#HTE

ThinkDriver: A Car Diagnostic Tool That You Interface With Using Your Smartphone

ThinkDriver is a smart, relatively inexpensive tool that allows you to access your car’s full system diagnostics.

Your car is smart enough to know when it’s having trouble, yet it won’t share the precise information with you. Instead you’re meant to bring it to the dealership, where company-certified technicians can tap into the car’s proprietary software to run diagnostics. And while you yourself can purchase a code reader/scanning tool, the current crop of OBD (On-Board Diagnostic) tools have limitations on the information they provide.

ThinkDriver, in contrast, provides “access to view live data flow of the entire vehicle system,” according to the developers, “which will be combined to create an easy-to-understand chart that presents data and conclusions about anything your car needs.”

It looks pretty slick in operation:

And here’s an example of how you might use it to effect a DIY repair:

Unsurprisingly, the ~$50 tool has been successfully Kickstarted. At press time there was $39,630 in pledges on a $10,000 goal, and there’s still 10 days left to pledge.