Reviewed: Garmin ecoRoute HD

[ESL]

Interestingly, the Eco Route HD web page, does not list any Renaults as being compatible with the device - you may be onto something there.

I wonder if Mike has a Renault?

[mikealder]

No I wouldn't buy French as I prefer Swedish, the car I use is a Volvo V70 2,5L Petrol (and yes it does know how to drink petrol at an alarming rate) - Mike

[PhilHornby]

[PhilHornby]

[PhilHornby]

[Chuffer4]

I completely agree that vehicle specific functions such as ABS, Air Bags and the like are not covered by the general ODB standards and yes you will always need a dealer to access these functions, and I never said it would, we are discussing the Garmin ecoRoute average fuel data readouts.

My first comments were about these fuel figures, which has also been discussed above by ESL, (who also could not get fuel related info) that they are always a calculated (guess) figure based on the air flow and throttle setting and pressure in the air box.
As a consequence of owning the interface and software for which my main purpose was to read standard and pending ( service 07 ) error codes, which it should but did not, I studied all of the other data available.
In my case it appears that the ODB standard code for RPM, engine load and manifold pressure are used more than once ( there are two sensors, one on the engine ECU and one on the transmission ECU and therefore 2 simultaneous readings ) as such the RPM and pressure readings fluctuate from say 10 to 80 constantly ( readings from each sensors ) and so making any meaningful MPG and averages completely imposable.
So the above device will not work satisfactorily on my car and probably not in some others as well because it's not compliant !.

Incidentally, if Mikes Volvo is Auto it probably has the same Honda gearbox as my Renault.

Darren stated........
In Europe, all petrol engined cars manufactured since 2001 have had to comply with the OBD-II standard.

Clearly not true as confirmed by the SAE J2012 workgroup chairman, I only wanted to make people aware before spending £75 there are problems because all cars do not HAVE to be completely ODB2 compliant and there is no law that says it should, they were merely invited to comply.

Technical Quote on my Renault.......

The most obvious failure is Service 07 - Pending DTCs. This vehicle always returns a response of $7F, $07, $11 which is a service not supported response for service 07. Any $7F response is known as a negative response, the remaining two bytes provide the details. As all OBDII compliant vehicles are required to support service 07, this vehicle therefore fails OBDII compliance.

It also responds with similar responses to services 06, 08 and 09.

It appears to support both engine and transmission ECUs, but invariably responses from the transmission ECU are either negative responses or responses that vary markedly from the same pid value from the engine ECU. The most obvious example being pid 0x04 Engine Load.

End

[PhilHornby]

[Chuffer4]

note to PhilHornby

I am not disputing what you have said but I think you are missing my point.

Yes vehicles do have to have on board diagnostics, one of it's main functions is to ensure that the emissions are within the stated levels agreed at evaluation time and are shown on the registration document and are tested for during an MOT by stuffing a sensor up the exhaust pipe and measuring the gases present, not by connecting anything to the ODB socket, when running if the on board diagnostics detect a condition that it cannot adjust it's systems to keep the emissions within the stated levels a warning lamp must be displayed with " stop engine" or "service" Etc, all the other stuff like ABS is just a bonus.

What you have pointed to only confirms that a diagnostic system MUST be onboard to control emissions.

The point I am doing my best to make clear is that they do not all have to use the same method of retrieving the information to a external display device and they are not forced by law to do so, therefore it is possible, and it has been confirmed by ESL and mikealder in this post, that external data capture devices largely to enable a repair to the ignition system timing, air flow and fuel mixture etc will not work every time on all vehicles, and the Garmin ecRoute is making use of this data.

IF the vehicle is OBD11 compliant by the choice of the manufacturer, of course it will and the dealer will always have the correct equipment to carry out the task.

Because I was also given to understand initially that all vehicles HAD to be totally compliant and just thinking about emissions control, I was ready to take Renault to court because mine clearly is not, Renault even wrote to me stating I should "not connect anything to the ODB socket as this could cause need for reprogramming in the future". ( copies available on request. )

So, I can only quote again ...............

My name is Keith Armitage and I am the SAE J2012 workgroup chairman. The ISO equivalent standard is 15031-6. Both standards document industry agreements for diagnostic trouble codes. Each vehicle manufacturer makes their own decisions for which standards or portions of standards to apply to their vehicles.

This is the group that wrote the standard http://standards.sae.org/j2012_200204 which says vehicles MUST report errors, it does not say who should be able to read them other than the vehicle it's self, so if he says the manufacturer can choose .......... surely he must be correct !.

Note under Scope is says "Recommended Practice", there is a misconception that all vehicles must be totally compliant that I am attempting to rectify.

[MaFt]

wow, all this debate to simply say that this:

[BigPerk]

[Horatio]

[Chuffer4]

Horatio

Been there done that, I first had a low cost clone wired interface and used it with some free and some decent software and got exactly as you did, fortunately I was able to return the interface as faulty and bought the proper item .............. and got exactly the same results.

I had spent many hours on the problem with my car and eventually found a freelance auto electrician who was ex Renault dealership and when discussing my issues hoping he would attempt a fix or at least have a look he said "it's no good me connecting to your car because Renault do their own thing with ODB and I will not be able to read anything of any use from it.".

He told me he had around £17000.00 worth of diagnostic kit updated regularly at considerable expense and Renault was just one of the manufactures that he was unable to service, so in that respect my £170.00 worth was no worse than his.

I have tested my kit on several friends cars, a Honda and Citroen and it worked perfectly but on a Landrover it did not work at all.

You are defiantly on a non-starter with your Renaults so I still can't fully agree with MaFt's latest comments that vehicles need to be compliant in any way

[MaFt]

[MaFt]

[Andy_P]

"Standards are wonderful things, that's why we have so many of them"


(and 'cos I'm bored watching all my new camera warnings batch converting to oggs here's a couple of totally off-topic examples from the audio industry:
1. When stereo first came along, the BBC decided to identify the left and right channels with RED for LEFT and GREEN for RIGHT (like the lights for port and starboard on a boat).
Then the Japanese hi-fi industry decided to mark all their stereo connections (such as phono plugs) with RED for RIGHT

2. The standard connector for balanced microphones etc is a three pin XLR.
Pin 1 is the earth and Europe decided on pin 2 'hot' and pin 3 'cold'.

Of course the Americans decided to do it the other way round, and stuck with it for years until they were finally forced to swap. )
_________________
"Settling in nicely" ;-)

We see you’re using an ad-blocker. We’re fine with that and won’t stop you visiting the site.
Have you considered making a donation towards website running costs?.
Or you could disable your ad-blocker for this site. We think you’ll find our adverts are not overbearing!