Volvo C30 Custom Gauge And CAN Bus Reverse Engineering

With cars and trucks being effectively CAN buses on wheels, it’s no ponder that there’s a ton of juicy facts about the car’s standing zipping about on these buses. The key concern is usually how to get accessibility to this information, both equally in phrases of wiring into the related CAN bus, and decoding the utilised (proprietary) protocol. Fortuitously for [Alex], decoding the Volvo VIDA protocol applied with his Volvo C30 was fairly easy, enabling the creation of a custom gauge that displays details like raise tension and coolant temperature.

The bodily interfacing is accomplished by means of the car’s OBD port, which conveniently supplies obtain to the car’s two (high-velocity and reduced-speed) CAN buses. Components of selection is an M2 UTH (Under the Hood) board, sporting a SAM3X Cortex-M3-centered MCU, created for permanent automotive installations. On [Alex]’s GitHub project web page it is defined how the protocol operates, and which bytes to appear for when replicating the task.

Rounding off the job is a round Lcd exhibit from 4D Methods that cycles via the status update screens. As a bonus, the dashboard illumination level is also examine out in authentic-time, so the brightness of the exhibit is modified to fit this level. All in all a nicely-rounded task, with fascinating prospective clients for a a lot more long lasting integration of the gauge into the dashboard suitable.