Thread: Hawkeye

Anyone has or used hawkeye before? checked on Rovacraft website and they have it for $550 inc.

Do you think it is as good as nanocom (dont have nanocom either but heard alot about it)? The good thing about hawkeye to me is that it can be used with other model in case I upgrade the car to later model.

In direct answer to harlies specific price question, it's about 1400 AUD for an Extreme based kit for the L322, slightly more if its a post 05 with a touch screen, slightly less otherwise. You could shave 100 AUD off that if you elected for The Nano based kit rather than the Extreme, but then you loose the additional stand alone capability, which i think is well worth that bit extra.

Regards VAGCOM, many do not understand why there is such a cheap solution for VAG vehicles and not likewise for other manufacturers, the answer is actually the same as to why there are also so many cheap generic OBDII scan tools availaible.

It's a bit complex, but i will try my best to share what i know and understand as easily and clearly as i can, so that others might understand how come we are now in this strange situation and hopefully join many of the dots up.


When the OBD / OBDII vehicle communication standards were origionally drawn up, it was actually done as a vehicle system wide standard. However only a small part, namely the emmision related stuff from an EMS or Autobox actually got legislated. From that point on any Tom Dick or Harry could read the published standard and so readily know how to access the OBDII info vehicle manufactureres were forced to provide, hence all the cheap generic OBDII stuff around.

VAG however, quite uniquely decided to adopt the drawn up OBD / OBDII communication standard on all their vehicle systems. And so without any of the significant development costs, it is possible for stuff like VAGCOM to be cheaply created.

However, as stated, this was unique, because every other manufacturer, including Land Rover, took the fact that they had not been legislated vehicle wide, as a prompt to protect access to it, and make all other system and data as secure, protected and proprietary as they possibly could. With each generation this protection has got better and nowadays rolling code based anti access algorithms are the norm for anything other than the legislated OBD data it must provide.

However, everyone wishfully seems to think and assume, that because you can buy a cheap OBDII scan tool and get a VAGCOM, all systems covered Kit cheaply, they should be able to for Land Rover and the fact they can't and what kit there is is much more expensive is often incorrectly assumed as profiteering for whatever reason.

Well guess what, no Land Rover owner has any legal or other right to have any equipment to access their vehicle outside OBD at all and if Land Rover had done a better job with the security as other manufacturers did, or there were not folks out there like me to figure the security and how to decode the data and provide equipment to you all, at any price, there would still be absolutely nothing availiable at all. Don't believe me, tell me what you can independantly get for a Jaguar.

I am one of the good guys, however the plain fact is that Development costs for equipment to fully and properly access these cars goes through the roof, especially for stuff like ours that leaves absolutely no stone un turned in terms of the systems it covers and what degree of access or capability it provides in each. And that of course reflects directly in it's cost. BTW our equipment beats the absolute Pants of LR's own in respect of communication reliability and a lack of glitches.

Yea sure, there is now equipment around that pecks away at much of the older and easier stuff we did many years ago and follows our lead, apart from they don't quite provide all we do and depend on your never finding that out yourself. But let's just say that one would hardly do your own development work when someone has already done such as good a job as we did, and so these do provide a slightly lower cost option.

But, i ain't preaching or complaining, everyone already knows where we always seem to stand in respect of the quality and capability of our equipment, we are, always have been, and always intend to be diagnostic equipment equivilent to what the Range Rover is in 4x4's.

Sure everyone wishes our equipment were cheaper, just like they might wish that a Range Rover could be bought for cheap nasty 4x4 money, but that is just not being realistic of the situation at all and frankly no matter what price it was, people will always say its too xpensive and it should be cheaper.

We could of course strip out all the nice stuff we do, like saving as HTML and restoring, AVI or CSV capture etc, strip out the features and capabilities to the bare minimum, well how would you know whats missing, skip covering absolutely all the ECU's, go to a PC, with all the unreliability it gives rather than use a dedicated vehicle communications server, and then we could produce a system to rival the cost of the many lesser ones we are so often compared against, but that really is not who we are or what we do and from the 10-25 Thousand GBP days when we first covered Discovery 2, and supplied kit that others now copy from, we have done an awful lot to bring that down to more affordable levels and within reach for private individuals and enthusiasts.

With our single vehicle licencing for example, we have found a unique and innovative way to offer our top of the line full capability system at much the same cost as most of the lesser stuff now bandied around, with only the loss of the ability to show it off on a Mates Car rather than your own or that if you have 2 cars, you have to pay a fee to add the other.

I can truly understand that those not familiar with our equipment might well assume all diagnostic equipment is the same, and therefore our adding a VIN restriction is bad, but that's really looking at it from very much the wrong point of view and if you really think all diagnostic equipment is the same, then you must think the same of 4x4's.

Our single vehicle licence is designed for a user to cover just one single vehicle only. Namely the one they own at any one point in time, As opposed to a business user needing to access all vehicles.
Our equipment can however have anything up to 3 single vehicles registered on it or even some multi vehicle modules or a combination of both.

We wish we could lock our system to a given owner / user by some form of electronic implant, and call it a single owner Licence but that's impracticable. so the best we can do is lock it to their current vehicle by VIN and provide an easy and cheap upgrade or transfer path for them as possible.

So if you buy an SV system from us for a 2002 on L322 and you later upgrade to a later model or sell the system on to someone who has the same or later year model, the cost to transfer the system to another cars VIN is nothing more than a small Admin fee, and the entry of a code. This often overlooked factor has seem many owners resell their equipment usually for more than 80% of its origional purchase cost, thanks no doubt to it's well earned reputation.

Anyway i hope my efforts to explain and provide information not usually known or appreciated have been of some use and help.

Colin