Eric Evenchick is an animal and has created some epic hardware one can use on car exploration journeys. In 2016, he released the (CANtact)[https://linklayer.github.io/cantact/] which was an open source Controller Area Network (CAN) to USB interface for your computer. In 2019, he released a new version that offers dual CAN-FD based around a sweet 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller.

@nathancy created (Pi-CANtact)[https://github.com/nathancy/Pi-CANtact], a Python script to dump and send CAN data, then @finderman2 released (CANtools)[https://github.com/finderman2/CANtools]

First you need to work out what you actually have in your car. What type of CAN (there are many). Google is your friend, or by looking at the OBD-II port under the dash

The OBD Standard allows for (five)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics#OBD-II_signal_protocols] signalling protocols. To check which one your car has, look to see which pins are active (you might need a flash)

Once plugged in and with your laptop, you need to get Linux up and running. There's a few tools out there but for now, let's use can-utils:

sudo apt-get install can-utils

Then to initialise your hardware/CAN adapter, issue

sudo modprobe can

sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 500000

1. cansniffer --> display only the packets that are changing
2. candump --> dump all received packets
3. cansend --> send a packet

Before you sniff traffic, you need to know what you are looking at. Most likely, it will be like so:

Seems hectic right? Well actually not that hectic, if you understand how the frames Network

Thankfully there are now a host of GUI-based tools out there compared to previous years, I mostly use two: Cantact App by Eric and the amazing SavvyCAN

On American cars, they just act like chatty douchebags in a nightclub. Plug in the OBD-II cable and bosh, you will see lots of chatter. On European cars, especially those with Bosch parts, they need a wakeup packet before they start transmitting data.

I'll try and document this as much as possible over the next few weeks. I'm busy writing a sketch for Arduino to achieve this

Serial1.write(0x20); TS.sleep(OBD_INIT_TASK , 5); SerialUSB.print("OBD_INIT_PHASE = "); SerialUSB.println(OBD_INIT_PHASE); SerialUSB.println("Send communication start message 81 20 F3 81 15"); SerialUSB.println("Send message 20 with 9600 Baud"); SerialUSB.println("Wait for response");

cansend can0 5A1#11.22.33.44.55.66.77.88 cansniffer -c can0

cansend can0 0C9#8021C0071B101000

0x7c 0x7B 0x7E

sudo modprobe can sudo slcand -o -c -s6 /dev/ttyACM0 can0 sudo ifconfig can0 up