Harry's GPS Suite Forum

I am having a couple of issues with HLT recognizing/interpreting OBDII data from some of my vehicles. They are as follows:

1. HLT recognizes throttle position data perfectly from my 2007 Ford Expedition, but not at all from my 2005 BMW M3 and only intermittently from my 2005 BMW X3 (however for all intents and purposes the two BMWs have the same issue). The only thing I can think is that Ford and BMW process this particular OBD data (throttle position) slightly different. I I think this is also related to how some car manufacturers provide more data via the OBDII port than others In this case, the Ford provides 40 PIDs while BMW only provides 20 - but both provide Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) data via the OBD port. The only data I can provide to help troubleshoot this problem is the TPS PID for the Ford was 0111 [86ms] while the TPS PID for the BMWs were 0111 [386ms]. I am assuming that PID 0111 is the generic PID for TPS. However, the difference in access times leads me to believe that HLT is interpreting the data from the two vehicles differently, and is thus the reason why it works with the Ford and not with the BMWs

This is not the first time I have seen this issue with TPS from BMW since when I connect either vehicle to my Mac running OBD software, the TPS signal is just fine from the Ford, but not from the BMWs. However, I did have older PC software and an even older BT OBDII unit (circa 2006 and no longer supported/in production) that had no issues showing TPS data from the BMW M3. This leads me to believe that the software was programmed to specifically recognize the BMW data (among other car manufacturers) but I am not a programmer so I can't confirm.

So I guess my question regarding this issue is, can the software be "tweaked" to recognize OBDII data (in this case TPS data) from different car manufacturers (in this case a 2005 BMW)?

2. When I tried to add new vehicles to HLT, the VIN did not link to the vehicle. The first car I added was the BMW M3 and when connected to my OBDII device a pop up screen came up asking me if I wanted to link the OBD data to the current vehicle (which was the BMW M3). I said yes, and the VIN was automatically added to the profile for the BMW M3, which was the vehicle selected at the time. I tried to do the same thing with the Ford Expedition and the BMW X3 (getting the same pop up window request) but when I hit 'yes' the VIN was never linked to either of the two vehicle profiles. I am not sure what I did wrong here since it seemed to be pretty self explanatory.

Hi,

1. The milliseconds named are the time the car's bus plus OBD dongle require to come back when LT requests a certain PID. 386ms is a bad value and it blocks all other request while waiting for it. LapTimer v16 will have a tweak to select one of the other throttle PIDs - especially for BMWs.

2. The VIN is requested only once. Changing the car while LapTimer is running is kind of a unsupported use case. To get that working. Please stop LapTimer (kill using the task bar) and start it again. In addition, the VIN is not delivered by every car, so there are two potential reasons if LT does not ask or auto-switch.

- Harry

Harry wrote:Hi,

1. The milliseconds named are the time the car's bus plus OBD dongle require to come back when LT requests a certain PID. 386ms is a bad value and it blocks all other request while waiting for it. LapTimer v16 will have a tweak to select one of the other throttle PIDs - especially for BMWs.

2. The VIN is requested only once. Changing the car while LapTimer is running is kind of a unsupported use case. To get that working. Please stop LapTimer (kill using the task bar) and start it again. In addition, the VIN is not delivered by every car, so there are two potential reasons if LT does not ask or auto-switch.

- Harry

Great! After my successful road test w/video using my new OBDII BT module in my Ford Expedition (RPM, TPS and gear selection worked perfectly), it was a little disappointing when TPS did not work in the BMW M3. I don't think my Ford SUV would be as much fun at the track, even with HLT to document it .

Regarding item 1, do you happen to know the other TPS PIDs for BMWs? I actually remember seeing multiple TPS PIDs for my Ford (labeled A thru D, IIRC) and wondered why there were so many (made me think my Ford had multiple TPSs in the car). I don't remember seeing additional TPS PIDs for the BMW. But there were some PIDs in the list from the BMW that were not labeled (compared to the Ford where all the PIDs were labeled). I know you don't have a release date set for beta testers of v16 yet, but since I have a vested interest in getting this working as a BMW driver, I may be able to help (I have one track event this weekend and plan on another one in either Jul or Aug).

Regarding item 2, I was pretty sure I did kill HLT prior to attempting to link to the other vehicles. As I said, each time I tried to link the VIN to the vehicle, I did get the pop-up window asking me if I wanted to link the VIN to the current vehicle (one from BMW M GmbH for the M3, one from BMW for the X3 and one from Ford for the Expedition). But I will give it another try for each.

HLT v16 will support PIDs 0x0147 to 0x014B Don't ask me what all of this is about. LapTimer checks which PIDs are available on your car and will fall back to TPS in case the selected PID is not available.

On the VIN topic: once you have your VIN stored in your vehicle data, LT will not ask for assignment any more. Instead, it switches to the vehicles that has the detected VIN.

- Harry

I tried to get the VIN to link with different vehicles and here was the result...

1. I uninstalled/reinstalled HLT. Then entered data for one vehicle, in this case the BMW X3.

2. When HLT connected to the car, it asked if I wanted to link the VIN to the currently selected vehicle, I hit yes.

3. HLT then took me to another screen to select which vehicle to link the VIN to. In this case, there were two cars that were entered: BMW X3 and BMW M3.

4. I chose BMW X3 and the VIN was linked to the BMW X3.

5. I shut down HLT (killed it as you describe above) and attempted to get the VIN to pair with my Ford Expedition (I entered the data for the Expedition before attempting to pair)

6. On multiple occasions after linking with the Ford, HLT did not ask me to link the VIN. On the few times it did ask me to link the VIN, HLT did not bring me to the screen to select which vehicle to link the VIN to, as it did for the BMW X3.

7. Prior to each attempt to link the VIN with the Ford, I "killed" HLT, "resprung" my device (it is jailbroken) or rebooted my device (or some combination of the three) with no success.

Based on my results I can only conclude that HLT will perform the VIN linking procedure properly only with the first vehicle that you link with HLT via OBD following a fresh install of HLT. Other than that, I am not sure what else I can do to try to get the VIN to link to the 2nd, 3rd, etc vehicle in HLT.

I had a look into the code. There is probably a dependency which view is currently active and the vehicle selection coming up or not. So please test the following: kill LT and start it again; select one of the first four tabs (do NOT select any view 'behind' the More tab); connect the OBD to your Ford. Do you get the selection now? As written before, LT will definitely ask only once while running, so you really need to kill the app ahead of this test.

- Harry

Harry wrote:I had a look into the code. There is probably a dependency which view is currently active and the vehicle selection coming up or not. So please test the following: kill LT and start it again; select one of the first four tabs (do NOT select any view 'behind' the More tab); connect the OBD to your Ford. Do you get the selection now? As written before, LT will definitely ask only once while running, so you really need to kill the app ahead of this test.

- Harry

I tried the above procedure multiple times but I could not get it to work, killing HLT each time and even rebooting the iPhone a couple of times. The initial popup screen that asks if you want to link the data never even came up during any of my attempts either. Not sure what I can do now to get the VIN associated with the vehicle. On a positive note, on each attempt the vehicle and HLT linked perfectly, streaming all other OBDII data.

Has your Ford a VIN defined already?

Yes, it does. When I use the Rev 2 Lite OBDII app with my iPhone the VIN for the Ford (and the two BMWs) comes up automatically after it first connects to the car without issue. The VIN also comes up (for all of the vehicles) when I use some other OBDII software with my Mac and the same OBDII Bluetooth unit.

The one thing that bothered me the most when I tried to get it to work yesterday was the fact that I could not even get the first pop-up window to display anymore, no matter how many times I "killed" HLT or even resprung/rebooted the phone (and I can't explain why). One other thing I can try is to completely uninstall/reinstall HLT and then add the Ford as my first vehicle. So far that has been the most consistent part of my testing.

My question has been if the VIN of your Ford is part of the Ford's vehicle definition already. In this case, LT will certainly not ask again.

Harry