Have anyone used carista or obd eleven to change settings or look diagnostics. Is it worth the money for changing settings. 

I've got a Carista. It showed up four faults on the infotainment system but I've no idea what they were. I cleared them all at once but I'm not sure if the faults were significant as I've noticed no difference. There were only a few  settings that could be changed. These were a 'beep' when you lock and unlock the car, instrument needle sweep, and enabling the fog lights to illuminate as cornering lights on left and right turns. Depending on the model of Fabia you have most of the listed changes are already available. There were a few other things listed on the menu but none worked. After the expiry of the the free month I won't pay for a year's 'subscription'.  BTW to get the month's free usage you have be up front with your credit/debit card details.  Have a look at Carista's web site at https://caristaapp.com/  and input your car - this brings up a list of things you should be able to change but take it with a pinch of salt.

I haven't used an OBD11 but I suspect it probably isn't much different to the Carista.

 

I have VCDS for use at home, and Carista for use out on the road, but I bought Carista before their pricing model changed so it was a better deal then.

 

I also found some incorrectly described errors in my wife's August 2015 Polo 6C, I passed this information on to Carista for them to consider and maybe take onboard in future updates.  This sort of thing will happen now and again and I don't really hold that against Carista as car systems do change, I had VCDS to fall back on and let me know that it was an intermittent ON/OFF switch infotainment issue, though I've just guessed that it was clumsy finger work by me so I've not asked VW to check it out.

 

Any scan tools I have ever bought do need you to alert them to any strange issues you encounter when using them, I've had ROD file issues with VCDS which they corrected immediately. 

 

For day to day checking what faults appear these cheaper scan tools like Carista are ideal and should allow you to either to dismiss and clear them, or book the car in and having a good idea what the issue is to maybe save you being fobbed off!

3 hours ago, bertJ said:

I've got a Carista. It showed up four faults on the infotainment system but I've no idea what they were. I cleared them all at once but I'm not sure if the faults were significant as I've noticed no difference.

 

Sounds a bit like those 'magic fix your phone battery" apps on google play......

Might just get one to check for faults before servicing and if the car has faults. Thanks

I bought my OBDeleven about two years ago now, so my opinions are based around that time. 

 

Obdeleven is the better and more rounded product out of the two. It has greater functionality (long coding) and at the time seemed to have better support and a larger user base.  The negative is it’s Android only. But, you can pickup a cheap Andriod handset so it’s not that much of a dealbreaker. 

 

Something to keep in mind, that I’ve been banging on about for a while as well as others. Take time to learn how to code yourself. Avoid the apps. We’re seeing more and more threads pop up where people have used the apps (pre defined, one click changes) and the results are not as expected.  Errors are then thrown up and there doesn’t seem to be a changelog of what paraemeters were before editing either. If you code yourself, you know exactly what’s been changed and have a history as well. 

 

Yes, loads of people do seem to be ok using apps. Me personally? I’ve no interest in blindly editing. 

 

 

I suspect the apps are coding that has been submitted by users for rewards. No testing done apart from maybe if they get more than one submitter with the same or similar coding.

 

So tested by amateurs and so not properly. Certainly not from official documentation, just trial and error and in some or a lot of cases incomplete or inappropriate coding leaving you with problems as they probably won't tell what exactly it coded to protect their income stream.

 

Maybe we are being a bit too old fashioned, I have been using VCDS long enough to remember when resetting service reminders was a case of going into many locations and clearing the counters back to zero - then VCDS made it "one click".

 

Testing of most of these "one click" changes does seem to be a bit light weight, with some very eager people signing up of beta testing and ending up being the first to have successfully made a change or maybe just a "sorry" communication when it went badly.

 

Carista for me is just a replacement for one of these VAG specific scan tools which ran out of usefulness when VW Group changed things, so it usually only gets used to check for faults when out and about - and I can use it with my iPhone. I did use it to enable auto locking/unlocking on my daughter's late 2009 Ibiza though, and once to reset the service indicator on that car when VCDS chose to find that task impossible - maybe after an update!

I used Carista the other day to enable refill quantity and needle staging on my car. Not much else that it can do, but that's mostly because my car is a standard SE so the spec isn't that high.