Gadgetory

any car built after 1996 is considered obd2 compliant meaning you can grab all of your cars diagnostics through a port that's a lot like a USB port for your car in most cases though only mechanics have access to this port but more and more apps are allowing the user to put all of that data into your pocket in this case I'll show you how to use an app called - which is free for both iOS and Android with it you can turn any dumb card into a smart car so you can see diagnostics like fuel economy rpm engine temperature and a lot more plus you can even diagnose the check engine light all on your own here's how it works first you'll need an OPD - device these costs anywhere from $15 to $100 depending on what the brand is and what features it has you can go to Dash's website for recommendations on both iOS and Android in this case I already have my obd for an android phone and i'll plug it into my car in most cases it's underneath the steering wheel now we're ready to pair the obd with my phone so the first thing i want to do is turn the car on to give power to the obd then I'll go into my bluetooth settings find the obd link it up then we'll launch - and in a few seconds the app should find the obd that's it we're set so let's take it for a test drive as I'm driving all these Diagnostics are updating in real-time so I can see my fuel economy rpm temperature engine load if you don't know what one of these means you can actually just tap the square and it'll give you a really nice explanation it becomes a little bit addicting because the goal is to get as many of these squares into the green zone as possible it's not always in your control but oftentimes you can prevent it from going into red by controlling how fast you accelerate or how hard you break so here's how it works from the moment I start my car to the point that I take my key out of the ignition that's considered one trip and at the end of every trip I get a driver's score from - that's dependent on how fast I was accelerating how hard I was braking and if I was idling for too long so let's see how I did good my trips so I see here that I got a score of 81 a lot of that is because I was idling too much probably because of some San Francisco traffic but it says I have some great fuel efficiency and I avoided hard accelerations luckily my overall score is still a nice 93