I have an ODBII USB cable for vehicle diagnostics, unfortunately I haven't been able to get it working on Ubuntu 12.04. The closest I've come is using the VAG-COM software with wine, using the ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1 trick and running stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 speed 9600 repeatedly. It will connect and show the vehicle is OBDII, but none of the useful features seem to be working. I tried:

• Scantool - says it's connecting to the /dev/device in terminal, but doesn't.
• obdgpslogger - times out all the time.
• pyobd - This seems to be the most up-to-date source I could find, I had to adjust the code a bit to work (see here for changes). Still, in obd_io.py interpret_result function, it says it's looking for 4 space separated numbers, where the usb-serial is receiving bogus code "0100" instead?

The device shows up in lsusb as:

ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC

Is the problem that these native tools don't expect a USB serial, or a serial of this type? Or are these apps too old to recognize OBD2 of this vehicle?