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Review of the CarChip® Pro
CarChip Pro by Davis is a car engine and driving monitor. It provides useful information about your driving habits and diagnostics for car problems by plugging it into your car's On Board Diagnotisc II (commonly known as "OBD II") port, which is found in just about every car since 1996. It can store up to 300 hours of trip information such as the time, date, distance, speed, idle time, hard accelerations, decelerations, hard breaks and engine diagnostic trouble codes. You can download and view the captured data using the bundled software that comes with CarChip Pro. The software makes it easy to read graphs, view information about your driving habits and easy access to information about any problems within your car.
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Setting up the CarChip Pro in my car could not be easier. I plugged the CarChip Pro into my car's OBD II port, which is below my car's steering wheel just under the dashboard. I started the car and took the CarChip for a test drive, varying my speed up to 80 mph and taking sharp turns and braking hard. I stopped at a gas station to check what information the CarChip Pro had stored. I pulled it off the port and connected it to my laptop via USB port. The bundled software used to read data from the CarChip is not very user-friendly or graphic-rich, but I learned it fairly quickly. The CarChip Pro recorded data about my driving regarding the speed variations, braking and turning. and my car's engine performance during the period. The CarChip Pro also logged some problems regarding my car's crankshaft. Recently, I cleaned the fuel tank and some residue was mixing with the gas I added to the tank afterwards. CarChip captured data about the gasoline quality.
The CarChip Pro can be a great training tool for teenagers who are just learning how to drive. Many parents are concerned that teenagers tend to drive aggressively when there is no adult supervision. The CarChip Pro can be an extra pair of eyes for parents when their kids drive alone or with their friends. In case of an accident, the CarChip Pro automatically logs data, storing 20 seconds of driving data before an impact.
A minor shortcoming is that you cannot connect the CarChip Pro to your laptop while it is also connected to your car's OBD II port. Every time I wanted to view information stored in the CarChip Pro, I had to pull it out from the OBD port.
Another limitation is that it does not support driver profiles. In other words, it cannot store information for different drivers . So if your car is driven by different people at different times, you will have to pull it out and dowload the data after each driver's trip. To summarize, the CarChip Pro can save you a lot of money by giving you appropriate diagnostics about your car's condition. You get information about major and minor problems before further damage occurs. It also keeps track of how you drive on any particular trip. The CarChip pro is available at around $100. Given the features of this tiny car engine and driving monitoring device, we think is a great buy for the price.
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3 Lights On: Nice Performer
