Carista OBD

[SootySport]

Ok, so this old dinosaur has bought a Carista plug in thingy what's the best free app to use? there's hundreds of them. I need one that I can't wreck the car

 

[LEE69]

ermmm the carista one

 

[Daveyonthemove]

Carista allows you to do coding and change a few settings. Can read/clear fault codes. Annual subscription.
Torque allows you to log and upload live data and gives you dials etc, but no good for fault codes. Cheapest option.
OBD Eleven allows coding and fault finding/clearing and can check more detailed data (Like VCDS). Most expensive option (Approx £60), needs branded OBD dongle and Pro subscription as well as credits (although you can get free credits by watching ads).

I have all 3 and they are good at different things. Sadly you can't use the OBD Eleven dongle for Torque and Carista apps, but they will use an ELM 327 and OBD Eleven won't.

 

[ch1z64]

Carista allows you to do coding and change a few settings. Can read/clear fault codes. Annual subscription.
Torque allows you to log and upload live data and gives you dials etc, but no good for fault codes. Cheapest option.
OBD Eleven allows coding and fault finding/clearing and can check more detailed data (Like VCDS). Most expensive option (Approx £60), needs branded OBD dongle and Pro subscription as well as credits (although you can get free credits by watching ads).

I have all 3 and they are good at different things. Sadly you can't use the OBD Eleven dongle for Torque and Carista apps, but they will use an ELM 327 and OBD Eleven won't.

Many torque in playstore whst 1 is a good 1

 

[Daveyonthemove]

Torque Pro (Ian Hawkins developer).
Put aside 30-60 mins to play around with the gauges and find ones you like and place them where you want them, and also look at setting up the 'data logging an upload'. That allows you to select a few parameters to log and when you check on a desktop you can see the data alongside Google maps so you can see the point you achieved the data point you are interested in.
It can read and clear faults on many other cars, but the Canbus system on the 8P seems to hide them from this app.

 

[Darren Ramsden]

I have Carista dongle and Carista app (IOS) on free trial. This reads fault codes and changes various code option.

I have Torque full app, Dash Command apps (Android), neither will read fault codes using ELM327 or Carista dongles on my 8P, they work on all other cars I've had/ have.

I'd like an app just to read and reset codes that doesn't need subscription.

 

[Daveyonthemove]

Not sure if there is one that will work on ours, it's a case of finding the one that's best value for what you need.
Personally I think Carista is best value as you can use a cheap OBD2 dongle with it.
OBD Eleven requires a bespoke dongle and a subscription (and credits on top!), but can do most of the stuff VCDS allows you to do, making it an expensive app or a cheap VCDS alternative.

 

[leshkin]

Carista allows you to do coding and change a few settings. Can read/clear fault codes. Annual subscription.
Torque allows you to log and upload live data and gives you dials etc, but no good for fault codes. Cheapest option.
OBD Eleven allows coding and fault finding/clearing and can check more detailed data (Like VCDS). Most expensive option (Approx £60), needs branded OBD dongle and Pro subscription as well as credits (although you can get free credits by watching ads).

I have all 3 and they are good at different things. Sadly you can't use the OBD Eleven dongle for Torque and Carista apps, but they will use an ELM 327 and OBD Eleven won't.

I have the OBDEleven Pro license and it will let you do long coding, like VCDS without credits, which is cool and all the modules are supported for error reading. The credits are only used when you want one of their 'apps', which is just a predetermined set of long coding via a single button.

You can get free credits too by opening the app daily, you get a credit free, then up to 5 credits per day for watching some adverts.

I don't bother with apps/credits, just use it for fault finding on the go and an occasional long coding tweak, like headlight tourist mode switch for trips to EU mainland.

 

[SootySport]

Thanks everyone. I have the freetrial with the Carista app so i'll try that first and see what I can do there. Will also try the other suggested free apps and see what they do as well. Daughter has a Clio but only basic service items there but still useful.

 

[Daveyonthemove]

I have the OBDEleven Pro license and it will let you do long coding, like VCDS without credits, which is cool and all the modules are supported for error reading. The credits are only used when you want one of their 'apps', which is just a predetermined set of long coding via a single button.

You can get free credits too by opening the app daily, you get a credit free, then up to 5 credits per day for watching some adverts.

I don't bother with apps/credits, just use it for fault finding on the go and an occasional long coding tweak, like headlight tourist mode switch for trips to EU mainland.

That's good to know.
I had to use it to activate the Haldex pump to lock the diff whilst removing the transfer box, and it used 5 credits, but that was before I bought the 'Pro' licence. Since then I have been opening the app every day and subjecting myself to 5 ads in order to build up credits.
Now I know I don't have to, I'm happier about it.
Do you know of any useful sites that list all the coding options available for our 8P platform? I've found loads for the newer S3/Golf R platform, but struggling to find any for ours.

 

[leshkin]

Do you know of any useful sites that list all the coding options available for our 8P platform? I've found loads for the newer S3/Golf R platform, but struggling to find any for ours.

I think it depends on what you want to do - I have an original VCDS cable from 2006 and it still works perfectly with latest VCDS software and most latest VWG cars, so tend to use that for more complex coding/logging tasks and google to find the coding procedures for bits I need. Ross tech site does have a load of coding processes documented too, so that's a good resource to keep as most docs have the long coding info you could use - http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I find that searching for specific options/coding tasks in google works better then the more general 'coding s3 8p' string. ASN has a lot of info on this too.

 

[SootySport]

Just been fiddling with carista and can connect to the ECU ok. Subscribed to the 1 months trial but I can't see anything extra on on menu screen, just service , ECU scan and emission scan, what else should I be seeing?
I've also reset an old Misfire fault but it's still showing up on the emission scan.