Another stable dongle?
Göran Nybom reported on the issue tracker that the Vgate iCar 3 ELM327, which at least seems not to be some no-brand-with-always-changing-guts dongle, works fine. Price seems fair (20-ish), and it’s smaller than the KONNWEI which people might like.
This is no endorsement, we don’t have one, but if you do, please comment with your results, so we can update the hardware page. Or send it to me 😉
Edit: unfortunately, the one I received did not support the ATAL command and contained a main controller with a scraped off top marking. So unfortunately, I cannot honestly recommend buying Vgate, at least not from Aliexpress or Ebay. it seems that these are carbon-copied too. Well, the shell at least.
I decided to check it out based on this post. I had been using the Konnwei KW902 bluetooth but had found it quite slow to connect and a noticable delay. The V-gate is definitely much smaller. I was able to fit it under the rubber cover. It rocked a bit so I stuck some small foam pads to raise it slightly and it’s solid now. In terms of the performance, I found it much faster to connect and to display info (e.g. speed in driving screen). Let me know if you’d like more info.
Thank you! I have one on the way too. I think we can slowly starting to conclude vGate is a viable, branded (as in no hit and run for what’s actually inside), working dongle. Once I also can confirm I will put it on the Hardware page.