Reverse Engineering the Vehicle's Networks

This is such a complex topic that I expect this category is going to get really messy. I'll do my best to mitigate that by putting together more concentrated information into the Papers section.

Essentially, what we are looking to do here is to take control of the various networks within the car. By why would we want to do that?

Well, let's talks about ECUs. An ECU is a computer inside the car. Your car has tons of them. I will be putting together a list of all the ECUs soon. But anyway, all of these ECUs are able to talk to each other which allows for the integration you experience in the car.

Just an example: When you open your hardtop, the roof ECU commands the door ECUs to roll down the driver and passenger side windows. It does this by sending commands over the BEAN bus (Body Electronics Area network.) The BEAN bus carries tons of information around the car containing sensor, switch, analog, and diagnostics data.

This networking concept reduces the amount of wiring needed in the car. Without out, the roof ECU would need several wires running throughout the car to activate the relays for the windows. With the BEAN bus, just one wire is used.

This network also makes expansion possible. Additional ECUs can be added to the system as 'Dealer Options' to provide more functionality to the car.

Unfortunately this is not very well documented and is going to require quite a bit of work to reverse engineer the system, but the ability to take control of the systems in the car and develop new functionality is a prize worth working for.

In order to do this, I will be building up a little 'test-bench' that involves wiring up some of the original components from the car. It will also require the development of some tools (hardware and software) to monitor and explore the network communications between the components. Once I have something stable, I can then install this in the car and from there, I can work towards unlocking all of it's secrets.

I have some parts I will need coming, so you'll be seeing a flurry of activity in the category.