what we use a car’s obd2 male connector port for:

obd Connector/obd2 male connector/obd2 male connector diagnostic/obd2 scanner slim 16 pins obd2 male connector diagnostic connectors it to read error codes recorded by your car’s electronic control units.
For example, you see a ‘Check engine light’ turned on. When your car encountered this error, it most likely stored information about the anomaly in its logs. You can then use a tool (OBD scanner) that connects through the OBD port on your car and reads the stored error message. This helps you identify the cause for the anomaly so that you know what you need to get repaired or replaced.Visualize data from various sensors on your car, in real-time.
Example: you feel you have a larger than usual fuel consumption. You can connect your OBD scanner tool and have it display live data from relevant sensors. You can then keep visualizing live-feed data while driving your car and this way pinpoint when the consumption reaches unusual levels, in real-timeobd Connector/obd2 male connector/obd2 male connector diagnostic/obd2 scanner

diagnostic connector is a widespread standard for self-diagnosing and reporting of car faults implemented on most cars produced after 1996.
It started as a way for automotive producers to measure and control car emissions, but today OBD-II is the standard communication interface for diagnosing various vehicle subsystems.

Your car is packed with sensors and small individual computers that integrate and monitor information from the sensors. When something goes wrong and needs your attention, you will see a blinking LED somewhere on your dash or some error or warning on the screen. Or even worse, there will be no warning but you will notice a malfunction in some subsystem of your car (lights, parking mechanism, etc). Your auto technician will connect through the OBD-II car connector (see Figure 1 below) with some physical device (hand-held device, a laptop, etc) and will pool your car’s computers for status information and error codes. All this is made possible by the OBD-II standard.

Differences between OBD and OBD-II

OBD Connector/obd2 scanner, diagnostic connector (actually, the correct name is OBD-I) and OBD-II are two versions of the same thing: a communication interface. OBD-I is older and OBD-II is the currently used standard. Until the industry settled for one standard, there were many versions and iterations. There were ADLD, M-OBD, OBD-I, OBD 1.5, and finally OBD-II. There is also EOBD (European onboard diagnostics), which is the European version of EOBD, JOBD (the Japanese version), and ADR 79/01 & 79/02 (the Australian OBD standard).

Unlike the OBD-I connector/obd2 scanner, which was sometimes found under the hood of the vehicle, you will find the OBD connector somewhere where the driver can reach it from her seat, usually below the dash or behind the ashtray.

The OBD-II connector/obd2 scanner has 16 pins, while the OBD has 20 pins. The physical OBD-II connector looks like the image below. The black is the female and the blue is called the male connector.

The OBD-II connector is specified by something called SAE J1962, documentation where the hardware interface is described in detail.

OBD-II type A and OBD-II type B

There are two types of OBD-II connectors: type A for vehicles where the supply voltage is 12V and type B for vehicles at 24V. In Figure 1, you see a groove between the two rows of pins going from one end to the other of the connector. This is a type A female connector. The type B female connector has a groove that is interrupted in the middle (see Figure 2 below). This modification prevents a type B male from being accidentally inserted into a type A female (a 12V male into a 24V female), because it would lead to a hardware fault.

When you purchase an OBD-II scanner, make sure the connector type matches the one on your car.

The OBD-II protocols

There are 5 signaling protocols that work on the OBD-II interface. These 5 protocols adhere to a common overall main structure, but also have various customizations (minor differences).

• ISO 15765 CAN – starting with the production year 2008, all vehicles tend to use this protocol
• SAE J1850 PWM – mainly used by Ford Motor Company
• ISO 9141-2 – mainly used by Chrysler, all European and most Asian vehicles.
• SAE J1850 VPW – General Motors
• ISO 14230 KWP2000

You will normally use a tool that scans your car through the OBD-II connector. The particular protocol used by your car is important and here is why. The scanner tools that implement all five protocols cost thousands (dollars/euros). The less expensive tools, which are the one’s individual car owners and small shops will use, are usually implementing one particular protocol. So, when purchasing a scanner, make sure it suits the protocol of your car.

If you need to figure out which OBD-II protocol is used on your car, you have to examine the OBD-II connector. In an OBD-II connector, not all pins are populated (look at the blue connector in Figure 1 and you will understand what I mean). Here are the differences in the 5 protocols:

• SAE J1850 VPW –The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 2, 4, 5, and 16, but not 10.
• ISO 9141-2 / KWP2000 –The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 4, 5, 7, 15, and 16.
• SAE J1850 PWM –The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 2, 4, 5, 10, and 16.
• ISO 15765 CAN –The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 4, 5, 6, 14 and 16.

Does my car have OBD-II?

Almost certainly, it does.
If your car was manufactured after 1996, your car must implement the OBD-II standard. Also:

• you should be able to see the OBD-II connector from Figure 1 somewhere within reach of the driver.
• there should be a sticker with the text ”OBD-II compliant” under the hood

Take a look at Figure 1 above to see what kind of connector you should be looking for. Pay attention to the number of pins (see section Differences between OBD and OBD-II above)

OBD Fault codes

Through the OBD-II interface, your car will present you with something called diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs).

Many people look into OBD-II scanning tools when they deal with a ”Check engine” light on the dashboard or some driveability problem. The information provided by OBD can help save time and money as it can pinpoint a specific problem cause rather than guessing and replacing components.

The Diagnostic Trouble Codes consist of 5 characters:

• The first letter indicates the family of DTC.

P: Powertrain, (i.e. engine and gearbox)
C: Chassis
B: Body
U: User network

• The first digit indicates if the code is generic or not (green digit):

0: Generic fault
1: Manufacturer fault

• The last three digits/characters indicate the actual fault code

There are 50000+ generic and manufacturer OBD-II Diagnostic Trouble Codes. When you encounter a code, simply Google it and you will reach one of the many online databases which store them all, together with the interpretation and advice for how to proceed.

For example, let us say your OBD-II scanner is showing you DTC P0301. Googling what DTC P0301 means we find not just the meaning of this error code, but also common symptoms, causes, and possible solutions.

OBD scanners

There are roughly four main types of OBD-II scanners:

1. Hand-held scan tools

These tools can be:

• simple fault codes readers (possibly with the ability to reset the error codes) aimed at private car owners (Figure 3)
• complex professional and expensive tools with more advanced functions like setting specific electronic control unit (ECU) parameters, graphing engine parameters, etc.