OBD2 Adapter: Diagnose Tool for Cars (02-12-2002, 17:46)

Hello,

I have recently been receiving a large number of emails with inquiries about the diagnostic adapters.

What do you think about putting together kits that include pre-etched circuit boards?

As a proposed price, I suggest cost price plus a fee for Ulf and Maik, plus an allowance to cover the expenses of assembling and sending it.
I haven't yet calculated which adapter would be cheaper to build (Ulf/Maik), but both options should be affordable.

Best regards, Rainer.

Rainer K. wrote:

As a proposal, I suggest a price of cost price + honorarium for Ulf + Maik + a compensation for the time and effort involved in assembling/sending it.

Hello Rainer,

I hereby explicitly waive any funds that may arise from the sale of adapters.
If there are any funds left over from the budget, I will donate them to a non-profit organization (completely separate from any political parties or agendas!!!).

Hello Ulf, commendable .

I don't want to get rich from it, and even so, it wouldn't be feasible considering the price of finished adapters .
Let's start by gauging whether there's any interest, I assume there is, since I regularly receive emails asking about ready-made circuit boards.

Best regards, Rainer.

Hi, I don't want to make any money from it, but I can look into how much a circuit board and maybe a complete kit would cost. The only problem is the OBD2 connector.

Regards,
Maik.

Hello everyone,

Okay, I would be interested. I currently have a ready-made adapter from eBay, but it doesn't really make me happy, especially since it doesn't have an L-line.

I can also buy the individual components myself at the electronics store just around the corner.
But the pre-etched circuit boards sound very interesting. With my grid-based designs, I always end up frustrated because I've missed something .

Okay, after all the long talk, I'm interested!
I think it's a brilliant idea!

Hm, should I get Ulf or Maik...?

Best regards.
David.

Hello,


I would also really like a cleanly etched (small) circuit board. So far, I've built everything on a breadboard, which works, but it's not particularly enjoyable, and I don't want to spend forever soldering things onto a grid.

Best regards, Georg.

Hi,

'I actually have my own etching machine and exposure unit. When I think about how long it takes to expose, develop, etch, and drill a circuit board, I would also be okay with it if they were offered at a price slightly above the cost of materials. I would probably buy one myself.'

Regards,

Eike.

I see two problems:

a) An etched circuit board would offer greater reliability in terms of replication compared to a perforated board. Therefore, it would be beneficial if both a usable circuit board layout were available online and if there was a way to obtain an etched circuit board.
b) Regarding the connector, I will contact various suppliers. I believe they haven't yet recognized the market potential.

'If the boxes break down in a few years, many people, especially with used cars, will need the ability to test them. I recently had an ABS warning light come on in a friend's car. No problem with the diagnostic tester: the wheel sensor on the rear right side is defective.'
The workshop can easily cover the cost of the diagnosis!

Hello,

Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact "c't" magazine. They often publish small DIY circuits related to computer technology, and they also produce the circuit boards for them, which they offer at almost cost price.

That would be a foundation upon which the initiative could likely progress significantly, without placing too much burden on individuals.

Motivating people to understand the benefits of such an adapter, i.e., explaining "Why is this adapter useful?", should probably not be a problem given all the reasons mentioned above.

Of course, there's the risk that this would become too widespread, and Rainer's server could crash if the URLs of these pages are printed in the magazine...

What do you think about it?

Best regards,

Jan.

Hello Jan,

Quote:

Of course, there's the risk that this would become too broad, and Rainer's server would crash if the URL of these pages is printed in the magazine...

Currently, the server is using 4.5GB of data per month, with a maximum allowance of 15GB per month.
I just submitted a request to increase my limit, because it would be annoying to receive a large bill for the extra transaction volume.

Best regards, Rainer.

If you know what you're looking for, the traffic volume with KaZaA distributes itself very well. It doesn't necessarily have to be configured on your server. The private homepages also aren't volume-limited.
Here too, some tasks can be outsourced.

Hi Andy,

That wasn't the point. The issue was the overall traffic volume of the *forum*. If you publish this information, which millions of people will read, through platforms like ct or similar sites, the traffic could easily increase tenfold.

It's not about downloading a few kilobytes of a blueprint a few thousand times, which amounts to a few megabytes; but not gigabytes. However, look at Rainer's numbers and consider how many people are generating that data. Every page view, or each post, generates a good 10 KB per read, and how many posts do each of us read every day? Well, sometimes it's certainly 30-50. And when that's multiplied by a large number of people, the gigabytes quickly add up.

Kazaa or something similar might be a small solution, but a forum cannot be *easily* and *reliably* distributed, even if the database allowed it – the access would still ultimately go through the same connection.

And that's exactly why I brought up the previous point, because you have to be careful when doing things that could potentially increase popularity so much – you don't want Rainer to end up being the one who suffers as a result.

Best regards,

Jan.

Sure, but the main traffic doesn't come from the cached HTML pages. When I reply here in the forum, it's only a few kilobytes. Users are spread across various forums. Have you ever been to www.set-top-box.de? If the topic is generally publicized, people come here through search engines. I see the main problem in large downloads or graphics. That's where you can save the most.

Hi, I also think it's a good idea. Partly because I'm probably too clumsy for breadboarding, I ended up etching Ulf's design onto a PCB. But that's a hassle if you don't have the right equipment for it.
The question of which adapter to use is still unclear to me. I haven't had the chance to test it myself on my unfortunately sensitive Audi 100. I haven't read any other reviews either.
Christian.

Hi Andy,

Ask Rainer, he'll definitely tell you that's not the case. There aren't any large downloads that are downloaded very frequently here, but the forums are loaded very often. I don't even count the graphics that are loaded as avatars, because those come from external sources.

And as the saying goes, even small things can cause a lot of trouble, and this is definitely one of them. It's not about the few kilobytes of data being sent upstream when someone posts something, but about the downstream data usage when people read those posts.

"Consider a longer thread that might have 30-50 KB of HTML. Even if only three lines are added at the bottom, the entire page will be reloaded when it's reopened (because HTML cannot be cached in parts). And if 100 people read that post, you're already at 5MB, all because ONE person added a comment, and many people have read it. After the next addition, the same thing happens, and so on."

Currently, the access numbers probably aren't that extreme yet, but that would be the result of extensive advertising. I would guess that currently 75-90% of the traffic is coming from the forum - is that correct, Rainer?

Regarding caching: Almost nothing (except for the static elements) is cached here. It wouldn't make sense to cache all the dynamic content, as it changes constantly.

Best regards,

Jan.

Hello Andy,

Jan is right. The dynamic pages of the forum account for over half of the total traffic.

Best regards, Rainer.