A while back in Voltlog #231 I took a look at a device called nitro obd2, it was this $2 OBD2 port dongle, which supposedly when plugged into your cars OBD2 port will enhance the performance by tuning the ECU. This was of-course a scam as I proved in the video by doing a teardown, the dongle did nothing but flash some LEDs. But there were still people who left some comments saying they we’re seeing performance improvements after using the $2 tuning gadget. Those are ofcourse false claims, maybe those people just don’t have a clue what’s going on, or maybe they’re the actual sellers offering these on ebay and aliexpress.
Tag: K-Line
Voltlog #247 – InTheMail
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re going to start with this small module, at first when I ordered it I didn’t fully understood what it does but now after doing a bit of research for this mailbag it seems this is an immobiliser emulator for the VAG group. So am immobiliser is a security component of your car that will not let the ECU start the engine unless a certain key or token is present. And there might be valid reasons why you might need this emulator, for example if the immobiliser is broken, you can supposably cancel it and start the engine with this emulator or if you exchange the motor/ecu combo once again it might not be possible to use the old immobiliser and so an emulator will help.
It talks over a K-line interface which is something specific to the automotive domain but it’s basically a form of serial interface. At first I thought this was going to emulate some kind of can bus and I was planning to play with it by scanning the bus but now I realize this is useless for me.
Voltlog #236 – InTheMail
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time.
Voltlog #231 – Nitro OBD2 Chip Tuning Scam
Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’re going to be taking a look at this gadget the nitro OBD2 performance chip tuning box, notice this is specially designed for diesel cars and since it’s using the buzz word nitro, this sounds like it might just work. For sure some company has invested time & money into finding the secret sauce to put into this thing to make it work and boost performance. They claim it fits all cars built after 1996 and all you have to do is to plug this into the obd port, drive for 200km so the device can learn and adjust to your car and after that you will benefit from 35% more power and 25% more torque. It evens says here on the box that it will enable fuel saving. So this sound pretty much like the holy grail in car ECU tuning.
But ofcourse if you have any experience with electronics you can’t believe that this is going to save any fuel or boost any performance just by plugging into the OBD port. So that’s why I purchased this, so we can take a better look inside, and also because I needed an OBD2 connector + enclosure for a project of mine. I plan to do some can bus sniffing and do something with that data but I’ll talk abou that in a future video.
Voltlog #225 – Taking A Look Inside A Bosch/Audi ECU EDC15VM+
Welcome to a new voltlog, today we’re doing a teardown of an automotive ECU which stands for engine control unit. Every car has one of these, unless it’s very old and doesn’t have electronic control of the engine. This is a small computer that reads a bunch of sensors like air temperature, air pressure, fuel pressure, rpm, crank shaft position, pedal position and various others and then based on these inputs will calculate various parameters and control outputs like the fuel pump, injectors, spark plugs, etc.
I’ve never opened one of these up but we should find something interesting to see in here, at least from the point of view of construction methods because these things need to run smooth even in the hardest conditions like very hot weather or very cold weather as well as endure water pouring right onto them all while withstanding high levels of mechanical shock and vibrations. So it’s likely we will see a nice seal on the enclosure, as well as conformal coating on the inside.
What we find inside might differ a lot depending on the generation of the ECU, older ones having to use more discrete components, while newer ones are integrating a lot of components into a single chip. I’ve worked briefly for Freescale which was building such a newer chip in partnership with BOSCH and it was amazing the level of integration they had: everything from multiple mosfet drivers, differential amplifiers for current sensing with programmable gain, dc-dc boost converter as well as a multi core processor was all integrated on the same chip, as you can imagine this can save quite a bit of money on the final build so that’s the direction things are heading.
The one I have here is from an Audi A6 model C5 which was manufactured between 1997 and 2004, this one is likely made in 2001, judging by a date code I see on the label and it’s from a 2.5 liter TDI engine. I got it from one of these auto dismantling businesses from ebay, I don’t know if it’s ever been opened before, but we will find out soon.