Today I’m announcing my next project, mavroOBD.  It’s an open source Arduino compatible OBD/Can-Bus module.  The goal behind this is to provide an easy way for people to interact with their vehicles.   Not sure where this will lead but I’ve been wanting to get into the “car hacking” space for a while.  I’ve already sourced an OBD port module and designed two boards (power and mainboard).    This is an open source project and is available here on Github.

The idea is to be able to enhance my vehicles capabilities — since they don’t provide us a way to do this via configuration screens in the vehicle — one thing that drives me crazy is in my vehicle, I have to press a button for my front parking sensors to be active (if I haven’t been in reverse first).  This is annoying when pulling into a space.   My first task will be to emulate the parking sensor button when traveling less than 10mph.

The first step is to sniff the OBD port Can-Bus traffic to see if I have access to the system via the OBD port.  Depending on the manufacture some of the “internal”, non-diagnostic features are on a low or medium speed Can-Bus.   I’m still learning so if anyone has more knowledge and wants to share, please post a comment or join my efforts.  More to come… components will be here soon and I will be posting again when I get the boards populated and I can access the high-speed can bus network of my vehicle.