Hello, I'm Professor John Kelly and this is the WeberAuto Youtube channel.
About three months ago I read an article on LinkedIn from the national automotive
service task force notifying us that Tesla had now opened up access to their diagnostic
scan tool software that you use on a laptop computer and connect with a special cable to the
vehicle an ethernet cable and communicate with the vehicle there's a cable for the Model S
and X and there's a cable for the Model 3 and Y and I was able to find these cables on eBay to
purchase. I'm not sure where exactly Tesla expects you to purchase these but they are available on
eBay and they're about a hundred dollars each for an ethernet cable which is pretty crazy
but it does have the correct connection that plugs in underneath the dashboard on the
Model 3 and the Model Y and plugs in underneath the touch screen on the Model S and the Model X
so depending on which vehicle you have you may need you may need one or both cables
if you're a service center also so I was excited to see that this diagnostic scan tool software was
was available and so I decided I want to try it and so I purchased access to tesla's
service information for one month 30 days and then a separate subscription to their
diagnostic scan tool software called toolbox three and so it's pretty expensive but not
outrageously expensive compared to other automobile manufacturers
and what they charge for similar services so you'd have to be pretty serious about
working on Teslas to want to spend that kind of money but here at our school we certainly want to
learn about and play with teslas and so I thought this here's a great opportunity let's check it out
so I'm going to show you in the rest of this video what I found using the Toolbox
3 scan tool software and their service information so let's take a look at that
okay I am going to demonstrate accessing the tesla service information
and the Tesla Toolbox 3 scan tool software so we are going to go to service.tesla.com you have to
purchase a subscription there's a separate subscription for the service information
and a separate subscription for the Tesla Toolbox 3 software so this page here is the tesla service
page we can access at the top here where it says model S model 3 model X model Y roadster we can
access the service manuals service information for those vehicles so if I click on model s
here's the service manual service documents wiring diagrams owners manuals body repair the different
generations of the model S same with the model 3 the model X the model Y and the
original roadster if we look at the model 3 and click on repair or service manual then it takes us
in to the service manual where we have basically a table of contents over here on the left side
and if we click on something like the battery system then it shows us where it is on the vehicle
and then we can look at individual pieces as far as the removal and replacement of that
part I have not been able to find any diagnostic information in this service manual it's all
how to remove and replace different components let's go back
to our main page here we can look at an electronic parts manual and get the part number
of different parts and sometimes they give you a specification to differentiate the
parts for example the different rear motors or front motors of the model 3
and other vehicles we have the wiring diagrams and connector references and you need to be able to
look on the "B" pillar when you open the driver's door to determine when that vehicle was made
and then click on the appropriate circuit diagram when you click on a circuit diagram
it allows you to download a pdf document of the electrical wiring diagram for that vehicle
you can really spend a lot of time in the service manual especially going through I would recommend
that you look at the information the general information section which tells you how to use the
service manual and other important things about the vehicle inspection and service modes
maintenance and so on but for now let's go back to our main service page here
and we can click on access toolbox software now I rented this toolbox software for one month
this is my last day of the subscriptions so I am going to click on that
let's see if we still have access
looks like we do before we do anything you have to read the getting started in Toolbox 3.
it requires a special diagnostic ethernet cable connection to the vehicle it requires that you use
google chrome as your browser and it requires that you set your hard-wired ethernet connection
IP address to a certain address to communicate with the vehicle so just because you access the
software doesn't mean it's going to work I had to order a 100 dollar cable to connect to the vehicle
and it's just an ethernet cable that plugs into my laptop and then it has this special
4-pin connector that plugs in under the dashboard of our Model S here as you can see in these
photos so once you've got the right cable you've got Google chrome set up and you've got
the right IP address punched into your network settings oh and there's also a security setting
you have to make in in google chrome to make it less secure then you can click on connect
to vehicle still doesn't work on this side, but if I click over here connect the vehicle hit connect
and now as you can see we have connection to the vehicle everything turns green, green checkmarks
and now the first time I use this software I was expecting something else to happen but nothing
happened and so I had to go exploring we have actions right here in this tab in this actions tab
we have a whole bunch of different actions that can be performed on the vehicle
on other scan tools, these might be called active tests or
commands or something that you're using the scan tool software itself to command the vehicle to
do something or to request that the vehicle do something so this list is rather lengthy
and what I found out is if you look in the service manual if you're going to replace for example
the drive unit when the drive unit gets replaced then you come in and you perform
a certain action and so these actions are accessible here in this toolbox
and you can search by task type or subsystem all right then
dashboards is our next tab and as you can see we have
additional tasks that can be performed
the rear-drive unit replaced the front-drive unit replace service tools thermal and HVAC systems
if you go to service tools let's go there then notice over here we have a DTCs tab that stands
for diagnostic trouble codes and these are the names of the onboard computers on this vehicle
and I have a decoder here somewhere that tells what all of those mean but if you want
to check the codes in all of those computers then you come over here and you click on check all and
then read DTC's and then it takes a minute for it to go through and communicate with all those
onboard computers and then it'll get give you a status of how things are here in just a moment
I was really surprised by this software I thought it would be a little more like other diagnostic
scan tools that I have used but not very user friendly at all I mean I get I am getting the
hang of it but it's certainly different okay so notice we have zero results uh if we did have
a result then we would click on this little arrow here and it would tell us what the error code is
and then there's an error code description in the service information that you can look up what
what that means you can also clear the diagnostic trouble codes you could uncheck or check none you
could just check codes in one module rather than all of them so that's diagnostic trouble
codes then we've got this other tab here named Vitals and I saw these little braces here and
I thought well that's not very helpful but then I saw the button down to the bottom right
that says read vitals so I click on that and now we have a very long list of all of the diagnostic
data parameters on this vehicle so think of this as your data list on another scan tool
and it's a one-time shot, you are getting the data from the time that you clicked
read vitals we can search in this if we just hit control f we can search um
here we go here's our 12 volt battery voltage right here 13.54
now if I hit read vitals again notice it's 13.55 so it does update, it does change even though
it's only, it appears to only be a one-shot thing. so we're not able to read a constantly refreshing
data list like you can on other diagnostic scan tools all right then we have
driver assist system functions for calibration of the driver-assist features
driver assist images we can look at images that let me capture this one
oh it's not going to let me, images from the different cameras on the vehicle so
for the scan tool coming to dashboards and service tools for me and then clicking on
DTCs to read trouble codes and clear them clicking on vitals to read the data list
these other items are things that you would access occasionally but not very often and these these
other items here are ones that you would do only when you're performing certain service procedures
here's thermal and HVAC system different things that you can do here's replace the rear-drive unit
these are all just actions that you would access in the action tab as far as I can tell anyway so
not the most user-friendly uh scan tool software but
interesting to play with and i was able to find a lot a lot of what i was looking for but
not exactly what I was expecting there is there is over here on the left a getting started
article that you can read about getting set up with the toolbox three software
and then service documentation takes you back to your service information
but one thing I have found is if you have too many tabs open the software
seems to lose track of which tab you're on and you lose authorization so
I have access to the model s and model 3 service information if I come back over here
but over here it tells me that well no it let me in any way, so I found a few times that it gives
me that error screen so you got to watch your tabs I keep the main service tab where I logged
in all the way over here on the left and then I keep going back to that rather than leaving
a whole bunch of tabs open because it opens a new tab or every time you click on another
option there see now we're back to 13.54 all right well that's certainly not the
most comprehensive but I am out of time on my subscription and I was hoping to spend more time
with this Toolbox 3 software to get more familiar with it
I will certainly rent it again later on for future boot camps and play with it some more
and look at the service information and see if we can figure out what all is
required for different service procedures but for now, this has just been a brief
overview of the tesla service information and tesla Toolbox 3 software application
you