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If you have a VW group car, there is always VCDS. You can usually get started with a $250 USB cable and their software. It's pretty much the recommended tool/software to use for Volkwagens.

VW/Audi group cars can all be easily hacked via a Vag-com http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-c... device which is a relatively cheap hardware/software alternative to the programmer used at the factor or at a dealership. There are great community sites. for instance: http://www.audizine.com/forum/...

One simple hack I performed for instance was to enable bluetooth hud. Default from the factory the contact list from my phone would not be displayed one the radio or on the instrument heads up display. One simple code change displays my contact list, last calls received, and last calls made. The only negatives to the vag-com are that engine performance and emissions are locked out. Which means you can't disable the ~130MPH governor for instance.

No. Really, no.

VW owners with a VAG-COM can do a number of tunes, mods and adaptations with just the software and the cable.

Modern cars run a CAN BUS (Car Area Network) and you can probably do a great deal on a number of vehicles. Certainly VW and Audi, but I can't imagine the rest of the industry is sitting still.

A VAG-COM is just about standard equipment for a VW owner who does his/her own repairs. Wouldn't think of doing more than regular maintenance without it. And for some of that (flushing brake fluid, f.e.), it's still necessary.

No. Really, no.

VW owners with a VAG-COM can do a number of tunes, mods and adaptations with just the software and the cable.

Modern cars run a CAN BUS (Car Area Network) and you can probably do a great deal on a number of vehicles. Certainly VW and Audi, but I can't imagine the rest of the industry is sitting still.

A VAG-COM is just about standard equipment for a VW owner who does his/her own repairs. Wouldn't think of doing more than regular maintenance without it. And for some of that (flushing brake fluid, f.e.), it's still necessary.

When it comes to VAG cars, this is the bees knees. It's not the cheapest, but when it comes to these cars (and I have two of 'em), it pays for itself 100 times over. -red

If that is all you want AutoZone/AdvanceAuto will usually reset the lights and read the codes for free. They'll try and sell you the part to fix it, but they don't force you to buy it.

I use VCDS on my VW because when I'm diagnosing a problem on my car, I don't want to simultaneously diagnosing my tools.

It takes time and money to reverse stuff. There have been a few open source projects, but all stalled or weren't kept up to date. I see there's a new VW project on SF.

And as far as development goes, don't ask what a CANapelicense and hard ware cost.

VW is one of the few makes for which you can get your own fully functional scanner (not just OBDII) for a relatively reasonable price: VAG-COM (I didn't come up with the name). It lets you interact with pretty much everything in the car with their hardware dongle and software and a laptop. It's still a little bit steep for what's essentially a serial-to-USB converter, but I suppose you're mostly paying for their reverse-engineering time.

One reason I like owning a VWAG built car. Someone reverse engineered the vehicle's computer interface and a $350 3rd party cable now replicates most all the functions the $2500 dealer diag system does. VW even uses the product themselves. http://www.ross-tech.com/

Just this past weekend I spent with my brother-in-law timing a 98 Passat TDI with VCDS. It definitely made a huge difference.

Going there it was definitely "gutless" and coming away it was like a new engine. (To be fair, the injector timing was off a fair bit.)

Cars are already more or less pretty open with some proprietary stuff tacked on. ODB-II (or now CAN) has a set list of standard messages that everyone uses. Now car companies can choose to extend into their own messages if they want. Engine speed, throttle, etc all have a set upon CAN Id.

AutoZone and AdvanceAuto and every other car repair place will read these codes for free. They may be cryptic (Your fault could have probably been FUEL PRESS LOW or something), but Google and auto forums can decode them for you pretty easily.

There are also 3rd party options (at least for VW). Ross-Tech makes VAG-COM which will let you connect to almost any ECM in your car and read diagnostics or monitor blocks which is much cheaper than VW's "OE" tool (Many $k).

Now letting them see the latest service manuals would help, many companies use MATLAB/Simulink to autocode their ECM software. The lines of code and the possibility for bugs is scary. And like software companies, no one is going to be doing software updates on 3-4 year old cars meaning instead of "Don't buy X car because the wheel bearing goes bad" you could get a bug report of "Don't buy X car because the throttle position sensor flips out".

On a VW, you can tweak the same values the dealership can with a VAG-COM.
You can seriously break things if you don't know what you're doing...

See Here for OBDII, and

Here or Here or Here

tm

And of course, the only thing that could make that install better is if Uwe Ross would just get over his aversion to Macs and port VAG-COM to Mac OS X so I could have on-board diagnostic software...I suppose I'll have to hack in a PC as well with a KVM to switch between them.

I think this is what you are looking for:
http://www.ross-tech.com/

Sounds pretty good. I just got a CEL on my TDI, so I am getting someone who has a vag-com to check it out for me.
You might want to find someone near you who has one, to see if it's what you want.

The codes aren't encrypted on cars for the most part, though on some they are. That's where you might run into trouble, although the car's yours and you never signed a license agreement of any kind when you bought it, so anyone trying to sue you for doing your own work might not have much to stand on. My experience described here is completely legitimate. No law requires me to take my car to a dealership if I don't have to, not even interrogating its computer to see why it turned on the check engine light.

I'm a member of the St. Louis Volkswagen Organization (I'm one of the early founding members) and several members have aftermarket scan tools that run on PCs.

When the check engine light came on briefly a few months ago, then went out after less than a minute, I put a note up on the club forums asking that a scan tool be brought to the next meeting which was to be held that next upcoming weekend.

After the meeting, I talked to the guy with the scan tool. We connected the tool to the car using the OBDII diagnostic port under the dash, followed the startup procedures described in the tool's manual, and downloaded the code. It turned out to be a momentary sensor blip from one of the numerous sensors in the engine and transmission, and a transient error, nothing serious, so we cleared the code. It never did recur, so it was indeed just the kind of blip that can happen anytime due to a slightly loose wire, gremlins, you name it.

The dealer would have charged me a LOT more than the yearly club membership fee to do the same thing, and the dealer doesn't hold social events, club drives, parties, get-stuff-installed-for-free days, or anything remotely as cool.

The car's a 2000 VW Golf GLS 2.0L, if you want to get on the racket, and feel free to move to St. Louis. ;) But even if you don't, take a look at the tool site -- if you own one of the compatible cars, and are even slightly tech-saavy, you should really own this tool.

A few enterprising people have reverse-engineered the KWP-1281 and -2000 protocols that VW and friends (VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda) use on their cars. One of the most recognized is VAG-COM which pretends to behave just like the expensive VW shop scantool in almost every respect. The only potentially useful feature it doesn't replicate is the ability to update firmware to the various control modules in a car. It even adds the ability to graph various sensor values, and with a cut-and-paste to an Excel spreadsheet can calculate horsepower just from driving the car around for a while (the 'butt dyno').

Very cool, and cheap enough for a only slightly mechanically inclined geek to justify.

There is a lot of opposition from all the trucking unions and lobbying from the transport companies over cleaner diesel, since it costs a little more then dirty diesel it would cut into there bottom line. Not sure if we will ever see it.

As for buying a TDI, I would recommend it, I would also recommend you purchase a VAG-COM if you already don't have one. Takes the guess work out of working on your VW.

"Are you saying that you could open the hood of a 2004 Audi and diagnose even a small problem?"

Er, yes. Well, not literally yes, because mine is a 1999 VW, and I don't need to open the hood. I spent a couple hundred bux on something called a VAG-COM (VAG-COM) that hooks up the OBD-II connector of any reasonably recent VW/Audi to a Windows notebook. It reads out the diagnostic codes in plain english - something like "temperature sensor shorted to ground" or "MAF signal intermittent" or whatever. It does a lot of other helpful stuff, too.

Many other brands have similar tools available.

The hood comes into the equation only because mine actually opens, and I can actually change out the temperature sensor after finding out that it is bad. But even if I had an Audi A2, if I knew a mechanic with the ability to get inside, at least I could tell him never mind the diagnosis, I want part such-and-such changed.

Now, as it happens, I don't choose to do much of my own work, but I did find out my MAF was bad, and changed it out. I bought the part from the internet for 1/5 what the stealership would have charged, and changed it literally in 5 minutes, a pliers-only job which probably would have been at least $200 for diagnosis and labor, not counting parts, at the stealership.

Ever since ODB-II, there have been onboard computers to change various systems in cars. The Volkswagen-Audi Group (VAG) has their VAG-COM tool for Volkswagen, Audi, Seat and Skoda to read a plethora of information and can change lots of settings. No "hacking" is needed, it is somewhat pricey ($229) but it won't void your warranty and you're not trying to re-invent the wheel. I know of individuals that own this tool that would be interested in loaning their VAG-COM out (by shipping or other means) to people.

In my car (an Audi), you can use the climate control display and have it output lots of speeds, voltages, temperatures and other paramters of many different parts of the car. It has a Diagnostic Trouble Code readout where it tells you what part of the car may be wrong. It also has 2 "graphic" modes where it uses each segment of the climate control display to display the status of different factors affecting the A/C Compressor and Alternator. So if the battery keeps dying, you can go to the diagnostic channel that displays the switches relevant to the Alternator and see if some switch is on when it shouldn't, or vice versa. This onboard tool can give some insight, but with the VAG-COM tool, you can get more specific answers.

A little off topic, but you can buy a tool from ross-tech.com and other places to connect to the serial port on a laptop to do your own diagnostic checking. In the DC area it saves me a whole lot of time and money waiting on appointments at the mechanics...

but to move closer to the topic, thats pretty impressive stuff in that car. it never ceases to amaze me how geeks like i hope to be can interface with engines and computers like that. anybody know where i can learn more about it?

Easy: Buy a 1994 and up VW, Audi, Seat or Skoda. They all have a computer interface port where you can interface with all the electronic gadgets in the car. Everything from the airbags to the stereo, the transmission (if it's auto), tons of engine parameters... basically everything that runs on electricity is wired into the central system.

And VW (who owns Audi Seat Skoda and also Lamborghini, Rolls Royce and Bentley) has always openly published the communication protocols and specs to their interfaces - very Open Source like.

Read more Here. These guys make an interface cable and software to communicate with your car. It plugs into your PC or laptop using standard RS-232 serial port or USB. I have a Turbo diesel Jetta and I can put a laptop in the passenger seat and monitor turbo boost pressure, anti-lock brake status, and even radio station information from the laptop!! I've always wondered why more hackers haven't been interested in these car brands since they have such open communication specs.... MAybe someone here can start a project on sourceforge to create a Linux client program to talk to my car?? (It's Windows only right now)

There is a good explination of the "Aftermarket Radio Problem" here and it even tells you how to test for it (I think your average dealer would have a voltmeter) and how to repair it if necessary.

I think rather than it being a technological issue it's more of an example of how the manufacturers will do whatever they can to try and generate more income for their mechanics and dealerships, and also how a distreputable dealer will use any excuse to avoid honoring a warranty. On the one hand they go out of their way to make it hard for anyone but the dealer to work on it, and then the dealers are assholes. That's why finding a clued mechanic is always a good idea.

We have an application and(VAG-COM) and an adapter which plugs in to our volkswagen and provides ALL SORTS of cool info - just like what you are talking about. We can use it in real-time... Neat stuff... And you can adjust settings as well (even break things - just like at the shop!)

if you buy a vw, you can get a vag-com and hack your car.

Actually, you do not need to emulate the OBD computer in order to make changes. As long as this in-dash PC has a COM port software like this for VW and Audi vehicles can make any OBD/VAG controlled adjustments and record engine data in real time. Of course you can do this with a laptop but I can see the usefulness for those interested in performance tuning or adding another layer of security. Maybe like having to login to your car in order to start the engine.

For Audi and VW owners, theres been a 'tool' and software (that runs on windows, but can use WINE under linux) called VAG-COM that is supposed to just plug into the diagnostic port and give you real time data from the ECU, I considered buying it...VAG-COM page

at least if you had a car on which you could use this tool

Its funny, because its sort of related to the Ask Slashdot question about car performance tuning software a week ago. All these computerized systems have left cars incredibly complex to tune, repair, or modify.

Thankfully for some vehicle types, the enthusiast market has reverse engineered a lot of these protocols and codes. I've driven two different Audi's for the last three years, and spent an ungodly large amount of time and money tweaking and otherwise customizing them. Our enthusiast community has software like VAG-COM which can provide a suprisingly large amount of capability for Volkswagen, Audi's and other VAG-group cars. But now Audi (and presumably Volkswagen) is changing their protocols yet again, keeping things proprietary and secret. Thankfully, I'm sure they'll be reverse engineered yet again.

Even with the capabilities the software has, we're still faced with having very good documentation for what most "sensor" blocks are, but essentially none for what the "settings" blocks are. I can read anything I want, but without insider VAG knowledge, I can't recode a damn thing.

Amazingly through trial and error, people have even figured out how to reprogram basic functionality on their cars, like how the automatic transmissions shift.

I would love to see this law passed, but it doesn't help things much if its just emissions codes that have to be released.

For your Audi or VW you can use the VAG-COM software. You're able to read and write not only the OBD-II but also audi/vw specific stuff.

There are actually a lot of people (GIAC for one) who are reprogramming ECUs to enhance performance. But it seems like most of them are manually tweaking various mappings.

I've used the following to check fault-codes, generate driving logs and re-program the locks on my Passat: http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/index.html.

I use stuff like this all the time. I often have my problems diagnosed before I drive into the dealer. I have a Volkswagen and use the Ross-tech VAG-COM. The now defunct CarComp also had a great tool available for similar purposes. Conveniently, the hardware interface also works for my Dodge truck with different software.

This guy seems to have what the poster is looking for. He covers building your own tools for GM cars.