I have an ODBII USB cable for vehicle diagnostics, unfortunately I haven't been able to get it working on Ubuntu 12.04. The closest I've come is using the VAG-COM software with wine, using the ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1 trick and running stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 speed 9600 repeatedly. It will connect and show the vehicle is OBDII, but none of the useful features seem to be working. I tried:
- Scantool - says it's connecting to the /dev/device in terminal, but doesn't.
- obdgpslogger - times out all the time.
- pyobd - This seems to be the most up-to-date source I could find, I had to adjust the code a bit to work (see here for changes). Still, in obd_io.py interpret_result function, it says it's looking for 4 space separated numbers, where the usb-serial is receiving bogus code "0100" instead?
freediag - I tried compiling,
sh ./configureran fine. I had to change some executable bit to make it start to compile, but now runningmakegives error:diag_general.c:52: undefined reference to
diag_l0_config' diag_general.c:55: undefined reference todiag_l2_config' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status ...and fails.
The device shows up in lsusb as:
ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) ICIs the problem that these native tools don't expect a USB serial, or a serial of this type? Or are these apps too old to recognize OBD2 of this vehicle?
3 Answers
Reference Data 1.This cable can not work if your car uses a protocol ssystem like VPW,PWM or Can-bus
This is a direct copy/paste from the Amazon page for the cable you link to. It may be that the cable just doesn't work with your device, though I would think the programs should see a non-working cable attached.
Have you also tried Freediag?
9Try these resources:
Using ScanTool(win) under Linux using Wine
Ubuntu Forums: OBDII Code Readers COM1 Port
1I downloaded freediag source from and had no problems compiling it on Ubuntu 20.04 and on Fedora 31. Perhaps your missing a prerequisite. Anyways it seems to work quite well.
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