cartrip
Latest
Griffin gets an iPhone all up in your car's OBD-II port with the CarTrip Bluetooth adapter
If you're not a car person there's a good chance you don't know much about the OBD-II lurking mysteriously beneath your dash. It's there -- if your car was built since the first Bush administration, anyway. Usually its needs go unfulfilled until your check-engine light pops on and some mechanic with greasy paws clumsily stuffs a code checker in there, but more and more tools are coming out to change that. The Autobot Mavia is one, and now Griffin is doing similar with the CarTrip. It's an OBD-II adapter that connects wirelessly to an iOS device or writes directly to SD card, storing information on information related to car mileage, even giving you a real-time efficiency readout on your display with the CleanDrive app. And, yes, it'll even pull warning codes and the like if things aren't quite running how they should. All that for $89.99, a fair bit less than the Mavia will potentially be and available sooner -- sometime before the first quarter is through.
CarTrip will connect your iOS device and your automobile
Griffin kicked off CES with a bang today by introducing several new products including the new CarTrip hardware and CleanDrive app for iOS or Android. CarTrip is a Bluetooth-enabled monitor that plugs into your car's OBD-II port and compiles the data logged by the car's onboard computer. Data accessible to the Griffin device includes car acceleration, top speed, fuel consumption and diagnostic codes. The module can store this information to an external SD card using the built-in SD card port, or you can access the data directly using your phone or iPod touch/iPad and Griffin's CleanDrive application. The CleanDrive application reads and analyzes the data provided from your car. Both individual trip and long-term data helps you analyze the fuel efficiency of your car and troubleshoot that annoying and often mysterious "check engine" light. The application requires an iPhone, iPad or fourth generation iPod touch with iOS 4.0 or later, while the Bluetooth module requires a 1996 or newer car that contains an OBD-II compliant system. The CarTrip Bluetooth module will be available in Q1 2011 for US$89.99 from Griffin's website. The free, companion CleanDrive app will debut in Q1 2011 for iOS and Q2 for Android. Anyone interested in a personal OBD-II monitoring system?
