Let's take a look at our Nitro OBD2 Performance Chip Tuning box from Temu or Teammu, Orangidal, Express or eBay or any of the online marketplaces. You may even be able to buy one from some unscrupulous garages and from some individuals who will be toting them in the pub. And the idea is that this version is for diesel cars. You also get a version for gasoline cars, but in reality they can be used interchangeably in both because the theory is that they contain a huge database of vehicles and their engines and when you plug it in, it communicates with the engine management system and uh finds out what engine it's got, then uses a database parameters to actually fine tune it while monitoring your driving to actually optimize the fuel consumption vehicle and give you 35 more power, 25 more torque.

but best of all, greater fuel efficiency. This one comes a two year warranty, which is okay. I Guess Now the instructions inside basically cover just uh, the typical location that you'll find the socket for. this.

if you go into your car, there's a diagnostic sport for mechanics very useful for you as well because you can plug a diagnostic devices into it, but the idea is in the vicinity of the steering wheel you will find hidden in the glove compartment or whatever, a little Port that you can plug a device like this in or a little handheld device and it lets you access the engine management system. which is the point of this? So let me Zoom down this. I will open it up and uh, technically speaking, this should contain a fairly powerful processor with a huge amount of database involved. If it does, then I will plug it into a vehicle and test it.

There you go. There's a commitment: If it's like 99.999 of the others and just contains the most minimalist circuit board, then I probably won't So what am I seeing here? I'm seeing a very small eight pin chip doesn't have a number on it. No, it doesn't. An anonymous eight pin chip? A little makeup controller perhaps? and uh, going for the pin out.

that is the negative. the chassis connection. So let's get the power supply on and this is the positive connection of the OBD port. So I'll just, uh, hook up onto that and we'll power it up and we'll see what it does.

So the first thing I'm noticing here is there is a lot of activity going on. You can tell the processor is active. it's currently looking for the vehicle. If you press the reset button and the reset button is very important.

If you press the reset button, it resets the system. The reset button has multiple functions, but when you let it go, it will start processing again. At this point in time when you see the green yellow LED flash. alternately, it is accessing your vehicle and doing all that stuff.

In this case, Obviously, it's not because it's just connected power supply, but let's take a picture of this. It's a single-sided board. the look of it. Yep, and uh, we'll reverse engineer it and we can analyze the circuitry one moment, please.

Okay, let's analyze this carefully and see how it interfaces with your vehicle's engine management system. So we have the two connections down here going to the chassis or chassis and they're the zero volt connections. We've got a 12 volt connection up here. Now there are three networks commonly used with OBD2 the SAE network with the negative positive connections that is not connected.

In this instance, we have the Iso 914, which 9041 which is the low and the L and the K connection that is also not connected. And we also have the Canvas which is the one we're interested in, canvas low and canvas high and they are also not connected, so it must be just communicating over the the power lines. Then presumably we have the three LEDs and we've got a green one, a yellow one, and a red one each with its own 2.2 K resistor. We have this uh, mystery chip I Thought this was a 555 at first, but it turns out it's an Lm358, which is quite interesting.

So right. We have a Uh four resistor array here: 105 one zero, and five zeros. That's one million Ohms. And then we've got a push button.

Now it's notable: the push button has two positions and you can if it's mounted in that position, it's for petrol. Vehicles if it's mounted in this position, it's for diesel vehicles. although they can be interchangeable. If you put both switches in, it will deal with both vehicles.

and if you push, hold, push, and hold both at once for three seconds, it will switch it into electric vehicle mode, which is very useful. Let's take a look at the circuitry. The circuitry is very straightforward and it is actually really interesting because the way they've used the Lm358, the Lm358 is a dual or pump. The second part of this chip is just not connected.

None of it's inputs and output are connected, and here are the four resistors in that, uh, parallel array. Everything is used very efficiently. So the 12 volt reel and the zero volt. Here we've got two connections going to the chip to power it, and then an Op-amp has two inputs and an output.

The inputs are compared to each other, and if the voltage is higher than one than the other, the output will change, stay accordingly. So in this instance, they've got a potential divider which provides roughly 6 volts to the positive input, but that will sway either towards a positive, real, or negative reel depending on the polarity of the output. It's a technique called hysteresis. Effectively, then the output also charges this capacitor, which is quite a low value I measured in circuit 220 Nano Which is not necessarily guaranteed, but the idea is that when this output is high, it's charging this capacitor up until this reaches the rough voltage of that.

But because this has gone High it squeeze the voltage up towards a positive rail so there is a fair amount of time involved in getting there and then when it reaches there, it will go low and when it goes low, it'll start discharging this capacitor. But because it's gone low, that also biases this line slightly to the negative Real. So it actually drops a voltage threshold so the voltage threshold is fluctuating up then all the time. Without this resistor, here, it would charge capacitor until it was just roughly between the Uh two Supply rails and it would effectively just the output would just stick at about half the supply voltage.

But in this way, they've created an oscillator with the output going positive and negative. alternately. there's a green LED and a yellow LED in a red. The red is lit all the time.

Uh, the green LED lights when this is negative. Uh, the yellow LED lights and it's positive So effectively because this is toggling all the time. The green yellow alternate powers and forwards when you take control of the situation by pressing the reset button, which is properly used to avoid warranties by basically discouraging people from making claims. You can say to them, ah, you, it's not working for you Did you press the reset button? No, What reset button? Oh, there's a reset button inside of your group through or you'll feel and you hear it click, uh, press and hold that and then your vehicle will have to learn again so they can basically postpone giving them their money back Etc That's almost certainly what it's for And then three months down the line, the contact again.

They say try holding it for 10 seconds and then give it another three months that it's just going to be used to actually avoid avoid giving people their money back. But as you can see from the circuitry, this is just an LED flasher. As they always are, it's probably just as well it doesn't connect your vehicle because the vicinity of these connections. if they'd actually been terminated onto pads at the vicinity of ground.

As has happened with some of these units, if there are solder blobs bridging, then say for instance, sort of brought blood bridging from uh, here, onto here or there to there. people have bought these and they've plugged them in their vehicle has immediately stopped working. The answer to that is to it won't shouldn't damage the vehicle. The answer to that is to unplug the module and then after a while after a few stops it should get rid of all the errors and the little money light in your dashboard should go out.

So the Chinese do have a name for this type of device. uh idiot. tax it. basically it dupes people into buying them and it's a way of making money with no liability and uh, some.

Well, you look at the reviews of these and apart from videos like this, you'll see people that say oh, plugged in and definitely I can feel the performance Improvement And if they do, then this is good because that is the placebo effect of these devices. But there we go. The neutral OBD2 is a different variation. It's an interesting variation.

I Love the fact that they've used the Op amp and it's a very good demonstration of the Op amp with its uh, bias and uh feedback actually providing an oscillator function. But Ultimately, it is just a scam device, but quite nicely made and not too expensive. so really, just a bit of fun.