with it and trying to show it to you on camera and all that I just don't want these things to pop out I have had that happen works this way loose you get a bad a bad connection kind of throws it off so normally if you're just using this for a couple seconds it's just just this takes longer to hook this up and it does to use it but we'll do that all right so this is your OBD2 end you can see it's kind of tapered so it only goes in one way now where that Port is varies varies widely from car to car uh some are on the left some on the right they're almost never in the middle at least some are horizontal sticking out some are vertical some are this way some are this way so just peek your head under there find it this one's over here on this side the driver's left leg there oh forgot the keys turn the car on let it stop beeping so I can talk to you so these uh these scanners like any other scanner right you can do a quick diagnostic on it so what I want to kind of show you a little bit of the the value of this tool versus one of these tools one big advantage of these tools is that they have vehicle software manufacturing software across a wide spectrum like cars I've never even heard of from I don't know whatever some third world country so that's that's one advantage is that it has a lot more built-in capability versus having to have special software previous video I did where I made some input changes changed some some of the uh thresholds in the Jeep here for the tire pressure and tire and change some of the uh parameters for the geometry for tire size so I could um uh calibrate the speedometer so that required a special piece of software the software that came with that tool didn't give me that option this one does so that's one but that software was 25 bucks so you know like this is $479 it may not be worth it but there is some cool stuff you can do with this that you can't do with these or this you can't do without special software now you're buying multiple pieces and it is a One-Stop shop but we'll start here we'll just do a quick auto scan so it's initializing talking to the car one of the things about these I find this one even relative to that Bluetooth one it's a little slow it's actually one of my I to say some of the things I don't love about it so we'll do an auto scan so it tells me I got to start the engine so we'll fire it up hit okay and it's going to go through a scan and this one has some issues I haven't gotten to all of them yet um you see some warnings come up here throughout this process and it's done now scan itself is pretty quick um and so that's just your basic scan what's what's normal what's throwing codes so I've got a code for analog brakes and I've got a code for um come on oh yeah the headlights this these stupid eBay LED headlights throw a code in this car and I haven't been able to figure out what to do about it so you can clear them so I can just clear all codes here and now it's back to normal so if you fix something like I like I said like the turn signal thing I think was when the turn signal was bad and I replaced the turn signal just had to clear that code so we'll get out of the scan here let's do a diagnosis let's do America's let's do Jeep kind of give you the difference one is an automatic scan this one's a manual it's probably going to do the same thing that want to detect what vehicle it is we'll do an automatic scan it's going to do the same scan so we just did this there's just two ways to get into the same thing this another piece of feedback I guess on this the UI is a little weird um it's not real clear what you're doing when you do it let's do powertrain okay engine started there you go live data so we go to the power train control module we can do a live data so so it's giv me TPS uh um thr AO blade position like it's engine speed 790 RPM um so it's just going to give you and you can export this you can uh save all this off and run it to into a computer um I mean it's going to give you everything torque uh injectors O2 sensors and so if you have something you're trying to troubleshoot on in on the Fly Right with with it running you can look at these up in real time and you can look up what the specs are and get an idea of what it's supposed to say and then is it really working that way for instance when I replace the um oil temperature sensor and oil pressure sensors and then I can look at this and tell me it'll tell me exactly what the pressure is since all it has is like an idiot light on here it doesn't actually give me pressure so I can tell from this that it was reading and working properly 146 different data points that it's recording in real time not all of them are on some of them all happens when you're driving some when you actuate different different modules all right let's turn this back off just so we don't suffocate here in the garage got an exhaust fan going but so the big value of these B directionals are you can talk to it and give commands to the car and like I said you can do that with special software if you have the right software if you have a tuner you have other other pieces of hardware and software that do that the advantage of one of these devices especially if you work on a lot of different cars is that it is built in support for hundreds thousands tens of thousands of cars okay you're not having to have a tuning software for uh Chevy Camaro and another piece of tuning software for a Jeep and another one for whatever you have right or whatever you're working on this is a One-Stop shop for all those cars so it's like having multiple pieces of software multiple scanners in one and if you do work on a lot of different cars and you do need that computer capability this is a pretty good investment because it's going to save you a lot of time it's going to save you a lot of headache and different things down the road let me show you some of the things you can do with this um so let's go something we can actually see let's go system selection where's a body control model module um see like I said and the other thing you need to make sure every car is different functionality that you can control uh like I said some of these cars they don't give you much access so it isn't a given that you can do anything and everything on every car um where is the windows I just want to control the windows SM cluster cabin compartment node let's try that uh you can test different this so this is testing instrument cluster lights so I can turn lights on and off I don't know if you be able to see that from here but I can turn on let's see I can turn on the ABS light is ABS light already on with it being nope all right Telltale ABS on you see that here ABS light is on turn it back off can turn on the airbag light there you go right there and turn it off so you can just test like these these warning lights are they working is your dashboard working is your cluster working you do some funny stuff with the radio let's go back to let's see what else can we do uh you do automatic sway bar so these Jeeps have like like the Rubicon model has the electronic disconnecting differentials and sway bars and you can actuate those from here this this is the Sahara model so it doesn't have that we can do heat okay let's do that one heat in AC so we do actuation test and let's see we can turn on you won't be able to see the HVAC from there let me try a fan front blower State there we go there's medium higher so if you can hear that or not on the microphone but you can change blower speeds check if the blower is working isn't making any noise get any blender door issues all that kind of stuff oh let's turn it back off that's kind of annoying uh like you can yeah you can recirculation door actuator position so when you change those blender doors um sometimes they need to be recalibrated you can recalibrate them from in here um let's see what are other fun stuff is in here Central Gateway what's in there headlights uh let's see how about door locks we can lock the doors driver all doors locked uh driver's door unlocked just this one that one's still locked all doors unlocked there we go uh can I turn on the headlight yep we can go so right low beam on so you can test all the lights I can test the wipers let's see front wiper relay low washer fluid let's not do that and spare ourselves washer fluid uh I can do the horn that's obnoxious I'm not going to do the Horn uh wireless control is where you can do one of the other one of the other things is cool about these you can do is you can reprogram keys keys and I had a friend of mine who had a key that quit working and we were able to reprogram another key and um and at that point it was the only key like the only key he had and it wasn't working and he was stuck at work so he was going to have to have his car towed it was another Jeep I would have his jeep towed to a dealer or somewhere else get a key have it cut program All That Jazz plus Diagnostics that probably would have cost him 2 or 300 bucks between Towing and service maybe more it was uh you know it was it was it was pretty pretty handy all right so let's get out of here so this is kind of the basic home screen and it has a browser so you can look stuff up it's probably got some tabs I've got open from before it's um some variants of chrome I'm pretty sure as what of the updates to do here some immobilizer updates we'll just click update all real quick and it should go to Wi-Fi and download them so when I got this it came with I think it came with 2 years of updates and then they emailed me and offered me um there was a deal you could get a coupon or you could get a third year and I chose the thirdy year free updates I don't remember how much the updates are I'll look it up and what that does is continues to update for newer cars so as new cars come out or technology changes in these cars because they update their own systems over the air all the time and uh so then this updates to match it and then you can get you know retain functionality or sometimes get new functionality all right so you see there's a lot of value in these tools now there's a question whether not there's value for you whether this is the right one this is going to give you you know a good chunk of what you need if you're just have your own cars and you're just trying to diagnose trouble codes uh you don't have to go spend crazy money for one of these for one of these systems even this is a little bit on the price of your side the only reason I got this particular one is I had some softare I was using to do some racetrack analysis in a previous time of my life when I used to go do some amateur track days and getting Telemetry out of the out of the car uh some of in real time some just recording to for analysis later and um and be able to learn from it that particular software had like two or three this was on an Android phone had two or three devices that it worked with and so I had to get something was compatible with that software um so it was a little on the little more expensive side it is a nice one though and um I'll put a link down below for it but there's a bunch of them and there's a couple of budget ones I'll even throw links to those down in there too that are perfectly fine in fact they're cheap enough you could buy a couple of them put them in your cars and just leave them in there just connect your phone to it when you want to but if that's all you're doing you don't really need one of these but if you're doing a lot of diagnosis and you're doing a lot of diagnosis detail diagnosis or live data feeds and you're doing it on a bunch of different cars then one of these is the way to go you can get regular updates and regular compatibility checks with with different cars so let's go back to the table and uh we'll uh I'll give you some of the pros and cons of this particular one and what you might want to look for all right we're back at the table here I thought I would talk a little bit about this particular scanner what I like what I don't like what you might want or not want what did I like about this scanner well for one at the time the price now they're much cheaper than they than I paid for this one now but that's true you know that's over time electronics and stuff get a little cheaper uh get a little better so this one's a couple years old I got it actually in January of 20 2 so a little over 2 years old and I think it was right near the end of its sort of model life it came out with a new one shortly after I bought this one uh this is a D7 they came out with a d8 right about that time maybe maybe a little bit right after uh so it wasn't new new like wasn't the newest model or the newest available model when I got it it was a little bit outdated but I did that to save some money I think I paid four I think I said before I paid like 6 or 700 and I looked at it was just under five and uh but there were other ones that were $7 $800 at the time so I was trying to save a little money but now they they've gotten much cheaper but so anyway at the time that was a that was a pro for me was price uh the other one was it came with two years of updates which is nice and then after I got it I got a communication from xtool thanking you know thinking me for buying it and offering me an add-on and it gave me a bunch of choices there were some other pieces of Hardware u a wireless scanner like this one but one of the offers was a third year of updates and which was $99 a year so I took that option so I got three years of updates so I still have a year left what else I like about it it's a pretty rugged case I've dropped this a few times it came with a screen protector and that's nice and the screen protector is pretty scratched up and I can just peel off another one an additional screen protector was another option they offered me but they're not terribly expensive it's fairly lightweight it's not super heavy uh it came with a nice case here so nice foam insert case locks up keeps everything pretty protected and obviously I like its functionality now what I don't what what don't I like well it isn't the greatest scanner on the market it doesn't have all of the same functionality that some of these especially some of these newer ones they've increased that capability quite a bit over the years uh at the time it was comparable but I wouldn't say it was highend It was kind of at that lower end but um it didn't have all the functionality that I kind of wished it had uh and I don't actually don't so I don't have a lot of experience with these I guess I should start there I don't know lot about all the different one different ones of these so when I talk about things I don't like I don't know if those are things that are true for all of them or is it just mine and that this is one of them where the this cable I don't love this cable I don't love the fact that you got multiple pieces I wish it was just one cable um that connected to it and it's cumbersome and it and you have to disconnect three pieces and fold it all up put it back in the case you can't just like wrap the cord up and stick it in the case so I often don't end up using the case I just leave all this stuff hooked up and kind of wrap the cord up with its velcro strap and put it in the drawer of the toolbox uh the other thing I don't love about it is the battery life battery life is awful this was fully charged before I started doing this video we are down to 68% already and I've been doing this for about just what we're going on about 2 hours here to record this stuff so off and on not super awesome it uh when you hit the button it goes to sleep it doesn't really fully go to sleep you have to power it off that'll save on the battery uh it's awfully slow so again I don't know if this is true for all of them maybe they're all slow maybe none of them are very fast cuz it is a rather cheap Android tablet so you know maybe performance isn't something one should expect from these uh I have seen some of the newer ones have a much nicer uh UI on them this is this looks kind of neat here but once you get into it it gets a little bit '90s looking I guess uh it's a little clunky it isn't always obvious what it is you're clicking on and um some of the newer ones have a much smoother interface and smoother interaction which I think I'd like better so I not enough to upgrade um this one works just fine I'm not going to spend the money on another one but if you uh if you're in the market for one there is a newer model of this that does include a nicer UI and by all accounts it's a little more performant so I would I would recommend getting the newer one it's also price-wise it's pretty close to what I pay for this one I think even be a little bit cheaper than I paid for this one so for most people that one is all you really need most people aren't going to use this this is kind of U what what would you what do you call that prosumer I guess grade stuff if you're working in a shop like you're a mechanic in a shop you already have one of these probably right and you got a really nice one probably from Snap-on probably cost five grand probably cost another thousand a year for updates that is that's the big dog that's the professional tool this is not that okay this is a little bit Pro suumer a little bit of an upgrade from the regular consumer OBD scanner and uh but I do a lot of car stuff obviously you know I do a lot of car stuff for my friends we uh and so this has come in handy many times it's probably that one scenario I talked about with that friend of mine to reprogram is key that probably for him right I I probably saved him the cost of my scanner he would have had to pay for towing pay the dealership have a key programmed probably would have cost him a few hundred bucks so that alone had that been me would have paid for this tool um but again that's not true for everybody for most of you guys this is going to be just fine all right well you know so do you need one of these maybe not you know it depends on what you're doing uh you got to decide for yourself and do if you're going to get one I'd recommend the upgraded one from this it's not appreciably more expensive in fact I think the new one is cheaper now than I paid for this one and um because you'll get a better UI you'll get a little bit faster tablet uh I think it's a d8 this is a D7 there's a d8 i' I'd recommend at least that but take a peek I'll throw a link down below and with that link you can navigate to some other ones and see what uh what works for you uh you want to make sure that it works for your car so do some research on which ones work for which cars cuz not all their software works for every car hope that maybe that helps you learn a little bit about how these tools work uh I'll put like I said I'll put a link down below if you want to pick one up otherwise um thanks for watching hope you hope you learn something on this and uh we'll see you next time [Music] down

Channel: Rhyno's Garage

Views: 3,662

Keywords: obd1, obd, engine light, code scanner, engine code

Id: kYW7jZSarKM

Length: 27min 39sec (1659 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024