Innovate OT-2 review

[jamesm]

I noticed when I was researching the OT-2 that there was very little info out there with regards to what PIDs are available, refresh rates, etc. I went ahead and picked one up, and here's my initial thoughts.

To begin with the thing is pretty cheap. I got it for $139 shipped from ebay. You can get the bundle with the LC-1 (though you'll probably want to wait until the LC-2's are bundled with it if you're going that route) for $250 or so. compare that to what you would've paid for the same capabilities 5 or 10 years ago and it's a pretty great value.

Prior to this I had been using techstream with a chinese j2534 cable for logging. it worked well enough, but the refresh rates were slow. The refresh rates on the OT-2 are much, much faster.

Some people probably wonder how this compares to something like Torque through an ELM327 bluetooth interface. I don't have any direct experience with torque, though it wouldn't help as performance is usually dictated more by the interface than the software itself. The ELM327's big problem is the 300ms recommended refresh rate. You can query the interface more often if you choose, but reliability suffers as you approach 100ms. this basically means that the best you can (reliably) hope for is 3-5 updates a second. not very fast, and some can't even perform reliably at the recommended intervals.

The OT-2 is a bit different in that it offers full-speed MTS on OBD2 channels up to the capacity of the ecu itself. MTS updates at a rate of 12 updates per second. Any MTS sensors in the chain (you can daisy chain a whole bunch of them and feed it into the OT-2) report at full speed all the time.

OBD2 channels are broken into high and low priority. High priority channels are updated every cycle, and low priority cycles share a single 'slot' in the cycle. so, if you have 4 high priority channels and 3 low priority ones, the lower priority ones are getting reported every third cycle. low priority is great for things like temperature readings that don't change very fast.

I've found that with 4 high priority channels and 2 low priority channels i maintain what appears to be full MTS speed on the logs. I don't notice any stepping in the high priority channels, and only a tiny bit on the low priority ones. If i were to add more low priority ones their refresh rate would degrade very quickly, but adding those to the 4 high priority channels had no effect on the speed at all. much better than techstream! here's a screenshot:



the pids (i know.. technically they're not pids, but whatever) available on the FR-S are as follows:

RPM
TP
LOAD_PCT
SPARKADV
MAF
MAP
VSS
ECT
IAT
FUEL1_OL
FUEL2_OL
SHRTFT1
LONGFT1
SHRTFT3
LONGFT3
FRP_HIGH
EQ_RAT
LOAD_ABS
TP_R
TP_B
APP_D
APP_E
TAC_PCT
EVAP_PCT
FLI
BARO
AAT
VPWR
MIL
DTC_CNT
MIL_DIST
MIL_TIME
CLR_DIST
WARM_UPS
RUNTM
O2S12
SHRTFT12
EQ_RAT11
W02S11
WBEQ_RAT11
WBO2S11
CATEMP11
RPM2
BOOST

most of these are pretty obvious what they do, some are baffling. the one thing to note on the fr-s is that the stock wide-range o2 is WBEQ_RAT11. notice that there isn't one for oil temp.

the 'OT' in OT-2 stands for 'open tune' which is a bit misleading as the product is very proprietary. what they mean by that is that they have an sdk available. it is a pretty basic c library that abstracts away all of the low-level mts protocol stuff and lets you get up and running pretty quick getting data from the device. they have sample desktop and mobile (ios) applications, and it was pretty easy to tear out the relevant bits and start talking to the device from a rubymotion repl.

the sdk also allows access directly to the ecu, if you're an obd2 expert or are into that sort of thing. you can do basically whatever you want, and gather a whole lot more data than the standard normalized pids offer.

it's great that they have a useful sdk and examples because the logworks iphone app sucks. it hasn't been upgraded for iphone 5 and looks terrible. tons of potential there sitting on the table. it is fantastic for logging though.

It also has some sort of 'economy' meter function that no one will care about and a mode to measure torque and hp, acceleration, 1/4 mile etc. from what i've read the readings are far more accurate thanks to the ot-2 interface, but i haven't had time to mess with it yet. it allows you to graph your afr along with the curves and has a single gear mode, which seems cool.

So in summary

The Good:
- Fast interface
- Logging on your phone is awesome, no laptop in the passenger seat
- Available sdk
- MTS support
- Compatibility with logworks desktop software
- super easy install (no wiring)
- eliminates the need for gauges in the cockpit
- it's has basic dhcp support on the wifi so you can use it to set up a quick wireless network to share files or whatever

The Bad:
- innovate software is missing some useful pids
- innovate mobile app sucks
- have to find a good iphone mount for the car
- connecting to the device's wifi is a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes

[xjohnx]

any chance you could attach an actual log file that you've captured from the unit (CSV, LOG, XLS, whatever format it has should be fine.) so that I can compare the time between samples to my ecutek logs?

[King Tut]

Very interesting. I will have to research this later today. You going to be at the Southeast 86 meet next weekend so I can check it out?

[stugray]

Originally Posted by jamesm

notice that there isn't one for oil temp

Yes there is, it is PID: 2101.

See this thread: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23530

Also, I have the Innovate LC-1 & the TC-4 in my racecar (porsche 914) and I have been able to read the serial data on a PC with serial port using Ruby.
I was hoping to use IRB on a droid to make my own app, but getting ruby to use widgets on DROID would be s significant learning curve.

I have been contemplating getting the OT-2 for the race car just so I can access the serial data via wifi at the track, but the car doesnt have OBDII, so it isnt as useful.

[jamesm]

Originally Posted by stugray

Yes there is, it is PID: 2101.

See this thread: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23530

Also, I have the Innovate LC-1 & the TC-4 in my racecar (porsche 914) and I have been able to read the serial data on a PC with serial port using Ruby.
I was hoping to use IRB on a droid to make my own app, but getting ruby to use widgets on DROID would be s significant learning curve.

I have been contemplating getting the OT-2 for the race car just so I can access the serial data via wifi at the track, but the car doesnt have OBDII, so it isnt as useful.

i meant the default logworks software doesn't have the pid. i can get any pid over the api. innovate only exposes a subset of 'normalized pids' to their software.

i wrote a rubymotion wrapper (basically just wraps the innovate c library) i can point you to if you're into rubymotion. without obd2 you'd be limited to a chain of mts sensors, or something like an auxbox.

[jamesm]

Originally Posted by xjohnx

any chance you could attach an actual log file that you've captured from the unit (CSV, LOG, XLS, whatever format it has should be fine.) so that I can compare the time between samples to my ecutek logs?

sure i can send you one. pm me your email.

[jamesm]

Originally Posted by King Tut

Very interesting. I will have to research this later today. You going to be at the Southeast 86 meet next weekend so I can check it out?

yes i will. hopefully my car will be done by then