Carista EVO – Bluetooth Scanner and App: Diagnostics
Carista EVO – Bluetooth Scanner and App: Diagnostics, Customizations, Service tools, and Live Data for your vehicle
Carista EVO’s cutting-edge OBD2 Scanner
Broadens Carista App’s capabilities ” data-position=”triggerHorizontal” />1-month trial of all in-app advanced features ” data-position=”triggerHorizontal” />
| Weight: | 120 g |
| Dimensions: | 9.9 x 7.2 x 4 cm; 120 Grams |
| Brand: | CARISTA |
| Model: | COBD-EVO |
| Manufacture: | Carista |
| Dimensions: | 9.9 x 7.2 x 4 cm; 120 Grams |
Bought this carista to replace the rear brake discs and pads on my.golf mk 7.5. I found this so easy to use. I managed to half the price of a rear brake replacement doing it myself using the carista.
I have a VW T6 and when it went to the garage it had 2 pages of fault codes and an engine management light on, The garage charge 130 pounds to clear the codes, there was nothing wrong with the van at all. This piece of tech has been bought to eliminate the garage cost. Reads the van no problem and is easy to use. Having to subscribe to the service is unexpected, but alot cheaper than going to the garage
Bought this so I could assess what was wrong with my car & was also having DPF issues so being able to regenerate my car when needs be is great, chills me clean ou
Had an error message on my dash so thought I’d give this a go as the price was good, and a lot cheaper than going to a garage for a diagnostic test, well what can I say plugged it in and cleared the problem and found a few other issues that I sorted using this device I was also able to unlock features on my car that BMW wanted hundreds of pounds to do! Yes it has a subscription attached to doing this but for 9.99 (1 month) I have saved myself hundreds of pounds and found an issue that wasn’t found by the garage that for 17 I solved myself
I love that I am able to customize my car with the hidden features. My only downside is the notes of what the fault code. I wish it had a little more detail on them.
I have the prior version, which did take a while to connect to my iPhone.
Is it worthwhile updating to this version?, so far all I’ve noticed is connectivity speed not any new features it can provide, so far.
So if you have the white prior version, upgrading is not a major issue, but if you are just buying your first one then it is worthwhile, especially if any discounts available.
It is far quicker in connecting to the Carista app on my iPhone.
It has plenty of other features and customisation too such as turning off the annoying seatbelt or door opening chime
Well worth the money and would highly recommend
Prefer this over obd as can activate lots of things for free, which I was able to do I. The months trial. Only thing you can’t do is long codes
I purchased many cheaper OBD2 Adapters before. Never again.
This adapter is quick to connect.
Incredible feel of quality.
Good packing.
Brilliant App (Free+Paid) with many features.
In quick detail:
The app has a very wide car compatibility list.
Shows most codes in detail and you really are able to diagnose and fix your car, or customize it.
It contains a lot of features (behind a subscription) that could really end up saving you a lot of money in the long run.
By all means, I could recommend this produc
Unfortunately for me, it didn’t work with my 2022 golf ehybrid. 1000 errors came up on the scanner and I couldn’t use the app. Newer cars have a lot more system protection and security with all the electronics. I’m sure it would be great with an older vehicle, had to return it.
I’ve finally turned off that dreaded stop start that I hate on my car, everytime I open the car door the engine used to switch off which in theory is a great safety feature but in reality it’s a pain, turned that off and it worked perfectly. I also turned on the passenger mirror tilt on reverse (bonus) and turned on the bleep noise when the car is locked and unlocked (lovely).
I work on my own cars and doing the rear breaks will be a dream now I can wind back the pistons on the electronic handbrake.
I tried diagnosing the car but it came back with 0 faults so I can’t comment on whether it will clear any fault codes or not but I’m 99% sure it will.
In order to receive your free 1 month trial you have to purchase the yearly subscription (about 45) which you can cancel before it’s due (after 1 month) honestly it’s worth every penny!
Dont think just get it, doing my brother in laws bmw 5 series in a few days so will update on that car.
Its still a very handy app,and the price of the year sub is well worth it when you consider that 1 trip to a main dealer will cost approx 120 here in ireland at least.
This product does what it says on the tin however it’s got quite a controversial way of doing it. How?- It’s a subscription-based service for something that, realistically, doesn’t have a justification of being. So take that in to consideration when you buy this product, it’s also worth noting that you’re unlikely to find a product that does the same thing that isn’t based on the same scheme. I’d be happier to pay another 20-30 for the product if you did not have to pay the 9.99 every 30 days, (or close to 50 for a year). For the first-time that you use this product this cost is negligible but if you decide a couple of months later that you do not wish to have one of the options enabled, you’ll be paying that 9.99 once again.
With the subscription-based aspect aside, this is a good product. It allows you to enable options that have been built in to your car but disabled by the manufacturer, either due to region or spec and configure debugging options. For example, on my car I was able to change the infotainment boot-logo and activate gauge-needle sweep. You will not be able to enable options that your car has not been specced with, so for example you will not be able to activate Apple Car Play/Android Auto or Sat-nav on your infotainment.
This device is also very good for reading fault codes, it has picked up fault codes that my other readers have been unable to, due to them reading each module and checking to see if the origin aligns with the fault, on cheaper units if these two values don’t match they’re marked as an error and not flagged. With this OBD reader I was able to find an AC Fault and a Cam-Shaft position sensor fault, that had both been stored in my infotainment, for whatever reason.
All in all, it’s a good product with a rather disappointing business model. For that reason alone, I have knocked it down a star. It’s on par with it’s competitors.
I bought it for my Seat Leon ST FR 2.0 TDi (184) so that I can use the `VAG DPF`app (3.30 from App store) on my phone to monitor my DPF levels. The car is nearly 5 years old with 93,000 miles on the clock.
Like a lot of diesel drivers, you can’t view your DPF soot levels or when the car is due/attempting/failing to complete a DPF regen. Having been a bit of a dark art (the manufacturers seem to like it that way), you can now see your real time figures, see how healthy your DPF is, when a regen is taking place and whether your driving style is suiting a DPF equipped car.
The beauty of the adaptor is that it just allows your car to `talk` to your phone via Bluetooth and allows you to use any 3rd party apps on your phone. Unlike cheaper/less capable makes, this reads all of the ECU’s in your car, so you can not only diagnose issues with engine management lights (most cheaper units can do this but with little detail or the inability to reset the EML), but also more complex areas like ABS, airbags etc. (to do this you need an appropriate app).
Carista also have their own app that you can use for 30 days for free and then pay a monthly/annual subscription. This does allow you use view/clear fault codes and also tweak some of the cars settings (this varies depending on brand/model but can be checked on the Carista web-site). I plan to have the car alarm beep on lock/unlock, turn on folding mirrors on lock (rather than press and hold keyfob) and maybe tweak some other bits (before the free 30 days are up).
So – if you use the adaptor with 3rd party apps, it could cost no more than the purchase price. If you want to use the optional Carista software on your phone after 30 days, there will be a cost.
Still far cheaper and easier than paying a garage for diagnostics and I think it’s brilliant.
Also VERY useful when buying a second hand diesel car, as you can plug it in and check the DPF Oil Ash Residue (OAR) levels to see if your DPF is likely to need replacing soon. Or as in one extreme case, a car had 100,000 taken off it and the high OAR values proved it was much higher mileage than advertised.
For 20 (adaptor and DPF app), you can know a lot more about the murky world of DPF’s and not rely on expensive dealer diagnostics.
I might report back when I’ve tweaked my car!
22.1.19 UPDATE – so far so good.
I now have:
Single press unlock (all doors) *
LED Daylight running lights (DLR) on rear now always on (called Scandanavian DLR)
Alarm beep on lock/unlock *
Dual dial sweep (both dials do a full sweep when you turn iginition on – it’s a vanity thing)
Electric folding mirrors on locking (you had to hold the key fob button down before)
Some of the above are activated straight away through the app. Other are now activated in the car settings (you couldn’t access them before) and you need to go through the car settings on the dash to activate them (marked with a * above).
I’m quite happy for the money spent!
For those who think this is the ‘ONE STOP SHOP’ of diagnostic scanners out there – it comes pretty damn close. It’s plug and play, no need to connect to wifi (iOS ELM 327), simply launch the app and it connects to the Carista seamlessly every time.
Picture shows activation of ‘Real-time MPG’ on an e90 BMW M3 which can improve your driving style helping you to understand how to save fuel when not driving these cars at their full potential. This option was activated in 2 minutes on the CARISTA and not normally activated from the factory on these vehicles.
A quick lesson in On Board Diagnostics:
Most cars have several ‘modules’ (ECU’s) which control all functions of the vehicle. Do a google search of ‘BMW Module Tree’ to see what this looks like on paper.
Your 5 – 50 scanners can normally interrogate ONLY THE ENGINE (ECU) module, as this is most commonly responsible for the ‘Check Engine’ light. A 50 scanner might give you live data of engine parameters with graphing etc. for fault finding, and the 5 scanner will simply give you a fault code. These scanners rarely let you code/program anything on the vehicle.
The more expensive scanners 50 – 250 work to interrogate additional modules including ABS, Airbag, Transmission etc. which can also cause the Check Engine light to illuminate. Decent scanners have better compatibility with a wider range of vehicles and some explanation of the fault codes built in (google is normally best for interpretation of codes anyway). These are still ‘scanners’ and permit very limit coding/programming to the vehicle, unless otherwise stated (steering angle sensor, battery programming, TPMS reset etc. are common features built-in). These scanners work for 50% of vehicle problems.
The expensive 400+ scanners usually allow interrogation of all vehicle modules, or atleast as many as are compatible with the device. Common faults often occur in auxiliary modules such as Footwell, Light, Car Access System, Radio etc. which normally only dealer-level OEM software can interpret, interrogate and program properly. These scanners offer varying levels of compatibility, but work for 90% of problems on cars, most independent garages use these and they often require some sort of subscription service.
The amazing thing about the Carista is that it is actually interrogating several modules in the car which normally only the 400 scanners would do. In order to do complex customisations it needs access to read and write to these auxiliary modules. To enable features like real-time mpg, driver door unlock on one-click, and increasing brightness of rear lights would normally require 30 mins of downloading module data to a laptop, interpreting through dealer-level software, editing string values, and re-uploading to the module, all in a careful and timely manner. The Carista takes care of this whole process and does the coding in seconds. It’s quite unbelievable (although not the first on the market to do this, it seems to be the first multi-vehicle, cross-compatible device).
So in having access to all vehicle modules, Carista is able to report back detailed error codes within these modules. The caveat is it only works if the Carista scanner is compatible with the vehicle. A 2015 Mercedes E Class W212 with the ‘Auxiliary Battery Malfunction’ error was not picked up by the Carista, nor was it recognised by a trusty 200 scanner. It’s likely that to read this error in more detail, a 400+ scanner would be required, or dealer-level software with a USB cable and laptop.
The 2007-2013 BMW 3 Series E9x vehicles are very well covered, as are VAG group vehicles. Compatibility seems to be improving regularly and is already very good for a device at this price. Carista have a Beta Test Team which are constantly working to add functionality and compatibility. You can join this team from their website.
All in all, an excellent little scanner, worth every penny.
Hints for use: Keep a record of the customisations you carry out. Carry out customisations one-at-a-time with the IGNITION ON but ENGINE OFF. Ensure your car battery is in good order, if in doubt connect a battery charger if doing a long session as a battery failure during programming can be fatal for the module. End all other apps on your phone/tablet and disconnect all other bluetooth devices. Do not operate things in the vehicle whilst coding/diagnosing/using the Carista, modules should be idle during read/write. Opening / closing doors and windows and operating the radio can affect coding.
WARNING on BMW E9x vehicles: Activating the ‘Engine can be started only when car is in Neutral/Park’ is for AUTOMATIC MODELS only. Activating this customisation on a Manual vehicle will prevent it from starting! – There are a number of issues like this, where the customisation needs to be carefully considered before activation.
Wish list for future updates:
More powerful diagnostics – adaptations, activation of ABS pump for bleeding, O2 sensor testing, live data streaming, sensor readouts, graphing, etc. Save/Restore feature – after making some customisation ‘mistakes’ you have to go back and undo those customisations by guessing. Increased vehicle compatibility list, especially Mercedes and other popular cars. Also fixing functionality with other diagnostic apps which are classed as compatible, could not get these to recognise and connect to the Carista. Also, some information on each customisation, quite often it’s a case of guessing what each thing does. Grouping customisations into a ‘custom list’ would also be handy. For example, you don’t need to look at customisations relevant to the sunroof when the vehicle does not have one.
Thanks Carista for a device that everyone has been waiting for. Enjoy your car, your way!