Aygo x 2015 AB1 rev counter

[fordulike]

7 minutes ago, Planemo said:

I appreciate that its live whenever plugged in but even so I am surprised that it could flatten a *car* battery within 4 or 5 days. I cant imagine the bluetooth transmit power is much at all.

It depends what bluetooth spec it uses. Older versions were much more power hungry than the latest ones. Coupled with the fact that these devices are highly unlikely to have been designed with power economy in mind, they could drain surprising amounts of power from the car's Battery.

The Xstrons one in Neil's link, has addressed this by providing an on/off switch on the unit itself.

[Agent Orange]

2 hours ago, Nick Brown said:

And it has had a bit of a issue this morning resulting in a dash full of flashing lights. Oh err missus. Removed from obd port all back to normal! 

Hi Nick,

I've never had this problem with either of the two OBD2 adaptors that I've had but when I was doing my homework, before I bought the Torque app, I remember somebody saying that they had seen something similar.  The problem seemed to be that the "Tips for Driving" widget had been pressed whilst the engine was on and that sends the car into a, sort of, diagnostic mode.

The cure was just to remove the "Tips" from your display (Long press and delete) and you never have the problem again.  The display pages are full of gauges when you get the app on your phone and my first job was to delete everything, get back to 5 blank pages and then add the gauges that I wanted.  In my case that was Digital Speedo and Coolant Temperature on the first (opening page) which I have on all the time and on other pages Fuel level and Distance until empty....Voltmeter and MPG...And then two blank pages that I removed under "Show number of pages" in settings (I set it to 3).  That way, I open up "Realtime information" (Gauges) to show the opening page and then just occasionally swipe left or right for the other info.

Another nice feature for me was that, as my Aygo Fire is orange, I reset the theme to "Orange Ring" and that perfectly matches the speedo and revcounter surrounds in the car....Loads of themes are available for various cars/colours.

As for Battery drain, well like I said before, I've never really had that problem either, but I did say that I would unplug the adaptor if I wasn't using the car that much and it was always at the back of my mind.  That's why I bought another one when I found the one with the on/off switch and that has been in the car for the past few months.

I hope that you get to grips with it, Nick, all the best. 

P.S. For anybody else, the only other thing that I had to do with the Torque App was in the "Profile" settings and once I had entered the car details ( Engine size, weight, fuel tank capacity etc) I adjusted the "Trim" for the MPG to 1.3....That gives a pretty accurate MPG reading for the Aygo and helps with the "Distance until empty" gauge .

[fordulike]

10 minutes ago, Agent Orange said:

P.S. For anybody else, the only other thing that I had to do with the Torque App was in the "Profile" settings and once I had entered the car details ( Engine size, weight, fuel tank capacity etc) I adjusted the "Trim" for the MPG to 1.3....That gives a pretty accurate MPG reading for the Aygo and helps with the "Distance until empty" gauge .

Great tip, thanks

[Planemo]

Thanks for the tip fordulike re the trim setting.

Neil, how is the data transfer/refresh speed with the xtrons unit? I know this is probably really difficut to quantify as it depends how many gauges you are running on the screen at any one point but in general would you say it's fairly quick? There is a noticable delay on mine, mainly witnessed by the rev counter and throttle angle dials. The other ones I use are not really a problem as G force is picked up from the phone and water temp can suffer a slight delay anyway. As you have probably seen, each gauge (which uses OBD data) has a little square green light which flashes when the data has been updated. Sometimes mine flash as slowly as once per second which isn't ideal tbh.

[Agent Orange]

Hi @Planemo

The Xtrons OBD2 transmitter is very quick, I may wrong but I would say that it's a tad quicker than the previous unit I had which was one of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004KL0I9I/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1   

I paid about £7.00 for that one and was very pleased with it but the On/Off switch made me go for the Xtrons transmitter....Also the Xtrons is a smaller unit and doesn't stick out of the OBD2 port as much, although you can still see it to check the LED and switch it on or off without any bother.

As I said before, I deleted everything from the Torque app and reduced it to three pages before installing what I actually wanted, with two gauges on each page and my main (Opening) page has a Coolant Temperature and Digital Speedo on it.  The coolant temperature gauge flashes it's little green light constantly and more than once per second......Some might think that is distracting but the light is so small that you don't notice it after a few moments.

As for checking the speed and accuracy of both the Torque app and the transmitter, I installed the revcounter and it matched the revcounter fitted to my Aygo Fire exactly and just as quickly, so there was no delay with either transmitter.  All in all I'm very pleased with both transmitters, although I do like the Xtrons more, just for the neatness of the unit and the peace of mind of having an On/Off button on it.

The Torque app is great, you can play about with it to your hearts content and you always seem to find something new, for instance, that trim setting feature was something I played about with for a good few weeks, I had it up to 1.6....down to 1.1 and finally settled on 1.3 as that gave me an accurate set of readings when I compared it to the actual MPG after a fill up, so I know it's accurate.

I have the Torque app on an old 4.5 inch smartphone (No need for a sim card) that I have on a magnetic mount on the dash, so It's dedicated Mini tablet arrangement for the app and the car, It connects quickly to the transmitter (about 1-2 seconds) and has never let me down.  If you want something that really looks the part, you know that space behind the gear lever and the cup holders, under the 12v outlet shelf?.....Well a 6 inch Kindle Fire (You would have to get a second hand one, these days as they seem to have stopped making them) fits in that space and you could have a bank of gauges to look at.....Not everybody's cup of tea, I know but whilst we were on the subject and all that. 

All the best. 

[fordulike]

On 9/1/2017 at 8:14 AM, Planemo said:

Just something to be aware of - I always left my adaptor (a £4 Ebay one) plugged in 24/7, and found that if I left the car for 4 or 5 days the battery would be really low and a couple of times it would not start the car. I didn't think much of it and just assumed the battery was on its way out as it looks quite old and I haven't changed it since I bought the car. I didnt think it could be anything to do with the adaptor as I couldn't see how it could possibly use that much power.

Got the adapter today and it's a great gadget combined with 'Torque Pro'. Just in case anyone out there fancies one of these, then it's advisable to purchase the adapter with the on/off switch, or pull out the adapter after use. It seems that they have a high current drain on the car Battery and may flatten it if left for days without driving the car.

See post#9 in the Focus ST forum:

http://www.focusst.org/forum/focus-st-discussions/8668-torque-pro-torque-lite.html