OBD II UART Hookup Guide

Contributors: Toni_K

Introduction

Have you ever had an infamous 'check engine light'? Did you wish you could just check the error code yourself and not deal with going to a mechanic? With the OBD-II UART, your wishing can become a reality. The OBD-II UART allows you to connect your car to a computer, embedded microcontrollers, or single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black.

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SparkFun OBD-II UART

In stock WIG-09555

This board allows you to interface with your car's OBD-II bus. It provides you a serial interface using the ELM327 command se…

$56.95

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SparkFun Car Diagnostics Kit

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Has your "Check Engine Light" turned on in your car and you don't know what could possibly be wrong? We get it, it's a stress…

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This guide will show you:

• What hardware is included on the OBD-II UART
• The basics of OBD-II commands
• How to hook this up over FTDI directly with your computer
• How to hook this up to an Arduino and display information to an LCD

Required Materials

To follow along with the tutorial, you will need the following parts.

Required Tools

• Soldering iron
• Solder
• A laptop

Suggested Reading

This tutorial does expect the user to have experience with basic electronics and serial communication. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts or need a refresher, check out these other tutorials.