Feeler: Open Source OBC Firmware

[Joylove]

Some similar stuff going on here.

http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/c...pv5/index.html

[R0b0t]

Some similar stuff going on here.

http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/c...pv5/index.html

Yeah, I saw that this morning.

I also saw this (http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...d.php?t=989304), which looked like an awesome idea for an install location for similar project.

/hijack finished...I think

[BeLiQ]

Interesting thread didn't know it exist here in the "Audio and Electronics" subforum. Maybe I should have posted here instead of the Track forum.

I was definetely looking into to the option of integrating the TrckrX with one of the displays on the dashboard but due to time constraints, we opted for something that resembles the stock colors. A revision of the project for the future will definitely include an improvement like that.

[R0b0t]

Side node (hijack)...

You want transflective lcd's for this sort of stuff.

Standard reflective ones from sparkfun wash out horribly on a sunny day, but look great at night. Transflective ones look great at night and sort of greenish or gray but with great visibility during the day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfl...rystal_display

I ended up marrying a display from http://www.newhavendisplay.com/ to a sparkfun serial backpack.

[BeLiQ]

Side node (hijack)...

You want transflective lcd's for this sort of stuff.

Standard reflective ones from sparkfun wash out horribly on a sunny day, but look great at night. Transflective ones look great at night and sort of greenish or gray but with great visibility during the day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfl...rystal_display

I ended up marrying a display from http://www.newhavendisplay.com/ to a sparkfun serial backpack.

I was under a budget for the class 16x2 LCD Orange on Black from China for $7.50 shipped. Its not perfect but did its job.
Thanks for the tip! Same display I have on sparkfun is $24.

OP: Amazing work sir! I am reading through the pages seems great!

[m2pc]

Yeah, I saw that this morning.

I also saw this (http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...d.php?t=989304), which looked like an awesome idea for an install location for similar project.

/hijack finished...I think

Yes those are both very good projects and great for additional info, especially the OBD-interfaces.

Interesting thread didn't know it exist here in the "Audio and Electronics" subforum. Maybe I should have posted here instead of the Track forum.

I was definetely looking into to the option of integrating the TrckrX with one of the displays on the dashboard but due to time constraints, we opted for something that resembles the stock colors. A revision of the project for the future will definitely include an improvement like that.

Wow, that's a great final project for a class... I wish I could have worked on my M3 when I was in school, and done some work on it for credit!

I was under a budget for the class 16x2 LCD Orange on Black from China for $7.50 shipped. Its not perfect but did its job.
Thanks for the tip! Same display I have on sparkfun is $24.

OP: Amazing work sir! I am reading through the pages seems great!

Thanks for your kind words, I appreciate it. It's part of what keeps me going on this project.

Speaking of which, I have taken an entire day off this coming Saturday to devote entirely to the openOBC project! I took home a couple test OBCs and borrowed some lab equipment from work.

I have some interesting LIN bus ICs arriving from DigiKey tomorrow.

My goal on Saturday is to completely work out the vehicle diagnostic bus interface. By shorting a couple pins in the round diag connector, the OBC should be able to communicate with all the modules in the car.

Once this interface has been finalized, I can _finally_ produce the newest PCB design and hopefully get a real working prototype installed in the car.

Stay tuned, things are about to get a lot more interesting in this thread!

[M3C]

Thanks for the update, please keep us postaed on the results.
I feel your project will be a unique compared to all others, many BMW enthusiasts will be happy to hear from you with positive results when finalized.

[BeLiQ]

Looking forward to the progress. Maybe I can reuse some of your discoveries and make something similar for my E34 brethren. It might not be straight transition since the E34 is a non-OBD II vehicle.

[m2pc]

Looking forward to the progress. Maybe I can reuse some of your discoveries and make something similar for my E34 brethren. It might not be straight transition since the E34 is a non-OBD II vehicle.

Me too! Feel free to re-use anything in this project -- my goal is for a 100% open source hardware and software project others can benefit from, adapt, etc.

I'm not targeting OBD-II per se, but rather BMW's own D-Bus, used by DIS, INPA, ADS, etc. So this project should cover most, if not all of BMW's older vehicles. The microcontroller I'm using does have a CAN bus built-in, so I suppose it could be adapted to newer vehicles as well.

[bmwman91]

Very cool thread! I'm a hobbyist dabbler in microcontrollers & hacking E30 control electronics, and I can appreciate what is going on here! Which microcontroller are you using?

Also, any idea what communication protocol the E30 uses? I have always been curious to see what info I could get out of the diagnostic port!

[m2pc]

Very cool thread! I'm a hobbyist dabbler in microcontrollers & hacking E30 control electronics, and I can appreciate what is going on here! Which microcontroller are you using?

Also, any idea what communication protocol the E30 uses? I have always been curious to see what info I could get out of the diagnostic port!

This one: http://www.mbed.org/

I believe the E30 has the same D-bus, since the connector appears to have the same TXD and RXD pins as the E36:

[Nomade30]

I can't get any response from an E30 325 with any cables. I think that port is more used to clear si board, check voltage, test starter, etc. if you could pull live data that would be awesome, but I doubt it's possible.

[m2pc]

I can't get any response from an E30 325 with any cables. I think that port is more used to clear si board, check voltage, test starter, etc. if you could pull live data that would be awesome, but I doubt it's possible.

Well, according to the E30 electrical troubleshooting guide, there was another connector, which didn't have the TxD and RxD pins in it, maybe the early E30 cars didn't have a diagnostic bus.

Another note, I found a nice resource for the DS-2 codes used by all E36's (OBD-I and OBD-II):

http://markgardnergibson.com/BMW/index.html

I spent the whole day working on my interface; I built up this circuit from Benemorious on a solder board for testing:



Got all the modules replying to the "hello, identify yourself" command.

I'm working on switching from discretes to an IC-based approach. I tried a LIN IC today with mixed results. I need to try some others when I get back into work on Monday.

I did manage to dust off my garage lab workspace and get all my equipment in order to work on this more, which was a bonus!

[Nomade30]

Glad to hear you had progress. The E30 I was trying to communicate is an 87, you might be able to communicate with late models though.

[alancop]

Hey, its been about a month since your last post, anything goin' on?

[Morgion]

Yeah, my OBC is beginning to die on me and I'm looking to replace it with some kinda computer, seeing as it's the 11 button one with no special functions apart from Check Control (which doesn't work anyway).

[silverbullet21]

bump for the beginning of september...

[Morgion]

Yeah, some late summer/early fall updates would be nice.

[daandaman]

So I've read trough the entire topic and stop understanding when it comes to the logic language bit when you start interacting with the car. Hence why I cannot make up now how far you guys are from a finished product that we all can start building and using. Would you mind reporting that... it also helps structuring this project!

Great work until now... thanks all

[benemorius]

Well I hadn't wanted to make any announcements prematurely and get anyone's hopes up, but I agree that we are long overdue for an update.

A few weeks ago I was desperate to get things going again so I took my working schematic and spun a board design from it. The boards have just arrived and I'm about to start populating one for testing. This will not be the final design for everyone to use, but unless I've made a gross mistake or omission it should be good enough to get some much needed software development going. I already see that the silkscreen is missing (that was about 60% my fault) but if that's all that's wrong with it then we'll be in great shape.

At this point we should be one or two board revisions away from the finished product that everyone is waiting for. This could happen as soon as a month or two from now, but the primary factor is always the amount of time that can be found to work on it. This project has been just like nanotechnology - it's been a month or two away for the past couple of years and counting. I keep hoping to push things far enough along to enable additional developers to keep things going steadily, but that never quite seems to happen. With any luck, this prototype will finally achieve that.

I'll post further updates and design files in the coming days. Right now I'm itching to get some parts on these boards and see how usable they are. I did the board design from a work-in-progress schematic I hadn't touched since my last posts in this thread, so it is a matter of fact that it will be incomplete. Even in the worst case though it won't have been a waste as long as it re-ignites the project.

This prototype doesn't have all the extra features that have been tossed around, but in addition to the factory obc features it has:

accelerometer
diagnostic bus communications
usb host
usb device
real time clock with battery
micro sd card slot
analog inputs and extra digital i/o
perhaps something else I've forgotten about

[Dannorth]

That looks awesome, man. Keep up the good work.

Too bad about the silkscreen - that'll be a bit of a pain. Too bad they didn't pick up on it.

[m2pc]

Well I hadn't wanted to make any announcements prematurely and get anyone's hopes up, but I agree that we are long overdue for an update.

A few weeks ago I was desperate to get things going again so I took my working schematic and spun a board design from it. The boards have just arrived and I'm about to start populating one for testing. This will not be the final design for everyone to use, but unless I've made a gross mistake or omission it should be good enough to get some much needed software development going. I already see that the silkscreen is missing (that was about 60% my fault) but if that's all that's wrong with it then we'll be in great shape.

At this point we should be one or two board revisions away from the finished product that everyone is waiting for. This could happen as soon as a month or two from now, but the primary factor is always the amount of time that can be found to work on it. This project has been just like nanotechnology - it's been a month or two away for the past couple of years and counting. I keep hoping to push things far enough along to enable additional developers to keep things going steadily, but that never quite seems to happen. With any luck, this prototype will finally achieve that.

I'll post further updates and design files in the coming days. Right now I'm itching to get some parts on these boards and see how usable they are. I did the board design from a work-in-progress schematic I hadn't touched since my last posts in this thread, so it is a matter of fact that it will be incomplete. Even in the worst case though it won't have been a waste as long as it re-ignites the project.

This prototype doesn't have all the extra features that have been tossed around, but in addition to the factory obc features it has:

accelerometer
diagnostic bus communications
usb host
usb device
real time clock with battery
micro sd card slot
analog inputs and extra digital i/o
perhaps something else I've forgotten about

Wow, excellent job on the board layout!

I've been tied up with family obligations and work, the usual stuff that keeps me from projects like these. I'm glad to hear Benemorius is still around, cranking away at his design.
I'll eventually get mine off the ground; I have the PCB layout done but lack of extra funds has kept me from having boards produced.

Some questions:

1) What CPU are you using on that PCB?
2) Can you explain the headers on the board (is that a JTAG header on the upper left?)
3) How are you scanning the keypad, direct with port I/O on your CPU I assume?

Again, kudos to the awesome layout!

[vollosso]

Im so excited to see there is continued effort in this project!

@m2pc & benemorius

I have done some prototyping and developing with stuff along these lines, if there is any way I can help shoot me a pm.

Cant wait for a finished project!

[benemorius]

1) What CPU are you using on that PCB?
2) Can you explain the headers on the board (is that a JTAG header on the upper left?)
3) How are you scanning the keypad, direct with port I/O on your CPU I assume?

It's an lpc1768.

Yes, it's jtag. I'll attach a pdf of the missing silkscreen including labels for all the headers. Several are obviously labeled for my own use - rfid is a uart header with 3.3v and ground; ignition is two gpio's and three low side relay drivers; keyless is an spi header with 3.3v, ground, and a gpio.

Yes, I'm scanning the keypad directly from the microcontroller. The gpio's can be configured as open drain so multiple simultaneous keys are readable.

[m2pc]

Ok, this is just awesome; I'm so excited that someone is taking this project further than time and resources have allowed me to.

More questions:

1) How will one develop for this board? Can we use the online IDE at mbed.org and use the .BIN file to update the firmware in this board?
2) Got any schematics to share?
3) How are you handing power management? This is one of my big hurdles in the design I'm working on.
4) Will there be other colors available beside purple? :P