CARGB Controller

OBDII CAN

The easiest way to start, and what most people use. It plugs into the socket under your dash — the same one a garage plugs a scanner into — and works straight away, with nothing to set up. Cars sold from 2008 onwards almost all use it. Some older cars have the same socket but talk a different way through it, which this cannot read, so ask us first if yours is older.

DBC File

Import your vehicle's DBC file. The app reads it, lists the signals it contains, and you pick the ones you want — no transcribing. It can write a DBC back out as well.

Wizard

Let the app find the signal for you. Name it, type a value you can hold — 2000 rpm, say — then hold it there and hit Sample. Repeat a few times across the range and it works out which bytes track your value, ranks the candidates, and builds the signal from the one you pick.

Manual Entry

Type the frame in yourself: CAN id, start bit, length, byte order, signed or not, and the scaling. Nothing has to be discovered if you already have the numbers.

Hall Effect or Digital

For a car with no CAN bus. The two CAN pins read engine speed and road speed instead, one each, from a Hall effect sensor or from a signal that already switches cleanly between high and low. A tachometer feed works where it comes from the engine computer, which most cars from the 1990s on have. Ask us before taking one from an ignition coil — the spikes a coil produces are far larger, and we will not put an untested wiring job in writing. A two-wire reluctor sensor cannot go straight in either; it needs a converter.

None

Runs on its own. Every pattern, palette, colour and speed is yours to set in the app, on each strip, and you switch between them from your phone.

Directly supported aftermarket ECUs

Haltech

Nexus and Elite broadcast CAN, at 1 Mbps. Some signals also come through from older Haltech series.

MaxxECU

MaxxECU broadcast CAN, at 1 Mbps.

Megasquirt

Megasquirt broadcast CAN.