Product Report - DashDynoSPD

[civdiv99]

Dunno if product reports are a desired feature here or not, but after reading Patrick-Irish's post about his frustrations with carsoft, I thought maybe I'd throw this out there.

Around mid-Nov I bought a "DashDyno" from OBD II Scan Tool, Performance Meter & Data Logger | Auterra

I bought the "ProPack" which is kinda amusing since it just means it comes with mount and cables. I think I paid $339. Fortunately the website has buttloads of pictures and screenshots and so forth, thus saving me from photo-duty. The screenshots and features shown are accurate in my experience. NOTE: This is not billed as (and it isn't) a programmer, and it doesn't delve into BMW specific items (like SRS for example). It's your general OBD-II display device. It has real time output, works with codes, including pending codes, freeze frame, etc. It has a variety of screens. It data logs, it allows you to use it as a portable item or as a pass-through to your laptop. You can set it up to automatically log your chosen parameters, and you can replay those parameters in a variety of ways. So if you want to log 10 parameters for example, you can then work with the data on a computer using 1, 2, or however many on a graph or displayed in other ways. Just check out the screenshots on the web page.

I already have a Garmin eTrex GPS, so another feature that caught my attention was the ability of the unit to incorporate GPS using Google Earth in your playback - so you can not only work with various recorded parameters, but you can do so in conjunction with a side-by-side Google Earth screen showing your position, thus you can see WHERE you were when those conditions were recorded, not just WHEN you were. Those of us born with pocket protectors already attached find shit like that pretty cool. I hesitate to attach the company's .jpg shots even though I'm not slammin' them, so you can see what I am talking about here:

GPS Data Logger - Vehicle Position and Sensor Playback with Google Earth

Also does the usual virtual dyno, acceleration, horsepower & torque curves, etc. Comes with a database of auto specs to configure the virtual dyno, and whaddya know, the specifics for the E53 4.4i are included.

PLUS, it also has some features I thought were pretty cool and are why I went with this particular product. The biggest thing I like about this is the programmable auxiliary ports. In other words, you have a number of ports, analog and digital, that can be configured to display (in your chosen units) data that may not otherwise be availabe or may not otherwise be in a particular format. Example - those of you who are all high-speed, low-drag may recall I posted a blurb about 3 or 4 weeks ago regarding tapping into your TCM and reading the trans temp. If you have something that'll already do that, well okay then. But in my case, I can use the trans temp sensor voltages from the TCM as an aux input, label it, and program the required conversion formula (recall I included a conversion table in that post) and easy-peasy now I can incorporate transmission temperature into my data log. And I still have a number of aux inputs avail for other stuff. Intermittant problem in some area? You can tie into a given voltage or other output and monitor it along with whatever other parameters I have designated and then playback on a PC and freeze - or zoom in - or expand the scales - you get the idea. Read the website for the variety of features, and they have the owners manual avail for anyone to download, both for the device itself and for the Win software. and you can export your data in a variety of formats to work with it in Excel, etc. Most of us recognize that feature is very powerful in that it greatly expands the ways you can graph or otherwise filter or work with a large amount of data.

Tho other thing you can do with the data, whether from aux ports or regular data stream, is configure alarms, and not only that, you can configure the aux port to OUTPUT your desired signal, voltage, switch (logic) based on a heirarchy of present parameters. Think about that. If certain pre-defined by you conditions exist, you can have this "data logger" trigger a separate action AND you can program the multi-colored LEDs on the front panel to tell you based on whatever you programmed the conditions you specified. Obviously you have to design whatever you want to occur, but that is also the beauty of the flexibility. The book gives an example using a wide-band oxy sensor. Instead of buying a wide-band kit, you can configure the DashDyno to utilize the wide-band sensor output as an aux input and display information digitally, as a graph, whatever, AND perform a given action as a result. Yeah, I'm just geeky enough to like that stuff. I have used it on my X5, a 2011 Camaro, a 2005 Tundra, a 2002 911 twin turbo, and I'd guess some other stuff with no issues. Crap, I DO sound like a commercial.

And - it has a 2 channel o'scope feature so you can display waveforms related to speed sensors from the trans, etc. Damn, I'm just all covered in "geek" over here, aren't I?

Well, anyway, I'm just a random dude and xoutpost forum user, no ties to the company, but for the benefit of the group, my experience has been quite positive for what I bought this unit to do. It has thus far been seamless in software and hardware functionality and has followed the representations on the website without variance. I have asked them 2 emailed questions since orig purchase, both times receiving reply within a coupla hours or less along with offers to call, etc. if need additional help or discussion.

civdiv99