mi3 App - alternatives?

[AndysComputer]

I got my new ODB2 adapter so decided to download mi3 for iPhone as that seemed the obvious choice but I was wondering if there were any others on iOS?

I guess I can use this to keep an eye on battery health over time.
I wish it would log time/date and State of Charge and Temperature to a CSV file so I could import it into my telemetry overlay software.

Is anyone aware of an app for iPhone that does this?

Failing that for Android as I suppose I could find a cheap Android phone somewhere just for this purpose...

 

[Carsten Haase]

Nothing else besides mi3 for iPhone or electrified for Android unfortunately. OBD apps for EVs need to be specific to each car. We are fortunate (I guess) that the i3 is so similar to the MINI or we'd probably have nothing.

Future EVs probably won't even have an OBD port since it is not required (Tesla doesn't) so there's not much benefit for devs to go through the effort of decoding all of the unique PIDs for each new EV.

 

[AndysComputer]

Yeah I will confess I first looked for a generic app, then a Mini one, than only after checking this forum discovered this one which as you say was intended for the i3 but we are lucky.
I may have to write my own to get what I want but I'm not sure the effort would be worth it...

 

[piflechien]

Write to the app developper, he regularly updates the app with new features.
Or ask him to publish his source code so that you can contribute and add features.
I would love a CarPlay version to be able to see realtime values on the mini center screen for example

 

[Carsten Haase]

Yeah I will confess I first looked for a generic app, then a Mini one, than only after checking this forum discovered this one which as you say was intended for the i3 but we are lucky.
I may have to write my own to get what I want but I'm not sure the effort would be worth it...

If you have the skills to code and know how to decode PIDs I'd definitely buy an Android version! I tried to buy BimmerLink for $45 but it doesn't work...

 

[Tren]

I guess I can use this to keep an eye on battery health over time.
I wish it would log time/date and State of Charge and Temperature to a CSV file so I could import it into my telemetry overlay software. Is anyone aware of an app for iPhone that does this?

Car Scanner ELM OBD2 for iOS/Android will log data displayed on screen (Data Recording - .csv export)

you should select connection profile Mini Cooper or BMW i3

 

[carrrl]

If you have the skills to code and know how to decode PIDs I'd definitely buy an Android version!

I have done this work and a long time Android dev... but I sold my MINI SE. Could have been a fun project, but never got around to it. I did a ton of this stuff on my Fiat 500e though and you can do some really cool things beyond data logging and display. I hacked together features like a "dog" mode (indefinite/repeated precondtioning) and proximity lock/unlock (remote lock control via phone proximity.) Their OEM app repeated everything on OBD so you could just mimic its behavior. I assume BMW/MINI is a bit more locked down? My understanding is that at a certain point you are bumping into Flexray.

Anyway, back on topic... A shortcut I used when there was an existing app with data I wanted - use an OBD splitter. Into one side your BT code reader, the other a CAN sniffer of choice. Start mi3 and start your logger. Start/stop the app updates and watch for the changes in data flow. From there it's just like and other CAN decoding. Isolate the messages you want, figure out the format, then do the app stuff. Although at this point, you'd hope there was a DBC or some basic knowledge floating around so you don't have to extract it like this.