[bwilson4web]

Hi,

A year ago come Friday, I bought AutoEnginuity, $495. Yesterday, I used the one year, default coverage to upgrade to 9.1.1 so I have a single, OBD, recording monitor that works for both our NHW11 (2003) and ZVW30 (2010). The upgrade was painless other than I had to 'cut-and-paste' the key from the email as typing didn't seem to work.

NHW11

This provides extensive data from at least six major ECUs: engine, hybrid, battery, brake, airbag, and body. However, it only reports the data from one ECU at a time which limits the ability to combine fields from different ECUs for engineering studies. Also, preliminary data suggests a problem with MG1 torque reading may still be there.

ZVW30

It reports 12 ECUs but they do not include the engine, hybrid, nor battery ECUs. There is an 'enhanced powertrain' that has many of these fields but lacks any traction battery, inverter, or MG1/MG2 data (see attached spreadsheet.)

Summary

I'm more tolerant of AutoEnginuity than thrilled with it. For maintenance work, it looks to be OK but for engineering studies, it is weak. We have two Prius models so the $495 price is split between the two, an acceptable solution. The only alternative is 'TechStream Lite' but at $1,200-1,500, this is a little too rich for my tastes. Worse, it also looks like TechStream is not designed for multiple ECU operation needed for engineering studies but at least the data would be trustable.

The ScanGauge II has some programmable XGAUGEs so it could support both models but reprogramming the XGAUGEs makes this time consuming. Worse, ScanGauge II has no data recording capability and only displays four data fields. At least they can be from different ECUs.

So we're still stuck with flawed tools but this is better than no tool at all!

Bob Wilson

[jdenenberg]

Bob,

Have you looked at the Rennacs OBD2 system from New Zealand? I've sent them a query about Prius coverage. It is $200 plus $69 per SW module (the first one is free). They do say "Satisfaction Guaranteed" money returned.

JeffD

ps: your link doesn't open.

[bwilson4web]

jdenenberg said:

. . .
Have you looked at the Rennacs OBD2 system from New Zealand? I've sent them a query about Prius coverage. It is $200 plus $69 per SW module (the first one is free). They do say "Satisfaction Guaranteed" money returned.
. . .

Thanks!

I checked their PDF list of supported vehicles and it does not show the Prius. But I found another web page that listed the Prius. I'll send a note and ask if the Prius just hasn't been added.

As for the link, it was an uploaded file. I'll pass your note to Jason.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

[Jason]

Interesting. No idea what's going on, there.

[HighDesertHybrids]

We have AutoEnginuity + Toyota as well as Mongoose MFC + TechStream (i.e. TISLite). We know of another option, the Tactrix OpenPort, and have wondered if anyone out there has tried it with a two day Professional Diag subscription to Techstream, particularly whether or not the Tactrix remains fully functional with Techstream after the subscription expires.

The AutoEnginuity product does a good job with NWH20 (Gen II, 2004-2009). It has the ability to read all sensors that we have ever looked at, most importantly battery block voltages. It can actuate most devices as well. We are contemplating buying the Honda add-on to see how it does there on the older Insights and Civic hybrids. Any info there would be appreciated.

[bwilson4web]

Hi,

HighDesertHybrids said:

We have AutoEnginuity + Toyota as well as Mongoose MFC + TechStream (i.e. TISLite). We know of another option, the Tactrix OpenPort, and have wondered if anyone out there has tried it with a two day Professional Diag subscription to Techstream, particularly whether or not the Tactrix remains fully functional with Techstream after the subscription expires.

The AutoEnginuity product does a good job with NWH20 (Gen II, 2004-2009). It has the ability to read all sensors that we have ever looked at, most importantly battery block voltages. It can actuate most devices as well. We are contemplating buying the Honda add-on to see how it does there on the older Insights and Civic hybrids. Any info there would be appreciated.

• I've seen notes about the "Mongoose MFC + TechStream" but there may be a copyright/licensing issue with the TechStream. Still, I'm tempted.
• Tactrix OpenPort seem more Subaru and tuning oriented . . . not that there is anything wrong with that. I just didn't see much about Toyota and/or Prius.
• AutoEnginuity is usable but one of the critical fields I'm interested in, MG1 torque, still looks like a psuedo-random number generator. Very irritating. Still, I am using it for my oil tests.

So tell me, you have a shop that also does hybrids? The reason I ask is the number of independent, hybrid shops remains pitifully small. Every now and then I come across someone who needs a traction battery or other major work for their older Prius. I send them pointers to folks whom I know and trust to do good work but that doesn't mean I know everyone.

Do you have a URL for your shop? Where are you located? Do you like working on hybrids, especially the Prius?

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

[jdenenberg]

Bob,

They are: Scott & Jennie Eilerts 2866 Cooks Road Santa Fe, NM 87507.

and do "Engineer" plug-in installs

JeffD

[HighDesertHybrids]

That's us, but we no longer install Enginer kits, and have asked to be removed from their website. We do rebuild traction batteries. Demand is high for Honda, but we will be happy to take care of the rare Prius with a problem. We just recently moved into the Cooks Road space and are in the process of getting everything set up. Hybrids are the focus, particularly traction batteries and electronic diagnostics, but we do conventional repair work for friends and family. It is getting harder to find time to experiment and make modifications. Website has been reserved at godaddy and is under development.

Regarding Tactrix and Mongoose. The Mongoose MFC VIM comes as part of the Techstream Lite package. What is the question re: copyright? Mongoose + Techstream is the gold standard, but it still leaves something to be desired, being geared towards solving a particular diagnostic problem, rather than generalized data collection across multiple ECUs. Data collection is what you are after Bob? Tactrix is possibly a good route for DIY, if it is possible to use with with Techstream on a weekend Pro subscription download. Now, will Tactrix + Techstream work on non-CAN Toyotas? That's a really good question.

Scott & Jennie

[bwilson4web]

HighDesertHybrids said:

That's us, but we no longer install Enginer kits, and have asked to be removed from their website. We do rebuild traction batteries. Demand is high for Honda, but we will be happy to take care of the rare Prius with a problem. We just recently moved into the Cooks Road space and are in the process of getting everything set up. Hybrids are the focus, particularly traction batteries and electronic diagnostics, but we do conventional repair work for friends and family. It is getting harder to find time to experiment and make modifications. Website has been reserved at godaddy and is under development.

Great! The traction battery receives the greatest amount of press but there are latent issues with accelerator pedal encoder (2001s), steering encoder, and exceptionally rare, transaxle failure. I'm also been looking at how to adapt the ZVW30 inverter pump for NHW11 service but nothing to publish, yet.

HighDesertHybrids said:

Regarding Tactrix and Mongoose. The Mongoose MFC VIM comes as part of the Techstream Lite package. What is the question re: copyright? Mongoose + Techstream is the gold standard, but it still leaves something to be desired, being geared towards solving a particular diagnostic problem, rather than generalized data collection across multiple ECUs. Data collection is what you are after Bob? Tactrix is possibly a good route for DIY, if it is possible to use with with Techstream on a weekend Pro subscription download. Now, will Tactrix + Techstream work on non-CAN Toyotas? That's a really good question.

The NHW11 uses ISO-9141, KWP2000, and apparently there are two ways to initialize communications, per ECU and a 5 BAUD, bus-wide initialization. Thereafter, queries to the ECUs prevent the loss of initialization. This is apparently the key that ScanGauge and the Graham mini-scanner use to read data from different ECUs as part of one stream. Sad to say, the AutoEnginuity and I suspect TechStreams use the per ECU method. So they do data from one ECU at time ... darn it.

I have an ELM 323 and about six weeks ago, I started on some Perl script to operate it. My plan is to use Scangauge XGAUGE definitions, comma delimited hex, to code the NHW11 data retrieval. But I have no idea how to approach the CANbus based systems like my wife's ZVW30. Worse, the AutoEnginuity, 9.1.1 does not report ZVW30 values, traction battery and MG1/MG2 metrics. I may have to go primitive sensors to read their data but for now, I don't see there is much to gain.

If you haven't guessed, I like to have several projects running in parallel.

Bob Wilson

[Jay Horak]

The AutoEnginuity design does not provide for multiple ECMs to report in at the same time as the tool was designed for diagnotics only. Techstream and all factory tools work this way and our tools are designed to replace the factor tools.

Coverage for the 01 - 09 should not be "close", it should be exact. We license the coverage from Toyota and we have implemented all the controllers, bidirectionals, and the system tests. We should be a direct replacement for the Techstream. I have a MasterTech and a Techstream and I amreally impressed with what we did.

The 10-11MY hybrid controller Prius actually is documented by us as being not supported in the current release. That is to say we have don't have the Hybrid ECU. There isn't two controllers like previous generations--they have one now. You state the engine isn't there but the enhanced powertrain is. They are the same thing. And, no, Toyota did not put any battery sensors (PIDs) in the powertrain. We do actually have the final controller in beta and have for some time. We do have an open issue with Toyota not correctly supporting consecutive CAN messages correctly and that's pending a formal answer. Right now the Techstream has "work around" they are using and we'd prefer it to be fixed instead. This issue ONLY affects the four hybrid models 10MY+. We have extensively commented our issue for Toyota and have had cntact with their engineering. I suspect it will be resolved soon.

I guess I am at a loss with your MG1 Invertor reporting "random numbers". Can you send me more on this?

I hope that helps.

Jay Horak