The ELM 323 completes our trio of OBDII ICs, allowing you to talk to your ISO 9141-2 or ISO 14230-4 standard OBDII equipped vehicle using an RS232 serial connection. It transparently converts between a 10.4KHz ISO data stream and standard ASCII characters, allowing trouble codes and operating parameters to be easily retrieved without the need for special software. No knowledge of data formatting, error checking, bus initiation etc. is needed either, as the ELM323 handles all of it for you.

The present version of the ELM323 (v2.0) provides several programmable features that the previous versions did not offer. It now allows programmable header bytes, adjustable timeouts, the ability to report in the packed data mode, and offers a special monitoring mode as well. This is in addition to all of the capabilities that the v1.x ICs offered - the full seven byte command structure, two line (K and L) initiation, software selectable linefeeds and character echoing, and the visual feedback provided by the four LED outputs.

DataSheet for "ELM323" from ELM Electronics.