Has anyone used this tool? http://www.car-pal.net/products.htm

I'm particularly interested in the bluetooth dongle to use with my Windows Mobile phone. Looks cool. Thoughts?

 

seems neat. i wonder what the range is with it, like if you can be in your garage away from the car, and still be on the laptop useing it.

that would be neat.

 

Site says it's BT Class 1; 300 ft, so I guess in theory it would work. I don't know what you'd want to view while not in the car, but I think the OBD port stays active even when the car's off (someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

You're wrong. Not to mention it's $240. It's cool and all but there are much better tools...
http://www.scanguage.com/

 

I don't think you'd want to leave it plugged in all the time anyway, the OBD port has power to it all the time which means a nice dead battery.

 

it would be nice to have it so you could be inside reading codes, and finding out what you need, parts, service ect..... but totally a waste. how many times are we going to need it? i would just go with a actual scan tool, or a laptop dyno set up that uses a usb cable into the obdll port.

 

It stays powered...that's what I meant. I like the scanguage too, but why does it have to look like such a POS? I wouldn't want that monstrosity mounted anywhere in my car, but I want the realtime info. It would be ok to clear codes and use occasionally, but it's so fugly!
I think it would benefit anyone who already has one of these PDAs or a laptop and wants a wireless solution. Oh, and I don't think the point is to use it remotely, just that there are no wires to run, and works with devices a lot of us already have.

(All that being said, I'll probably end up with the scanguage anyway for the cost savings and similar functionality.)

 

Check this one out!
http://www.dashhawk.com/

 

my scangauge2 is always plugged in, and gets power from the odb2 port, and it powers off when the car is off. so I'm assuming it's only powered on when the pcm is active. It would be useless to be active when the car is off and has nothing to read.

 

I have one of these and its great. You can even hook it up via USB to your laptop to save all the data. I believe its one of the most asthetically pleasing device in its category.

 

dashawk looks better than the scangauge, I wouldn't want a datalogger that I couldn't log to PC.

 

the CAN scanners are schitzo enough without adding Bluetooth to the mix