CAN, or Controller Space Community, was initially developed as a resilient differential bus for controlling varied programs inside cars. From the throttle to the spark timing, to the air/gas combine, just about every thing inside a automotive is managed by the ECU (engine management unit), a small embedded laptop that’s normally very proprietary and potted with resin. If you happen to’ve ever wished to log knowledge in your vehicle, or some other gadget utilizing CAN (there are fairly a number of today!) then the CANarchy is a good selection.
With a small OLED show and an ESP32 operating the present, you will have a variety of flexibility. The firmware is predicated on CircuitPython so modifying it for a selected use shouldn’t be troublesome. One of many options that actually stood out to me is the flexibility to take 12-72V enter voltage! In North America, nearly all automobiles use a 12V system, however in Europe and different locations, it’s not unusual to return throughout 24V vehicles, and varied different programs usually use 48V (telecom, for instance). With the ability to run off of just about any accessible voltage is a very nice contact.
However how do you entry the CANbus to start with? Properly, by legislation, cars made since 1996 within the US and since 2001 within the EU should have an ODB-II port, which lets you join on to the primary CAN bus contained in the car. That is how these diagnostic dongles can inform precisely what’s happening. However these dongles not often allow you to ship instructions or log knowledge, whereas the CANarchy can do each. You may ship any arbitrary CAN message, log knowledge to an SD card, or ship pre-recorded knowledge. Plus, with Wi-Fi on board, you may simply create an online portal to watch and/or ship packets in actual time or ship them to a logging system like Adafruit IO with MQTT.
Only a phrase of warning: solely hack issues you will have permission to hack! Be sure you have the consent of a car proprietor and don’t experiment with new instructions on public roads. Take a look at issues out in an empty lot and see what you are able to do.