Here is a cool car gadget for Android owners. The Kiwi Bluetooth Android Car Diagnostic Kit connects to the OBDII port of your car (works on any car model 1996 or newer) and allows your Android phone to get the information via bluetooth from your car. There is even a power switch to turn it off when you are not using it.
It is unclear to me if it is powered from the port on your car, or requires a battery. They also mention there are two application that can work with the Kiwi in the Android market, but don’t mention the name, or the cost of the applications. I found 10 ODBII applications, by none when i searched for “ODBII Kiwi”. The kit itself is $99.95. Here are the specifications from ThinkGeek:
- Wirelessly connect your car to your Android phone
- Two compatible applications from the Android Market work with Kiwi Bluetooth
- Monitor: Fuel efficiency, check engine trouble codes, real time gauges, horsepower and torque, and more.
- Range: 50 ft (Line of sight)
- Power Consumption: 0.7 Watts (With Power Switch)
- Dimensions: 2.75 x 1.25 x 0.6 inches
There is also a more expensive one that uses WiFi available for the iPhone for $149.95.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
One of the Android apps is Torque. It is currently free and available in the market. Non ad version is $4.98. I just downloaded it the other day and haven’t had a ton of time to play with the app but seems to work well. See more info here; http://torque-bhp.com/
ThinkGeek page mentions three apps, Torque, alOBD & OBDroid.
I believe the image shown is using Torque, which you can find youtube videos demonstrating it. The other two only have don’t have any video demos on them.
Price a little high considering you can find similar devices on eBay for about half the price…
Things have changed a little since Dec. 2010, when this was first published. Here is an update in case anyone reads this review and loses interest due to the price(in 2010). PLX Devices will be releasing the Kiwi 3 (http://www.plxdevices.com/Kiwi-3-Car-to-Smartphone-Connection-s/156.htm )next week, Feb. 7th, 2016(per their web site). If you pre-order, your price is $89.99 plus tax (where applicable) with free shipping. After that, the retail price is $99.99. The Kiwi 3 Bluetooth is a plug-n-play, OBDII/CAN monitoring device (like the Kiwi 2) and it is compatible across basically all OS platforms. Since it transmits via a Bluetooth connection, it shouldn’t interfere with your device’s wifi connection. Google Play has a few android compatible apps: Torque lite and Torque Pro($4.95), DashCommand(Palmer Performance Engineering) which is more of trial mode, costs $9.95 to unlock, and OBD Car Doctor(from PNN Soft) just to name a few. Today, when I looked online, both versions of Kiwi 2(for Android and iPhone) were only $39.99($30 off the regular $69.99 price). After you add first class postage and sales tax, the Kiwi 2 will cost you about $47. Do a little research and decide which one suits you best. Personally, the Kiwi 2 was informative and fun(with the right app) but the cord was a little annoying. The new version, Kiwi 3, is more compact, the unit and OBDII plug are combined together, so no more cord.