I thought i would add a small snippet of info regarding my experience with the Witech system setup.
So i decided to order a "Witech V17.04.27 Micropod" kit. If you look online there are many options to choose from. I was initially going to order one from the obdii365 site listed earlier, but i had a slight change of mind and ordered one from a seller on aliexpress that would be shipped quickly via courier (dhl in my case), just search for item 32995661303 on aliexpress(
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32995661303.html). It was 167$ cad for me. They had 2 versions, one with a Hard Drive and one without. If you want to go thru the process of setting up the software, choose the cheaper "without hard drive" version. I had messaged the seller if the CD had the DRBIII files on it, and they said No, but it did have the files anyways... lol?
Package showed up, and it had the interface dongle, usb cable, and software disk. I made a backup of the disk and uploaded it to my drive for all to have, John also is sending me a copy of his version of the disk so we can compare differences. I will also upload his disk if it has any differences. It just under a 2gb package that i put in a single rar file, that contains 2 versions of the witech software, the DRBIII files, as well as a simple setup video that is not exactly helpful.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwM...ew?usp=sharing
Setup was pretty straight forward. For this though i would recommend that folks pickup a cheap used laptop for installing these programs on. I have a laptop dedicated just for all my automotive diagnostics software. More specifically its a Dell Latitude E6420, which is a model i had to specifically get for natively running the Mercedes Star/Das system. Ive set it up for dual boot on a big SSD (win xp - MB Star)/(Win 7 - everything else), i would definitely recommend folks to go straight for a SSD HD if your going to be using this for other diagnostics software and such, it just saves you alot of time waiting.
Witech install was pretty simple, You need to first install Adobe Air (included), then Java (included), then the witech application. Wait for the Witech to finish installing, then you can plug in the USB interface module. How this works actually is it emulates the device as a network connection. You might notice that windows might ask you to join a new network, this is fine and normal. Witech has different versions of this unit, and its not uncommon for automotive diagnostics devices to use network interfaces as they are usually used inside a dealer shop and have a central connection service for the wireless connections.
I will do a update of my experience with this because i havent had a chance to get the DRBIII setup on the machine yet. Theres a specific sequence of events to get it setup and working which i will document my experience with it. The witech software is fully operational however if you want to do any dealer level modifications such as swapping out ecu's and such i am pretty sure you will need a subscription "dealer connect" "TechAuthority" login which will fully work on this device from what i heard. So far i just hooked it up to a 06 charger and was able to check ecu/body codes, and fiddle with a few "preference" options. But in regards to us being able to use this on our X-fires, the DRBIII functionality is needed.
ive also attached some photos of the inside of the MicroPod interface unit.