Ok -cheers.
Have you used the previously mentioned obdeleven?

I haven't - sorry

I have used obdeleven on my cars for fault finding, service resets and coding. It seems to work well. Obviously not as good as vcds but it’s not £300. I think I paid about £40 for it a couple of years ago.

Obdeleven is only for vag cars ! I guess you know that

Carista is basic, but uses a cheap dongle you may have for other things (i did). You can download and test the app without buying it and see what you can do on your car with it. It's simple, limited but will give you codes and some ideas of what is going on. It's better than a basic scan tool.

ODB11 is pretty good. I keep my dongle in the car ash tray as it's useful when traveling. Cost for the dongle is reasonable and there are two versions of the software. Uses a smart phone and gives you almost as much information as VCDS, though it's more powerful if you know how to use VCDS and can look up procedures.
I just did my rear brakes with it rather than getting out the laptop and you CAN do almost all of what VCDS does, though I'd argue the adaption / basic settings are easier to use on VCDS

VCDS is the rolls royce of DIY VAG cars. Original cables are a few hundred and you need a laptop. You need to be careful buying second hand that it IS an original.
Decent clone cables are still expensive (~£50) and locked to a specific older version of software, come with no support and are a bit hit and miss.
Cheap cables (£5-£20) 490.1 are REALLY old and limited to a shareware / hacked shareware version. This way frustration lies

ODIS / VAS 6154 - Dealer level stuff. Either old or Clone stuff. Some of it needs online accounts. I've been occasionally tempted to play

Lee

Running an Android based car stereo and installed OBD11, but couldn't get it to connect due to the fact the software was designed for portrait only and the connect button did not show.
Raised this with them and they told me they will look into it for the next release. :)

Good on them - they sorted it. You can choose between landscape and portrait now so all good +++

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psy2c0vqds.jpg

No need to use my phone or tablet now as always available - sweet
(Just need to code the stereo out as it shows as not being there.....)

When you have codes that keep comming back , you can use this cable

Definitely not getting any more codes after that one :ROFL:

Hi Mark.

What's your experience of this so far?

Cheers,

Mike.

Hi Mike,

It works pretty well.

Connectivity and scanning can be a bit temperamental at times but that's more of a Bluetooth issue than a fault with the device. Usually if you turn Bluetooth off/on on the phone/tablet or restart the phone/tablet, it connects and scans successfully.

I did have a few issues with it recently, in that it would scan for fault codes but was unable to reset them. A few weeks later it wouldn't connect and gave a "not authorised" error. I contacted Support and they replied within the hour. They fixed the issue and now it works again +++