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NickMikhay
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Joined: 05/02/2026
Location: United States
Posts: 7

Posted: 07:59am 20 May 2026

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Does anyone know what happened to ELM Electronics?
They appear to have gone out of business a few years ago, and their chips are not available anywhere. The unique product was an OBD2 interpreter, that can link up to the bus of an automobile and communicate with a PC using its own set of commands. There is lots of software and the OBD2 to Serial over USB adapter is available fairly cheaply, but I couldn’t find the chip from my usual suppliers in the US, like Mouser.

The chip was a Microchip MCU 16FXX and it is the firmware that makes it work, kind of like a micromite.
It went by ELM327 but there were several variants, including the newer SPI modes.

It would be a shame for it to just dissapear, when there is no reason other than the company closing. Something just doesn’t add up.

JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4326

Posted: 09:42am 20 May 2026

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I think the illegal "clones" may have been the cause.

The elm327 was not an Elm product I think but used their code (without permission) and was useful.

You can still get all sorts of "clones". I use "clones" because lots are only somewhat cloned, often lie about the software version (in an ad / when you query the device), and so on.

There are now some with special features (again not I think from Elm) which apparently work well with FORScan. You can read about them on that site.

The "basic" elm327, if you're lucky to get a fully-featured one, has circuitry for the 3 variants of OBD II (ISO9141-2, PWM(Ford's SCP)/VPW(from GM), CAN) and may even when queried give a version that makes sense.

Some come in wired (USB), some BT (good for Android), some WiFi (for Apple).

Some software tests the device and says what it found i.e. a sort of actual capability test rather than trust the (commonly faked) version string.

If buying an elm327 be prepared to get a partially-functioning one which lies about its version, so run software to check.

John
Edited 2026-05-20 19:45 by JohnS

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