APR Dongle with Harry's Lap Timer?

jmhtexas · Post by **jmhtexas** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 5:30 pm

Hi folks.

I have a 2013 Golf R and am looking at OBD dongles. Planning on upgrading my car to APR Stage 1+ and want to use the APR mobile dongle and their app.

Concurrently, I just purchased Harry's Lap Timer and am looking at the GoPoint BT1 dongle.

I've asked on another forum about the compatibility of the GoPoint with APR's mobile app, but wondering if the APR dongle is compatible with Harry's Lap Timer app?

Thanks in advance.

Post by **Harry** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 11:01 pm

Hi,

I have no insights into the APR OBD dongle. I checked this page but have not been able to find details on the protocol used. Maybe you want to contact them and ask whether standard ELM327 compatible communication is supported. The next hurdle is it is a BT device. As they claim it is compatible to older iPhone they need to have their dongle Apple certified too - but I do not see any reference to Mfi (Made for iPhone)... So in case it supports standard ELM327 communication and they offer a white listing to 3rd parties, I'm happy to support it in the future. However, I cannot pursue all of this gadgets my self and need help.

As they are able to optimize communication between their own dongle and ECU, systems like this open an interesting range of additional features (both values and update speeds). They downside is, this extensions are always completely proprietary.

On the other hand I'd assume any standard OBD dongle (including the GoPoints) should be able to receive standard PIDs from the APR. There are tons of ECUs available in the market and the APR is just another one. They will interface to whatever car bus is used in your Gold R - which kind of standardizes access to values used by LapTimer. Again, please consider contacting GoPoint, they know a lot more about car bus hardware topics than I do

- Harry

jmhtexas · Post by **jmhtexas** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 3:03 pm

Thanks Harry, I have a thread going on the Vortex with the same topic with the folks from APR. I posted your questions there as well. The link to the thread is here:

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.p ... st84666529

Post by **Harry** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:50 pm

Please just keep us posted here, I have not subscribed to that forum and will not get notifications.

I thought about the GoPoint compatibility item again and I'm nearly sure any OBD dongle should work with the APR (standard capabilities only). Otherwise this would mean you break OBD II compatibility in general when installing the APR ECU - which I cannot believe as this would make it a "don't buy" for any car not being "track only". APR on the other hand will not have a case to raise this compatibility as it is kind of competition to their 200 $ package (which will certainly be better then the OBD II standard and allow configuration).

- Harry

jmhtexas · Post by **jmhtexas** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:26 pm

Their short answer was: "We don't support ELM327."

Post by **Harry** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 6:06 pm

They didn't comment on the ECU's compatibility with other OBD II dongles?

- Harry

bulls23 · Post by **bulls23** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 4:56 am

I think you are getting it wrong Harry. APR provides ECU re-maps together with their dongle so you can chip tune your car by your self. It's only for newer TFSI engines which all have MED Bosch Motronics and I'm guessing that's the reason the adapter isn't ELM327 compatible because they communicate directly with car's ECU (but I haven't read at vwvortex yet).

Post by **Harry** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:04 am

bulls23 wrote:I think you are getting it wrong Harry. APR provides ECU re-maps together with their dongle so you can chip tune your car by your self. It's only for newer TFSI engines which all have MED Bosch Motronics and I'm guessing that's the reason the adapter isn't ELM327 compatible because they communicate directly with car's ECU (but I haven't read at vwvortex yet).

You are right, they provide several re-mapping programs, not a separate hardware. That makes things even more clear, OBD dongles (all ELM327 based, GoPoint, and their own) will be compatible. The whole ELM327 / GoPoint / APR Dongle discussion is only about the protocol between an app and the OBD gateway. As LapTimer supports ELM and GoPoints protocol, it is limited to these. Data transfer between the OBD gateway and the ECU is always done using the car's bus, which is CAN for most modern cars - this is in-depended of the dongle and the ECU. The reason they are not compatible is they built their own protocol - just like GoPoint did. Doing something like this has an financial (or legal) impact, but actually not on the functionality you *can* provide. For extended (non standard) functionality it is possible to switch to a bus specific protocol (especially CAN) and request what ever you want - as long as you have your hands on the ECU firmware. There is certainly another impact from using your own protocol: using one makes sure you decide who can communicate - and who can not.

- Harry

Sean@APR · Post by **Sean@APR** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 6:19 pm

ECUs with our flashes still support all the OBD pids and should work fine with any other dongle.

Harry wrote:As they claim it is compatible to older iPhone they need to have their dongle Apple certified too - but I do not see any reference to Mfi (Made for iPhone)...

The APR dongle is MFI certified. We don't make a big deal of it, but it is.

As they are able to optimize communication between their own dongle and ECU, systems like this open an interesting range of additional features (both values and update speeds). They downside is, this extensions are always completely proprietary.

Yes on all counts

On the other hand I'd assume any standard OBD dongle (including the GoPoints) should be able to receive standard PIDs from the APR.

Yes

There are tons of ECUs available in the market and the APR is just another one. They will interface to whatever car bus is used in your Gold R - which kind of standardizes access to values used by LapTimer. Again, please consider contacting GoPoint, they know a lot more about car bus hardware topics than I do

<shameless plug>Yes, but ours is better!</shameless plug>

radioguy1 · Post by **radioguy1** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:48 pm

Does anyone know if the BT1 is still on the market? Gopoint seems to have been acquired by some other company. Their website no longer allows buying products. Amazon says they don't know if the product will ever be available again. Any information?