First setup

Five minutes with your phone: plug WiCAN OBD in, join its access point, give it a password of your own and put it on your home WiFi. Everything happens in the phone's browser; there is no app to install.

You need

A phone or laptop with WiFi, the car parked with the ignition on, and the name and password of your home WiFi

Access point

WiCAN_ followed by twelve letters and digits, factory password @meatpi#

Setup address

http://192.168.80.1

Saves

Nothing until you press Submit Changes; WiCAN then restarts with the new settings

Parked, not driving

Do all of this with the car parked. Never use a phone to configure WiCAN while driving.

1. Plug WiCAN OBD into the OBD-II port

   On most cars the port is under the dashboard on the driver side, sometimes behind a small cover. The power LED lights at once. Turn the ignition on so the car's modules are awake.

2. Join the WiCAN access point

   On your phone, open the WiFi settings and pick the network whose name starts with WiCAN_. The factory password is @meatpi#.

   Tip

   Your phone may warn that this network has no internet. Stay connected anyway. If the phone keeps switching back to mobile data, turn mobile data off for a few minutes.

3. Open the web interface

   In a browser, go to http://192.168.80.1. The Status tab opens: WiFi mode AP, the mDNS name of your device, the CAN settings and the voltage of the car's battery.

   

   The Status tab on a new device. The seven tabs are on the left; Submit Changes stays grey until something is changed.

4. Set a new access point password

   Open Settings. Under AP Config, replace @meatpi# in AP Password with a password of your own, 8 to 63 characters. The factory password is the same on every WiCAN, so anyone near the car could join until you change it.

   

   AP Config on a new device: access point only, channel 6, the factory password.

5. Join your home WiFi

   Set Mode to AP+Station. The Station Config fields wake up: type the SSID (the name of your network) and its Password, and pick the Security your router uses: WPA2 for most home routers, WPA3 only if yours is set to WPA3. WiCAN joins 2.4 GHz networks only.

   

   Station Config. The fields are greyed out until Mode is AP+Station.

   Auto-Disable AP decides what happens to the WiCAN access point once your network works: Disable keeps it on (the factory setting), Enable switches it off as long as WiCAN is connected to your network. Keep it on for now; you can turn it off once everything works, see WiFi.

6. Choose how the car is read

   Under CAN, Protocol decides what WiCAN does with the car's bus. Leave slcan if you are not sure; every use has its own chapter and the protocol can be changed any time.

   Protocol	For
   slcan	SocketCAN, BUSMASTER and other CAN tools. The factory setting.
   elm327	OBD apps such as Car Scanner, and RealDash's OBD2 mode.
   realdash66	RealDash as a CAN device.
   savvyCAN	SavvyCAN.
   AutoPID	Home Assistant and MQTT: WiCAN reads the car by itself.

   

   The CAN card with the factory settings.

7. Submit

   Press Submit Changes at the bottom of the page. WiCAN answers Configuration saved! Rebooting... and restarts; the page goes quiet for about 20 seconds. If the button stays grey, a field is out of range and a red message at the top of the page says which one.

8. Find WiCAN on your network

   Put your phone back on your home WiFi and open WiCAN's new address. Your router's device list shows it as WiCAN_<device id>, and on most networks http://wican_<device id>.local works too; the device id is the twelve characters from the access point name, in lower case. While the WiCAN access point is still on, you can also join it again and read Station IP off the Status tab.

   

   The Status tab of a WiCAN on a home network: WiFi Station Connected, with the address the router gave it.

What next

• Home Assistant or MQTT: switch the protocol to AutoPID and set up what to read, see AutoPID, then Home Assistant or MQTT.
• Car Scanner, RealDash, SavvyCAN, SocketCAN: see Apps over WiFi and BLE.
• A car that sits for days: WiCAN draws power from the battery while the engine is off. Turn on sleep mode under Power Saving, see Sleep and battery alert.
• The whole interface: The web interface is a tour of the seven tabs.

The page does not open at 192.168.80.1?

Make sure the phone is on the WiCAN_ network and not on mobile data, and type the address with http://, not https://. A WiCAN that has been set up before may have the access point switched off while it is on a network (Auto-Disable AP); reach it through that network instead. Common problems has the rest.