I’ve posted this also in the Scantool.net forum the maker of OBDLink bluetooth module. This is driving me crazy. When I hook my US bought 1997 Mercedes Benz SL320 through the computer via the USB cable everything works absolutely perfect. When I try to use the bluetooth with Torque Pro it will pair with the Droid x but will not connect. Watching the status LED it will change from green to yellow and red (I think, I did this yesterday) and keeps trying to connect but won’t do it. Does anyone have a clue what’s going on.

Quote from admin on October 20, 2011
Hi!

Make sure your computer is *fully powered down*. And then unplug and replug the adapter into the socket to drop any existing bluetooth connections.

Laptops (especially running windows) can try to connect to the OBD adapter even when the OBD software is not running. Once something has connected to the adapter, it will then stop listening for other devices connecting (as it can only connect to one device at a time)

In the Torque app, make sure you have told it (in the settings) which bluetooth OBD adapter to use (make sure you haven’t accidentally selected a handsfree device instead).

Also check the vehicle profile and ensure that you haven’t also told that profile to connect to a specific adapter (which isn’t the scantool one).

These are the usual culprits of not being able to connect to the adapter

Ian

Thank you for your response. It works perfect when connected to the laptop via the usb cable. Not sure I was clear on this. When unhooking from the laptop and disconnecting the usb cable and try to connect via bluetooth that is when it tries to connect, but keeps disconnecting and does the red,yellow and green rotation on the status LED. I did check the things that you mentioned and I think I did not have the correct bluetooth device selected. That may do it by itself, but it’s been a long day, so it will wait till tomorrow. Again thank you for your advice and time.

Marty

Quote from admin on October 21, 2011
Okay, I misread the OP

Can you un-pair any other bluetooth device that is on the phone (remove all pairings apart from the scantool device, then reboot the phone).

After rebooting the phone, try Torque again. Hopefully it will connect without issue and stay connected.
If it does, then you have one of the android devices that doesn’t work too well with multiple bluetooth connections (some devices work okay, some don’t due to bugs in the bluetooth drivers) – it might be worth seeing if there is a firmware/rom update available for your phone

Yep I unpaired all devices except for the OBDLink bluetooth device. I’ll be out in the workshop trying this again this afternoon. I will reboot the phone, but believe I did that already a couple times. Since it’s raining this whole weekend, I’ll have a lot of time to get this to work. This is on a current updated firmware for the Droid X phone. The OBDLink was manufactured this month on the 11th. Current firmware revision of 2.7. I picked this combination per numerous threads in different forums, Torque developer and the OBDLink company, all saying the 2 should work the best of other combination’s. Danged if you do and danged if you don’t.:-(

Quote from admin on October 21, 2011
Yep, I’m the developer, and it should be working for you – that’s a known good combination!

This will send some debugs to me and I’ll have a look to see what is going on when the app connects to the adapter for you.

Piemmm I will do what you said. I have no other bluetooth devises present just the adapter. I’ll do the debugging thing and hopefully that will point things out where the problem is. I’ll be doing it tomorrow.

Prior to getting Piemmm’s advise above
I tried everything that was suggested by numerous people, did everything that I could think of and no luck. What bugs me is that it works on my laptop with a USB cable. Absolutely no problems and was exchanging lots of info at a very fast rate. Too bad I don’t have room for a netbook or something. Just to clarify what I’m seeing on the LED status indicator. It will glow yellow, then green and then red. Watching the status page on the Torque program and it coincides with the status LED. Yellow it shows it trying to connect with the phone. Green shows it’s connected with the phone then red shows a disconnect from the phone. Keeps doing this at about 2-3 seconds on each LED and then cycles again, again…. well you get the idea. I’m beginning to think there is something wrong with the bluetooth portion of the adapter. I have no other bluetooth devices installed. I’m going to try the adapter on my wife’s car before coming to any conclusions even if I’m able to do that then. Hope this may mean something to someone out there. Thanks for reading this mini-novel. ???

This evening I tried to hook it up to my wife’s 2002 Infiniti QX4 and it does the exact same thing as in my 1997 Mercedes SL320. By the way I checked in the engine bay near where Mercedes puts their round 36 pin ECU connector and I found a manufacturers stamp that says in fact it is OBDII compliant. I was glad to confirm this. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not the OBDLink bluetooth adapter that is the problem. Hopefully someone will advise me what to do with the adapter or help me figure out how to make it work.

It’s not common on 2.3.3 (I use that version on my nexus S and Galaxy S2 when testing – so unless you have more than 2 bluetooth connections at the same time, you should be fine)

The debug will show us what is going on though

Hi

Got the debug, thanks!

Here’s a snippet:

Connected to OBD interface, configuring
Sending reset sequence
1319740195698 {-- ATZ
1319740202870 {-- ATE0
1319740202872 *** class java.io.IOException:Software caused connection abort ***

Basically the adapter is responding over bluetooth, but is then closing the connection – this could be one of thtree things causing the issue:

* The android handset is having trouble communicating over bluetooth – a couple of handsets have this issue but it is usually quite difficult to trigger (usually, you have multiple bluetooth connections, one of them breaks the bluetooth stack then you have to reboot the phone to get things to work properly again). Removing the bluetooth pairings for other devices, then *rebooting* the phone and trying again with just the OBD2 device paired (and no other bluetooth enabled software running) usually provides a clean test and can rule this out.

or

* The Roving Networks ‘bluetooth module’ inside the adapter is faulty

or

* The bluetooth module isn’t fully inserted into it’s carrier on the PCB (if you drop or knock the adapter hard enough, it can sometimes dislodge the bluetooth adapter fully or partially out of the socket it sits in, which may cause this behaviour).

Basically, we need to check the bluetooth module in the adapter is working correctly, so you will need to connect over bluetooth from something like a laptop temporarily to check the adapter is functioning correctly. If not, then you know it’s an adapter problem. If it does work (using bluetooth), then we know to look at the android device.

Sorry I haven’t got back to you sooner. I was unable to keep a connection to my laptop. It would connect at first and if I didn’t touch anything else it would stay connected. If I tried to change to different area’s of Torque it would do it’s disconnection dance. I recorded some debug lines for you. Again if hooked back up on the USB cable everything worked great. Here are the debug lines:

I JUST REALIZED THAT THE 2 ATTEMPTS TO CONNECT TO MY LAPTOP WAS WITH THE PROGRAM “OBDwiz” PROGRAM THAT CAME WITH THE ADAPTER. DOES THIS MAKE THE INFO USELESS. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THERE IS A WAY TO USE “TORQUE” ON THE LAPTOP IF NEEDED.

This is the bluetooth attempt to my laptop:

Version: 2.11.2.217
Product: OBDwiz

Opening communications: COM6, 115200
Port Open
Flushing communications buffer
?: []
ATZ: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
Command timed out
Opening communications: COM6, 115200
Port Open
Flushing communications buffer
?: []
ATZ: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
Command timed out
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The write timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The write timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The write timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The write timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
ATI: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.

And just for the heck of it, this is when it successfully hooks up with my laptop via USB:

Version: 2.11.2.217
Product: OBDwiz

Opening communications: COM6, 115200
Port Open
Flushing communications buffer
?: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
Command timed out
Opening communications: COM6, 115200
Port Open
Flushing communications buffer
?: [->Timeout]
System.TimeoutException – The operation has timed out.
Command timed out

Above was when I was switching the software over from bluetooth to USB. Below is a few seconds sample when it connected to the adapter by USB

ELM327 v1.3a]
Interface connected
ATE0: [ATE0
OK]
ATL0: [OK]
STI: [STN1100 v2.2.2]
ATRV: [11.7V]

Trying Protocol: SAE J1850 PWM (41.6 Kbaud)
ATSP 1: [OK]
01 00: [NO DATA]

Trying Protocol: SAE J1850 VPW (10.4 Kbaud)
ATSP 2: [OK]
01 00: [NO DATA]

Trying Protocol: ISO 9141-2 (5 baud init, 10.4 Kbaud)
ATSP 3: [OK]
01 00: [BUS INIT: …OK
41 00 BE 3F F8 00 ]
Protocol detected: ISO 9141-2 (5 baud init, 10.4 Kbaud)

ATH1: [OK]
01 00: [48 6B 01 41 00 BE 3F F8 00 EA ]
Detected PIDs:
ECU: 01
0x00 – SupportedPIDs0
0x01 – MonitorStatus
0x03 – FuelSystemStatus
0x04 – EngineLoad
0x05 – EngineCoolantTemp
0x06 – ShortTermFuelTrimBank1
0x07 – LongTermFuelTrimBank1
0x0B – IntakeManifoldPressure
0x0C – EngineRPM
0x0D – VehicleSpeed
0x0E – TimingAdvance
0x0F – IntakeAirTemperature
0x10 – MassAirFlowRate
0x11 – ThrottlePosition
0x12 – SecondaryAirStatus
0x13 – OxygenSensorsPresent
0x14 – OxygenSensorDataBank1Sensor1
0x15 – OxygenSensorDataBank1Sensor2

01 01: [48 6B 01 41 01 80 07 6D 00 EA ]
09 02: [NO DATA]
01 00: [48 6B 01 41 00 BE 3F F8 00 EA ]
01 0D: [48 6B 01 41 0D 00 02 ]
STMFR: [ScanTool.net LLC]
STI: [STN1100 v2.2.2]
01 10: [48 6B 01 41 10 00 00 05 ]
STDI: [OBDLink r2.7]
01 05: [48 6B 01 41 05 30 2A ]
STSN: [110010033841]
01 0C: [48 6B 01 41 0C 00 00 01 ]
01 03: [48 6B 01 41 03 01 00 F9 ]
01 00: [48 6B 01 41 00 BE 3F F8 00 EA ]
01 04: [48 6B 01 41 04 00 F9 ]
01 0D: [48 6B 01 41 0D 00 02 ]
01 10: [48 6B 01 41 10 00 00 05 ]
01 0C: [48 6B 01 41 0C 00 00 01 ]
01 00: [48 6B 01 41 00 BE 3F F8 00 EA ]

I will and thank you very much for all of your help. I’ll let you know how it goes after getting a replacement.

Marty

Update:
I received the new OBDLink from Scanlink within a few days. I got it to work again with USB effortlessly and I got it to work with the blue-tooth adapter on the laptop after playing around with it for a bit. It was cumbersome to get it to recognize the BT each time on the laptop, but that might be me not use to the setup yet. I sent another debug to you in regards of still not hooking up with the DroidX. I might have all of the settings screwed up now on the Droid, but I spent enough time out in the shop to start my toes freezing and just could not get it to even try to hook into it with blue-tooth unlike the first adapter that tried but would not stay connected. Any more ideas piemmm? I’m lost.