RX8 Project – Part 20, Canbus #5, RX8 Odometer

So again for this post I’m going to concentrate on one specific aspect of the RX8 CANbus system which a few people have asked me about and that’s making the ODOmeter on the cluster tick up correctly without the factory PCM (ECU) being fitted to the car. This also allows the trip A and B meters to work correctly as they are all linked to the same register.

I’ve mentioned in previously to people that the odo requires a state change to update and I think this is why people haven’t been able to identify what controls it – simply writing a value doesn’t do anything. It is controlled via byte 1 of what I defined as statusMIL, this is CAN ID 0x420 which is the same ID which also controls things like the temperature and oil pressure displays on the dash.

I originally identified how this was controlled during some of my early reverse engineering work on the cluster when I was just sending blocks of values (initially cycling between 00 and FF for all bytes in the array) to CAN ID’s to see if I could make anything happen and I noticed at some stage the trip had increased. Clearly this meant one of the ID’s was doing something and because the same ID also controls various warning lights they also flashed on and off at the same time as the odo incremented which made the identification of the ID rather simple.

Next up I edited the program to count each byte in the CAN data up in order, so for example start with an array with only 00 in each byte then starting at byte 0 increment the value by 1, send the whole array, wait briefly and increment again and so on. When the top value of FF is reached set it back to 00 step on to byte 1 and so on. This allowed me to isolate the specific byte that was controlling the odo changes. Anyway the story goes on and after a lot of trial and error with values and timings I got to this bit of fairly horrible test code:

#include <mcp_can.h>
//#include <mcp_can_dfs.h>      //Declaration for Standard Can
#include "mcp2515_can.h"        //Declaration for Seeedstudio Can Library

#define CANint 7  // Normally 2
#define LED2 23   // Normally 8
#define LED3 0    // Normally 7

#define NOP __asm__ ("nop\n\t")
const int SPI_CS_PIN = 17;
mcp2515_can CAN0(SPI_CS_PIN);   // Declaration for Seeedstudio library
//MCP_CAN CAN0(SPI_CS_PIN);     // Set CS to pin 10 - Older Library version


void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);

    delay(1000);    //delay to allow for monitor
    Serial.println("Init…");
    Serial.println("Setup pins");
    pinMode(LED2, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(SS, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(LED3, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(CANint, INPUT);

    Serial.println("CAN init:");
    
    if (CAN0.begin(CAN_500KBPS) == CAN_OK) 
    {
        Serial.println("OK!"); 
    } 
    else 
    {
        Serial.println("fail :-(");
        while (1) 
        {
            Serial.println("Zzz… ");
            delay(1000);
        }
     }

Serial.println("Good to go!");
}

unsigned char statusPCM[8]  = {125,0,0,0,156,0,0,0};                            // Write to 201
unsigned char statusMIL[8]  = {140,0,0,0,1,0,0,0};                              // Write to 420

void loop() 
{
    
    unsigned int i=0;
    unsigned int j=0;
    unsigned int k=0;
    float mile=0;
    unsigned char num;
    
    
   
    //Warning Lights - 0=Error, 1=OK

        for(k=0;k<200;k++)
        {
          
          for(i=0;i<=206;i++)
          {
          
          statusPCM[0] = 50;           //RPM  Value*67 gives 8500 RPM Reading Redline is 127
          statusPCM[1] = 0;           
          statusPCM[2] = 0;
          statusPCM[3] = 0;
          statusPCM[4] = 93;           //Speed  Value=0.63*(Speed)+38.5
          statusPCM[5] = 0;
          statusPCM[6] = 0;
          statusPCM[7] = 0;

          statusMIL[0] = 145;         // Temp 91-0%; 96-10%; 107-25%; 152=50%; 158-75%; 164=100%    
          statusMIL[1] = i;           // Odo / Trip     
          statusMIL[2] = 0;
          statusMIL[3] = 0;
          statusMIL[4] = 1;           // Oil Pressure (0=Off, >=1 is OK)         
          statusMIL[5] = 0;           // Check Engine Light
          statusMIL[6] = 0;           // Battery Charge Light
          statusMIL[7] = 0;
          
            CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x420, 0, 8, statusMIL);
            delay(20);
            CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x201, 0, 8, statusPCM);
            delay(20);
          }
          
        Serial.println("Miles : ");
          mile=(k+1)*0.05;
          Serial.println(mile);
      
        } 
while(1){}
}

Basically much of it is the includes and setup which is common on all CAN code but the more interesting bit is the main loop. In essence it just uses two nested loops to count up to a certain value and transmit the new value each time. All the other CAN is just static values to turn off warning lights on the cluster – the the ID 201 isn’t actually required here but it stops extra things blinking at you! Additionally ignore the comments on the statusPCM, while these sort of work I realised later that the speed and RPM use 2 byte blocks rather than a single byte to display all values.

So in the code there are 2 loops, the first is counter “i” which in this counts up to 206 (which is 207 steps including 0) and the second outer loop “k” which counts up to 200 and for each increment of “i” the new byte value is sent over CAN. Now through experimenting with various values for counters in earlier versions of this code I’d come up with the values you see here which seem to be consistently accurate for me. Basically 207 changes of the byte sent to the dash = 0.05 Miles counted so the extra loop “k” multiplies this up to a useful mileage change we can measure on the cluster. every time “k” increments it also sends and update to the serial monitor so we can keep track of it. We can see that 200 loops of 0.05 miles should result in a count of 10 miles and that’s exactly what we get on the trip meter.

The very last line is one you don’t see in many Arduino programs, “while(1){};” makes the program hang at this step. Basically what it’s doing is a normal while loop except using a static 1 as the condition makes it always true but there’s no code in the curly brackets so it will just sit there endlessly doing nothing rather than starting the main loop again as it would normally. This was simply so I could leave the code running to completion (at this stage I was sending CAN data with much wider time delays than needed to make sure none got missed) without it looping back round without me noticing.

So now we can count it up which is interesting but not especially useful as it is but since my car didn’t move I left it here for a long time with the plan to sort it out later. Anyway following my recent posts resurrecting this project there’s been some interest in how to sort it out so I started working on it within my already butchered about derivative of Dave Blackhursts code, which in itself was a further development of much of my earlier work. I’m aiming to post a version of my finalised code for the complete system once I’m happy I’ve got all the features I want but this should give you enough info to understand how this bit works.

Updates by Timer1 Interrupt

First off lets just say this didn’t work quite right for this task so I moved away from timer interrupts but it does include some interesting bits of timer manipulation so I’m including it anyway.

The best idea I had initially was to use the data from the ABS system which gave an accurate speed for all the wheels individually but the problem was I would need to vary the frequency at which the ODO byte was changed such that the ODO rate matched the speed. My first idea here was to use a hardware timer on the Arduino and use a hardware interrupt to increment and send the CAN packet. This would require the timer count value to be calculated on the fly from the ABS data. First I built and Excel spreadsheet which firstly calculated the frequency we need to update and send CAN data at to give the right ODO reading for a given wheel speed.

excel mph to freq conversion

So all this does is some basic calculation,

Pulses per mile * mph = pulses per hour

pulses per hour / 3600 = Hz (updates per second)

1000 / Hz = Millisecond interval per update (used to cross reference from the CAN logger)

From this we can fiddle about with values to see what gives enough range on timer1 (because it’s 16 bit which gives us a much wider range of intervals, timer 0 is only 8 bit and usually used elsewhere in the Arduino IDE) to make this work, or for that matter if it even is possible without dynamically changing the pre-scaler value.

Timer 1 is controlled primarily by register OCR1A which is the value it counts to before the timer resets so we need to work out the correct value for the register to do what we want. Rearranging the standard equation gives us this:

OCR1A = (( Clock_Freq / Required_Freq ) / Prescale ) – 1

Now because the count is a 16 bit integer there will be some error created by rounding on the count value so I added another section which updates to show the error vs the required value.

Excel OCR1A count value calculation

The top two lines are just the standard calculation the middle two lines are where the clock and prescaler values are entered and the OCR1A value is calculated. The 230 and 1.15 come from the previous step automatically. The bottom two lines then return the degree of error resulting.

It looks like we can cover the range we want with a prescaler of 1024 however as the speed goes down below 1mph the period between CAN sends becomes excessively long and beyond the range of the timer (max value of OCR1A is 65535), the limit is approximately 0.21 mph which seems reasonable. This means only 1 update over CAN every 4.1s which it turns out is about the limit anyway because if you make the updates longer than about 4.5s for this ID all the warning lights turn on again between updates but we can handle this case seperately.

Now to get the timer working we need to set up a few other things

TCCR1B options

We want to use CTC mode resets the count value at the top of the count to make it loop round constantly so WGM12(CTC1) in register TCCR1B should be set to 1.

TCCR1B options

Next to get the prescaler value of 1024 we need we set CS12 and CS10 to 1. Lastly OCIE1A in TIMSK1 needs to be set to 1 to trigger the interrupt every time the count reaches the count value set bring it all together and we get something like this :

void setupTimer1() {
  noInterrupts();
  // Clear registers
  TCCR1A = 0;
  TCCR1B = 0;
  TCNT1 = 0;

  // Freq (Hz) (Clock (Hz) /((OCR1A + 1) * Prescaler))
  OCR1A = 64700;
  // Set CTC mode - trigger interrupt on TOP
  TCCR1B |= (1 << WGM12);
  // Prescaler 1024
  TCCR1B |= (1 << CS12) | (1 << CS10);
  // Output Compare Match A Interrupt Enable
  TIMSK1 |= (1 << OCIE1A);
  // Enable Interrupts
  interrupts();
}

// Send update to cluster on interrupt
ISR(TIMER1_COMPA_vect) {
    // Increment ODO byte each time function is called
  // this makes ODO update based on ISR frequency call.
  // Check speed is > 0.21 mph ( (left+right/2) * 0.337962 * 100
  if ( (frontLeft + frontRight) >= 68){
    send420[1]++;   
  }
   
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x420, 0, 7, send420);
 
  return;
}

Next up to convert from a speed to a timer count value we need to do the same thing on the Arduino that we did in Excel earlier so here’s a quick function which just calculates count.

int calcTimer1Count(float speedKMH){
  float freq;
  int count;
  float speedMPH;
  
  //Serial.print("speed = ");
  //Serial.println(speedKMH);
  speedMPH = speedKMH / 160.934;
  // Required frequency for timer 1 ISR
  //  1.15 is 4140 (Pulse per Mile) / 3600 (1hr in seconds)
  //  0.7146 is 2572.5 (pulse per KM) / 3600
  freq = speedMPH * 1.15; 
  //Serial.print("freq = ");
  //Serial.println(freq);
  // Required OCR1A value based on 16Mhz clock, works best with 1024x prescaler giving minimum 0.21mph
  count = ((16000000 / freq) / 1024) - 1;
  //Serial.print("count = ");
  //Serial.println(count);
  return count;
}

The input here is km/h because that’s what the ABS values are given in so we might as well convert that here as well.

Now in the main loop we’re scanning for incoming data on CAN and checking what the ID is already for the bits to manage the immobiliser exchange and handily in this Dave Blackhurst has already added code to read the ABS data which we know is coming in on ID 4B0 in two byte blocks so we can just update OCR1A with a function call to our new calculation function with the average of the front wheel speeds whenever new ABS data is received.

    if(ID == 0x4B0) {
      frontLeft = (buf[0] * 256) + buf[1] - 10000;
      frontRight = (buf[2] * 256) + buf[3] - 10000;
      rearLeft = (buf[4] * 256) + buf[5] - 10000;
      rearRight = (buf[6] * 256) + buf[7] - 10000;
      
      //Going to check front wheel speeds for any issues, ignoring the rears due to problems created by wheelspin
      if (frontLeft - frontRight > 500 || frontLeft - frontRight < -500) { //more than 5kph difference in wheel speed
        checkEngineMIL = 1; //light up engine warning light and set speed to zero
        vehicleSpeed = 0;
      } else {
        vehicleSpeed = (((frontLeft + frontRight) / 2) / 100); //Get average of front two wheels.
      }
      //Update timer count value with live speed for ODO
      OCR1A = calcTimer1Count((frontLeft + frontRight) / 2);
      
      // Dump speed to serial for debug - this is just a cropped int.
      //Serial.println(vehicleSpeed);
      
    }

Now when I ran the whole program I hit a minor issue, it worked initially and the timer speed changed correctly but after a small number of can packets the Arduino stopped sending any other CAN data. I don’t know what caused it – best guess is when the interrupt was called it was blocking something and causing a buffer overrun somewhere else making the Arduino crash but either way I felt a different approach would probably be quicker than solving that so I moved on.

Updates by Delay

So the alternate approach relies on the main loop running quite quickly and simply counts how much time has elapsed since a function was last called and if over the set value calls the function. This basically allows functions to be called in the loop without needing to slow the loop itself down. The down side here vs interrupts is the accuracy of this is entirely based on the speed of the main loop so if the loop slows down the events will move about in time. Also obviously if the loop is only doing something like 10ms per iteration you will never get something to go faster than that!

void loop() {
  //Send information on the CanBus every 100ms to avoid spamming the system.
  if(millis() - lastRefreshTime >= 100) {
    lastRefreshTime += 100;
    sendOnTenth();
  }

So this is the initial version Dave used in his code to keep the scanning at a decent pace for the CAN reads. The function millis() just returns a counter value in milliseconds since startup. Unfortunately scanning at millisecond rates isn’t going to cut it for the ODO because at say 200mph the update period is 4.35ms so if we work in ms the best we could do assuming the loop ran fast enough is 5ms which means the ODO would be going 15% slower than the vehicle speed. Luckily Arduino also has a similar built in function ‘micros()’ which does the same thing but counts in microseconds. Some of you familiar with binary might be thinking an integer counting up in microseconds will hit its limit very quickly and then it is likely to cause a problem with the calculation however we get round this because the returned value is of type ‘unsigned long’ which gives us a range of up to about 70 minutes before the count resets. Interestingly because of the way data types wrap round like this the variable “lastRefreshTime” can actually be either signed or unsigned and it works the same.

long calcMicrosecODO(float speedKMH){
  long uS;
  float freq;
  float speedMPH;
   
  Serial.print("Speed = ");
  Serial.print(speedKMH/100);
  Serial.println(" km/h");
  speedMPH = speedKMH / 160.934;
  // Required frequency for timer 1 ISR
  //  1.15 is 4140 (Pulse per Mile) / 3600 (1hr in seconds)
  //  0.7146 is 2572.5 (pulse per KM) / 3600
  freq = speedMPH * 1.15; 
  Serial.print("Freq = ");
  Serial.print(freq);
  Serial.println(" Hz");
  uS = 1000000/freq;
  if(uS < 4500000 && uS > 0){
    return (uS);}
  else {
    return (4500000);
  }

Similarly to the previous interrupt version we have a function which calculates the correct delay required to keep the ODO at the right frequency, there are some minor differences to work in microseconds and if the speed is too slow cap the output at 4500000us (4.5s). Otherwise it’s much the same.

    if(ID == 0x4B0) {
      frontLeft = (buf[0] * 256) + buf[1] - 10000;
      frontRight = (buf[2] * 256) + buf[3] - 10000;
      rearLeft = (buf[4] * 256) + buf[5] - 10000;
      rearRight = (buf[6] * 256) + buf[7] - 10000;
      
      //Going to check front wheel speeds for any issues, ignoring the rears due to problems created by wheelspin
      if (frontLeft - frontRight > 500 || frontLeft - frontRight < -500) { //more than 5kph difference in wheel speed
        checkEngineMIL = 1; //light up engine warning light and set speed to zero
        vehicleSpeed = 0;
      } else {
        vehicleSpeed = (((frontLeft + frontRight) / 2) / 100); //Get average of front two wheels.
      }
      //Update timer count value with live speed for ODO
      ODOus = calcMicrosecODO((frontLeft + frontRight) / 2);
      
      Serial.print("ODO Step : ");
      Serial.print(ODOus);
      Serial.println("us");
      // Dump speed to serial for debug - this is just a cropped int.
      //Serial.println(vehicleSpeed);
      
    }

Above we see the call for ‘calcMicrosecODO’ which is basically the same as the interrupt version but gives an actual time delay in microseconds rather than a timer count. It is called in this way with a calculation in the parameter field because if it is stored in a variable in between the number gets cropped off at the decimal point even if the variable is a float – I believe this is due to the way Arduino processes floats.

void loop() {
  //Send information on the CanBus every 100ms to avoid spamming the system.
  if(micros() - lastRefreshTime >= 100000) {
    lastRefreshTime += 100000;
    sendOnTenth();
  }
  // Call function to updateMIL on variable timebase
   if(micros() - ODORefreshTime >= ODOus) {
   ODORefreshTime += ODOus;
    sendOnClock();
  }

So our extra call for the variable timed refresh is above, it varies a bit from the first one because we have a varying time delay depending on the frequency required which here is a long we are calling ‘ODOus’ which we calculated previously. Obviously because we are using two comparisons we need another refresh time variable to keep them distinct, this is also a long. Also the second one calls a specific function for the variable time refreshes ‘sendOnClock()’

void sendOnClock(){
  // Do not increment ODO byte when step is = 4.5s
  // slower than this updateMIL must still be called so 
  // warning lights don't turn on but speed may be zero!
  if ( ODOus < 4500000){
    send420[1]++;   
  }
  updateMIL();
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x420, 0, 7, send420);
}

This function is pretty basic, all it’s doing is checking the resulting ODOus value isn’t 4.5s because if it is this value is means the calculation is at it’s upper limit and the car isn’t moving (specifically the speed is below 0.21 mph). In this state it still updates the warning light registers and sends the CAN packet to keep the warning lights from blinking on but it doesn’t increment the ODO byte value so the ODO doesn’t continue to tick on.

// Time delay for Odo
long ODOus = 4500000;      

// Set to max 4,500,000 to keep dash 
// MIL warning lights awake at 0 speed

The declaration for ODOus is set as 4,500,000 at start up so it correctly. The only downside to this is it takes a few seconds for the dash lights to go out initially and the oil pressure gauge goes to normal in two steps. This could be dramatically improved either by setting a higher minimum speed at which the ODO ticks because even increasing to 0.5 mph would improve the maximum duration to 1.7 seconds. Another option to avoid this is just to send an update to 0x420 in between the ODO calls. If we keep the one to the other loop ‘sendOnTenth’ without incrementing the ODO value it will just display any changes to the warning lights almost instantly while keeping the ODO working correctly.

void sendOnTenth() {
  //  PCM Status's to mimic the PCM being there, these may be different for different cars, 
  //  and not all are always required, better safe and include them all.
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x203, 0, 7, send203);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x215, 0, 8, send215);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x231, 0, 8, send231);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x240, 0, 8, send240);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x620, 0, 7, send620);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x630, 0, 8, send630);
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x650, 0, 1, send650);
  
  updateMIL();
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x420, 0, 7, send420);    // Duplicated in sendOnClock to update ODO

  updatePCM();
  CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x201, 0, 8, send201);

So that’s it but I should probably mention that I’ve not tested this on a live car however I have a program which works out the correct CAN byte values and then builds a correctly formatted string which can be pasted into USBtinViewer and sent to simulate an update from the ABS and the Arduino and cluster all seem to respond correctly:

Labview speed to CAN bytes converter  front panel
Labview speed to CAN bytes converter  front panel code

In this code you will see a scaling factor of 100 which should be correct but on my cluster I seem to get a speedometer reading 1 mph higher than intended from a calculated 5-185mph I actually see 6-186 mph on the cluster. I’m not sure why this is but it may be on purpose due to the common requirement for speedometers to never read lower than true speed. Indicated speed is required to be within -0% / +10% + 4km/h of actual speed in the EU. Technically we could correct this by doing two vehicle speed calculations on the Arduino, one for the odometer calculation using the proper scaling factors to keep it accurate and one for the displayed vehicle speed using a scaling factor which corrects this error. I do not intend to do this but I have found a scaling factor of 99 rather than 100 makes the speedometer match up if required.

As ever your mileage may vary, but hopefully it’ll closer than it was before! As I said earlier this is part of another major overhaul of the code and I’m intending to publish the final version as a complete code when I’m happy I’ve got everything working but that might take some time.

RX8 Project – Part 19, Canbus #4, The Comeback!

Lets be clear before we start – This will not allow you to start a car with a factory ECU with the wrong key or by bypassing the immobiliser. This is to do with making things like engine swaps work fully in the car without the factory ECU connected.

I’m going to apologise right now, there’s quite a lot of background about how I investigated the process of the ECU talking to the immobiliser in this one, if you don’t care and just want the CAN info scroll down a bit. I’ll write a complete update of all the codes when this phase of work is all done.

As some of you are probably aware my RX8 engine swap has been going on some time for a variety of reasons but specifically due to not having cover and so not easily being able to hook the car CANbus up to my computer to do live diagnostics I had hit something of a problem. I couldn’t generate data fast enough to fake all the devices on the bus reliably to test things on my desk away from the car but had no-where undercover to work with it connected to a PC so largely I’d planned to concentrate on organising a garage – something that should have happened more than a year ago now but due to the pandemic and related 2020 problems that not gone as well as hoped!

Anyway a few months ago on trying to find a CAN diagram for the car to aid answering a comment someone posted on here (yes I do try to answer them but I know sometimes it takes a while – I’m hoping to keep a better eye on it this year!) I came across a video from a guy called Dave Blackhurst (this one) which was rather interesting as he apparently had my two main issues from my previous code sorted, specifically the immobiliser system (the thing I want to look at here) and the power steering.

So to see how he was doing it I went to the linked Github and downloaded his Arduino code and on opening it I was largely very familiar code, specifically a whole set of variable declarations for the various dash instruments and a large section of code related to using a boolean variable to set the correct bit in the corresponding CAN packet so individual warning lights can be turned on or off and the speed/RPM etc to all be set easily on the cluster. So this was basically a development of my previous work

Now just to be clear this isn’t a complaint. This is just the first time I’d see my work go full circle and someone else actually develop it further which was quite exciting. If I hadn’t wanted it used and developed I wouldn’t have posted it online! Even better was it gave me a kick to have another go at it and at the very least try this new and improved code which said it fixed all the issues because if true Dave might have just solved my remaining problems!

So back to the immobiliser. I’d never managed to get the immobiliser light to go out despite trying all sorts of combinations of data from the logs I had but after seeing what Dave had done I realised I’d been missing a critical bit of information. The CAN logs I’d previously worked from were predominantly provided but someone else who contacted me via the blog and so were from two other cars and not my own. Additionally you can see in the early blog posts I actually built my own CANbus board several years ago which worked but had some speed issues with all the work it was doing. This was because when I started this project several years ago there was little else available for sensible money so it was the only real option. Long story short the immobiliser relies on a very short data exchange which occurs when the ignition key is first turned on and is never repeated and basically it had just been missed by the loggers that I had data from previously so I may never have figured it out!

Excited at the prospect of this just being a load the code and go I wondered if in the intervening years better hardware was available for this job than my old Arduino Nano based DIY job and there are now various Arduino expansion shields for CAN but to me these were all rather clunky solutions so I started looking at the “Feather” range which has a couple options but again these were a board and a piggback interface which isn’t what I wanted and there’s a new one which is the Adafruid Feather M4 CAN which looked pretty good but doesn’t seem to have ever actually been in stock anywhere so moving on.

Adafruit Feather M4 CAN

Following this I had a realisation – if if was going on the car it really didn’t need an integrated battery. Previously I’d started using Leonardo based modules for projects and these proved very quick for most tasks and have integrated USB meaning data throughput can be faster so I tried to find a Leonardo based CAN module. Eventually I found a company who I’ve used before for various neat modules do basically exactly what I was after for a reasonable price, enter Hobbytronics and their L-CANBUS board.

Leonardo CAN BUS board
Hobbytronics Leonardo Canbus

Looks just the job and even comes with the headers and 9 way connector unsoldered. and the board itself has pads for screw terminals to be soldered in place of the 9 way connector for bare wire connections. This time round I decided I wasn’t going to mess about with screw terminals while testing so I splashed out and bought a £10 OBD2 – 9 Way D-Sub CAN cable off eBay to go with it (unfortunately Hobbytronics were out of stock of the cable). This also had the advantage of including 12V and ground connections which are routed to the board regulator so the module is powered directly off the OBD2 port on the car making testing really easy.

I also decided being powered off the car that rather than risk shorting the module/car it needed a case and since I recently was given what I believe is still the cheapest 3d printer on eBay by a friend who got so annoyed with it he bought one that was actually good, so I designed a 3d printable one :

It’s pretty basic, the holes should be undersize for an M2.5 laptop screw so they basically thread cut it when you first put them in. Not ideal but it’s what I had. M2.5 sized plastic screws with a coarser thread would be better but either way it held fine. This case also leaves the USB accessible.

Anyway, back to the point we now have some nice neat hardware so I tweaked the code to run on this module (different CAN pins to the normal Adafruit CAN shields) and flashed it. After plugging it into the car…nothing happened. Once I’d reflashed the Leonardo with CLK_OUT enabled as per the instructions following a conversation with Hobbytronics who were very helpful (in their defence it says to do it right on the product page but I’d not read that bit!) I loaded it again and when hooked up to the car what I got was the basic warning lights went off, but the immobiliser and power steering that I’d hoped to resolve were still there. Time to delve a bit deeper!

So looking at Dave’s code here’s the bit to resolve the immobiliser:

 if(CAN_MSGAVAIL == CAN0.checkReceive()) { 
  // Check to see whether data is read
 }
    CAN0.readMsgBufID(&ID, &len, buf);    // Read data

        
    //Keyless Control Module and Immobiliser want to have a chat with the PCM, this deals with the conversation
    
    if(ID == 0x47) { //71 Dec is 47 Hex - Keyless Chat
      
      //***** Fixed Coding for Dave Blackhurst's Car *******
      if(buf[1] == 127 && buf[2] == 2) {      
        // Look for 0x 06 7F 02 00 00 00 00 00
      }
        CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x041, 0, 8, send41a);// 0x041 = 65
        // send41a = 0x 07 0C 30 F2 17 00 00 00
      }
      if(buf[1] == 92 && buf[2] == 244) {     
        // Look for 0x 08 5C F4 65 22 01 00 00
      }
        CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x041, 0, 8, send41b);
        // send41b = 0x 81 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00
      }

I’ve added in the codes being looked for or sent in each case which Dave identified from scanning the bus on his RX8 just to make it easier to see what’s going on. Breaking this down ID 0x47 is the immobiliser module sending data out which generally seems to just keep repeating 0x06 01 FF 00 00 00 00 00 when in normal use with the car running as factory I have that from my previous logs. So this first code starting 0x 06 7F 02 is something from the immobiliser which triggers the exchange. The code basically just reads any incoming data then checks the ID is 0x47 (i.e. it’s coming from the immobiliser) and that two bytes match the what he knows the CAN data should be (simpler than checking the whole code) , specifically byte 1 being 127 (7F) and byte 2 being 2. He then sends the recorded response to this (send41a – 0x 07 0C 30…) back to the immobiliser which would normally be done by the PCM (ECU) in the car when present. Then we look for the response from the immobiliser matches what we expect (0x 08 5C F4….) and sends a second reply to the immobiliser (send41b – 0x 81 7F 00….). I started thinking the module wasn’t talking to the CANbus right but after some fault finding and adding a diagnostic LED blink at critical points I found it was on the bus but just wasn’t seeing the right data coming from the immobiliser to respond to. Now I knew this exchange worked on Dave’s car but not on mine so clearly the codes we have aren’t universal in some way but I needed to work out what was going on but at least I knew what to look for.

Back when I was trying to find the code to disable the power steering light from Labview I bought a device called the USBtin which is a neat little PCB which is basically just a USB to CAN adapter but it has a built in protocol to control it so you can read the data via software like Putty or relative easily develop custom applications to connect to it. Now facing this problem I decided to give it a go and see if it was actually fast enough to catch this exchange in the first few fractions of a second of the ignition being on. I blew the dust of the original ECU for the car and hooked it back up to the bus (there’s no engine but I hoped that wouldn’t matter for this bit) loaded the basic USBtinViewer onto a tabled and hooked it up.

Ok it’s a photo of a tablet screen but anyway, the point is the USBtin is clearly fast enough to catch all the data because the monitor mode shows it’s caught the exchange because it’s logged packets to ID 0x41 and 0x47 and the last message to 0x41 matches the last one from Dave’s car (send41b – 0x 81 7F…). So it’s got the data, unfortunately to see what was sent both ways I had to trawl through the trace mode which just lists every CAN packet on the bus but after a bit of searching I found this:

So going through it first and ignoring all the extra data (there will be more to follow on this) there’s the default message from the immobiliser sending 06 01 FF… highlighted in yellow, then shortly afterward we see what looks very similar to Dave’s first message of the exchange but where his was 0x 06 7F 02, mine critically is 0x 06 7F 01. Looking back to Dave’s code for this we find that he was specifically looking for byte 2 = 2 and mine is 1, which is probably why it never triggered on my car. Now because that first packet we need to match starts 0x 06 7F … on both cars I can just change the check to look for that combination instead but at this point I also realised the outgoing data from the ECU (0x 07…) and return from the immobiliser (0x 08…) are totally different for my car so rather than mess about I just swapped out both to match what I’d logged for my car (assuming the codes may be car specific to stop PCM’s (ECU’s) being swapped between vehicles they’re not coded to or something) and tried it again, but this time…

Yes this time it cleared the security light! Definitely progress!

But for me making it work isn’t really enough and I like to understand why something works and hopefully make it better!

First off I tried again but this time with the matching done using the updated positions for the consistent bits of the code common to both cars. Specifically getting rid of the check for the byte 2 being any value because this appeared to change from car to car. What we can reasonably assume is fixed from this data is byte 0 because they always seem to indicate the step in the exchange with the exception of the initialisation state and first request state which both start “06” however byte 1 gives us if the immobiliser is still starting (0x 06 01…) and making a request to the PCM (0x 06 7F) and these match on both cars. We then send back one of the first response packets (0x 07….) and wait for the next request which byte comparing the data both cars start with byte 0 = 08 and based on the rest it’s reasonable to assume again this is the sequence step and so universal. Then Dave looks for a value of byte 2 which differs between our cars, however I have noticed that byte 5 for both cars is always 01 so this would work for both. So we end up with this :

      
      byte send41a[8] = {7,120,192,226,94,0,0,0};                      
      // Reply to 47 first  : 0x 07 78 C0 E2 5E 00 00 00 
      // Bytes 0 is the same, bytes 3 & 4 dont seem to matter, 
      // 5,6,7 are zero
      
      byte send41b[8] = {129,127,0,0,0,0,0,0};                         
      // Reply to 47 second : 0x 81 7F
      
      //***** Fixed Coding for Jon's Car *******
      // Some experimentation showed that on the initial request
      // for my car byte 2 was a 01 not a 02
      // however all codes so far begin 06 7F 
      // for either car so this was used.
      // Similarly in the second message from the 
      // immobiliser bytes 1-4 change but byte 5 
      // is always 01 on either vehicle

      if(buf[0] == 0x6 && buf[1] == 0x7F ) {                      
        // 0x 06 7F 01 00 00 00 00 32
        
        // printhex(buf,8);                                        
        // Transmit out received request on debug serial port 
        // - breaks timings on vehicle.
        
        CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x041, 0, 8, send41a);                    
        // 0x 07 78 C0 E2 5E 00 00 00 
      }
      if(buf[0] == 0x8 && buf[5] == 0x1 ) {                        
        // 0x 08 94 29 BC 91 01 00 32
        
        CAN0.sendMsgBuf(0x041, 0, 8, send41b);                     
        // 0x 81 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00  
      }

I’ve included the notes I made at the time – the printhex is a function I wrote to dump these arrays out to the serial port easily as two digit hex pairs for monitoring what’s going on at different times. As noted here it breaks the timings of the exchange between the ECU and immobiliser but if we want to check something we just add it in and at least we can see what the data was. I’ll do a separate post for that as it might be useful to others. Not unexpectedly matching in this way worked fine but more interestingly I tried my car with Dave’s codes matching in this new way and interestingly it actually worked with no security light…

Well that raises even more questions because in theory I’d just swapped my ECU for his (in terms of the code exchange at least) and it authenticated!

So I went back to my car, reconnected the original ECU, powered it up with the USB logger again and noticed that each time I turned my ignition on the code exchange was different so clearly the idea of the code being fixed for a pair of ECU and immobiliser was wrong. After a number of goes and recording all the results a few things started to become apparent.

Firstly the initial request from the immobiliser had some variations on bytes 7 and 8 which always matched the byte 7 and 8 in the second request but the bytes we look for (byte 0 and 1 shown in green) are always 06 7F in every try.

Second, the first response given by the ECU indeed always starts 07 (light blue), but the next 4 bytes change each time the ignition is turned on (bright blue).

Third, bytes 0 and 5 in the second request are always 08 and 01 respectively (orange) however the 4 bytes between change each time the ignition is turned on (yellow).

Fourth, the second response is always the same (pink).

So what I think is going on here is actually something slightly different. If we assume for a moment the ECU knows the code or processing going on in the immobiliser we get a proper challenge/response interaction. I think the first message sent by the immobiliser is basically a “ready” message telling the ECU to send a block of data. The ECU then responds with a 4 byte block of data which is randomised each start. The immobiliser then performs some function we don’t know and sends the result back to the ECU where it checks the result against what it should be and gives a pass or fail back to the immobiliser so it updates the dash light. The last packet is always the same because we’re using everything from one car so its a pass so we don’t know what a mismatch fail looks like yet but I’m going to look into this at some point.

Now the interesting result of this outcome is with our Arduino we’re not checking if the code response actually matches and if my theory is right the outbound 4 bytes can be absolutely anything as it’s basically just a seed value, then the immobiliser will will reply with a coded version which we just ignore and so long as we reply with a pass message at that point (0x 81 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00)the immobiliser turns the dash light off.

To prove this out I set up the Arduino to send different random numbers in each of bytes 1-4 to the immobiliser in the initial response and indeed while the response from the immobiliser bytes 1-4 change as in response the immobiliser light went out on the dash every time.

My final theory is that the immobiliser module is reading the data from the chip in the key, and using that to transform the initial data from the ECU to create the response and since the ECU knows the key code and whatever this transformation is it knows if it’s the right key or not.

Now hopefully that problems solved for all RX8’s, I’m aware I haven’t posted a full, complete code like I have done previously but that’s because it has all sorts of other features going in this currently and I’ve not finished and tidied the rest of it yet. I’ve also considered the situation where there might be an RX8 out there that doesn’t match the code pattern found in my current sample of two vehicles so I’ve actually added a feature where if you jumper a wire onto a digital input and connect the Arduino to a car with the original ECU in place it will read out the entire code exchange and store all the codes for that car in EEPROM on the Arduino. If you then take the jumper off and pull out the ECU, when you turn the ignition on again the Arduino will use the codes it just stored instead of the defaults. Again I’ll write this up properly when it’s all finished.

Finally thanks to Dave Blackhurst for your work on this. While your solution didn’t work for my immobiliser it gave me the drive to have another go and enough information to go in the right direction and hopefully we’re a step closer to a universal engine/motor swap solution for everyone.

More to follow!

RX8 Project – Part 13, Canbus #3, Labview!

If you just want the CANbus ID for the RX8 PS light and not all the background work just skip to the end!

So it’s been quite a long time since I had chance to have another go at getting the CANbus on the cluster working and while previously I manged to get everything apart from the power steering warning light working I decided I really should find out why not. This is a simple lesson in why getting sufficient sleep is really important!

I was contacted a while ago buy a guy doing a similar conversion to mine who happened to have a second complete RX8 and a variety of diagnostic equipment that can talk CANbus who had send me a block of CANbus log data that I’ve done nothing like enough work on since I’ve had it! Anyway the key here is I knew that the car some of the logs had come from had the factory PCM (ECU) working as intended and as such the power steering light doesn’t illuminate. This meant that somewhere in that log file was the data that turned off the light, I just had to work out where it was!

Now first off I took the approach of taking the two sets of data logs I had, one from a car with a functioning PCM and one from a car that doesn’t. Then list out all the ID’s that occurred in each set of data. I’m going to assume for my purposes that any that occur in both sets are not required. The logic being that the data that turns off the light must be present in one set and not the other. I admit that this might not be the case if there’s something more complex going on like if with the PCM removed the power steering computer doesn’t get the required data and sends a different value on the same ID. But for now it’s a starting point!

The ID’s that remain are as follows:

201, 203, 215, 231, 240, 250, 420, 620, 630, 650

A couple of these we’ve already seen elsewhere, specifically 201, which is the RPM and speed to the dash, and 420 which control the cluster warning lights. So after setting up the arduino and canbus data to strobe all these remaining address and nothing happening I gave up!

Many weeks went by and I it was nagging at me why I couldn’t find the right code. Eventually I decided to try a different tack so I ordered a USBtin which is a really neat little USB to CAN adapter which appears as a virtual COM device in windows and can be controlled using a series of commands known as the LAWCIEL protocol (details of which can be found here). The kit version is really quite cheap and would probably be a good option for the budget conscious but on this occasion I just decided to be lazy and buy the prebuilt one.

Clearly I’ve decided to PC control it at this point! Next up I needed a way to stop it when the warning light went off. I ordered a very cheap optical detector off ebay which can be wired into an Arduino or something similar. These are the ones that vary around £1-2  so difficult to argue with. They offer a potentiometer to adjust the switching brightness so I can tune it to what I need and a digital output so I don’t need to mess about doing analog reads or calibrating things on a microcontroller. Yes i know it’s not the neatest or most efficient way of doing it but for my purposes it’s so cheap and easy it really doesn’t matter! So I need to make that talk to a PC in a way I can use and that’s where this whole thing starts to get more interesting.

I’d pondered ways of interfacing a microcontroller to a PC easily and while it’s not terribly hard to make it shout over serial when an input goes high I came across something much more interesting. There’s a company called National Instruments who make lots of very expensive software and equipment for recording data from experiments but fairly recently they started supporting hobbyists by producing the Labview Makerhub, and more specifically a package called LINX. LINX includes a series of drivers and firmwares to allow things like Arduinos, Beaglebones and even Raspberry Pi’s to be used as IO devices (the Raspberry Pi can actually have programs loaded to them as a full remote node). This is quite a major step because it suddenly allows hobbyists to use really good professional software without having the problem of only being able to use NI’s extremely expensive hardware! This gave me and idea – use labview as the core software then I can use the supplied LINX firmware to set up an arduino as IO. To make this deal even sweeter you can also download Labview for free from NI for home use. Take a look here

So after a quick bit of following the instructions we have a basic labview program that will read the arduino IO via serial:

Labview Lynx1

Basically what this does  is it starts by opening a serial connection via the LINX toolkit, this returns a device name to an on screen string display and passes a reference which identifies the connection to the read stage. The next bit the larger grey rectangle is how Labview handles a while loop so it’ll keep performing the enclosed functions constantly from left to right until the conditional term in the bottom right goes high – in this case it’s a stop button. So basically the loop just calls a LINX channel read of channel 2 where I connected the light sensor to the Arduino. The inner rectangle only executes when the read value is false (i.e. when the light goes off) and while there’s a lot of information recorded here from elsewhere in the program basically if it sees the light go off it records the current ID being tested, the time that has elapsed since the test started. This means we know when it’s right!

Labview is designed to capture data from lab instruments and so there’s a really handy thing called the VISA toolkit that allows blocks of data read and write via the serial port and basically you can just open a port with specified settings then make read and write requests and do things like crop the incoming data at a predefined character. In this case that character needed to be CR (Carriage Return) this is ASCIIcharacter 13 because LAWCIEL terminates everything with one.

Labview Lynx2

For the USBtin we open the correct COM port at 115200,8 Data bits, No parity, 1 stop bit and no flow control. The other thing to note is at the top right, this sets the termination character to the numeric value of CR, the benefit here is you can perform a read of any length and it will automatically break up the data in the buffer so a single read can vary in length but the start will always synchronise  with the read call. Opening the connection in a terminal program for the first time and you’ll see nothing actually happens as such, an OK is signified by a CR so all you see is the cursor move. At this stage we are only connected to the USBtin, not the CANbus. So next, configure the CAN connection, send a value of “S6\r” . The code is S6, this will set the USBtin to 500kbit correct for the dash, the \r is how you indicate a CR in a Labview string. Next I chose to send “v\r” which requests the version from the USBtin, we don’t need this but it gives a solid confirmation it’s talking to us. Next up Z1\r tells the USBtin to timestamp the incoming data, I thought this might be useful but never actually implemented it.

Labview Lynx3

With the setup complete we can start reading data by opening the CAN connection by sending O\r. On a terminal program (assuming you have the CANbus wired up) doing this would result in packets of can data from the cluster appearing. The initial read of length 1 byte reads just the confirmation from the USBtin that it has received the open request. Next is the main read, it’s worth noting the read length is set at 50 bytes but this will be cut short by the termination character set earlier so we can accept varying length CAN data. C\r closes the CAN connection and again another read 1 byte clears the acknowledge. Tacked on the end is a section to read the controller status looking for error states etc. The keen eyed amongst you will notice the majority of this code is conditional, this is because the code needs to insert send requests among the stream of reads. This is because if the data is not read from the USBtin constantly a buffer somewhere fills (I imagine on the USBtin itself but can’t confirm this) and the port crashes. I spent a lot of time finding this out the hard way!

Labview Lynx4This is the write data code, again very similar but it just opens the port, writes whatever string is in the buffer and closes the connection. Once the connection is confirmed closed it resets the Boolean that causes the ‘write’ condition so on the next loop it goes back to reading again to keep the buffer clear. The read loop runs at the maximum possible speed but it is slowed down because it waits for either a termination character or 50 characters to be received before it completes and loops again.

Beyond that the only other bits of code just generate the data for the write buffer using an increment counter for the ID field and toggling between either 8 bytes of FFFF or 0000 every 100ms for 20 cycles and setting the write flag high to send the data..

So after letting this run for a fair while it started spitting out values, specifically the ID 300 for the power steering light. Wait a minute that wasn’t in the list earlier. Yes I know that, that’s where getting enough sleep comes in. Originally I split the data based on whether or not the PCM was fitted and ignored the ones that occurred in both sets, the obvious mistake here is that of course the power steering light isn’t controlled by the PCM, quite logically it’s controlled by the power steering controller!

So there we go, ID 300, the first byte (leading) controls the light, values below 80 turn the light off. Unplugging the PCM causes the controller to send 80 on loop hence the the warning light.

Get data from ID: 4B1
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 81
43	6F	1	4B	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 300
80	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 231
F	0	FF	FF	0	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 430
95	5F	83	0	0	0	60	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 81
25	6F	1	4B	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 81
16	6F	1	4B	
-----------------------------
Get data from ID: 630
8	0	0	0	0	0	6A	6A

Looking at the log data again we see that ID 300 is getting a value of 80 – this is during the self test before the engine is started. I previously tried sending this data on the original Arduino CAN setup and go no result so what did I do wrong. Again this is based on another assumption, I though the logger was ignoring high order bytes with zero value (ie this value if could be 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-80) well it turns out that was totally wrong, it actually ignores trailing zeros, the value of the can data here should be 80-00-00-00-00-00-00-00.

So while all these hours of work told me one thing I should have already known it’s actually worked out Ok because it highlighted this other problem (read ‘incorrect assumption’ !). This means The odds of me working out all the other data from the logs (that I’d previously written off as not usable) is actually much higher!