Thread: Why is is so hard to find an OBDII based performance gauge?

I am looking for a simple performance gauge. I want something that can log vehicle speed, or rpm versus time so I can compare performance before/after mods. The trouble is the only performance gauges I can find use a G-force meter to measure acceleration, and I don't want that. I just want something that can read vehicle speed and rpm from the OBDII port and either log it with time values, or just tell me various perfomance metrics (0-60, 60-0, etc).

So my question is, why are all performance meters accelerometer based rather than OBDII based?

You should checkout nissandatascan... you can set parameters and do active testing and record on your laptop.... it also have a lot of other cool things you can do...

Home - Palmer Performance Engineering, Inc.

you can also use nissan data scan. I have both programs.

It looks like the palmer program can only do a drag simulation. I was hoping to take launching out of the equation. Can it do, say a 45-65 mph time or something like that? Can Nissan Datascan do that?

Also, what OBD interface do you use?

nissandatascan.com

I have a elm 5 compact for obdII and a datascan unit for obd1.

the reason they use a accelerometer is that the calculation is simple. change in rate of speed of a know mass.

I have also seen this done by using the abs wheel speed sensors and a databucket. Not the cheapest way of collecting data but effective.

I just found what I needed



So I guess nissan datascan is what I want. It is $120 though (with the blazt cable). Anyone selling one? Also, the blazt website wants you to buy the log viewer also. I won't need that right?

One other thing is I read that the values only update about 3 times a second. That would make my times off by a potential 1/3 of a second, which is pretty large. Do you have any experience with that? Is it really that slow?