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GM's OnStar System Hacked
Makarand writes "According to this Mercury News article users of GM's OnStar system
are finding that they can modify their OnStar unit to make it work with commercially
available mapping software after disconnecting it from the OnStar network. Websites
and message boards are rife with step-by-step instructions to personalize OnStar's navigational and communications components. When a driver requests directions from OnStar his GPS data is routed over an analog cellular network to OnStar computers and the directions are read back to the driver on the same network. The price for this service is around $400 each year. Those who tap into their OnStar systems pay no such fees."
I don't want OnStar for directions to restaurants or gas stations.
I like On-Star for being able to have police/rescue know exactly where I am if/when my Airbag deploys. I like On-Star for when my "check engine" light comes on, I press the button, they run a remote diagnostic on my engine's computer, and can tell me how serious the problem is and can call me a tow truck if needed. I like OnStar for being able to unlock my car when I lock my keys in the car (with an infant in the carseat). I like OnStar for being able to track, and stop my car if it is stolen.
That's worth the OnStar subscription... The other stuff is just gravy, which we never really used - so we cancelled....
Not really. The Motorola Oncore GPS unit has slightly more informative proprietary software to talk to than your average NMEA serial GPS unit, but it's no better than a decent stand alone Garmin GPS unit.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Have you ever used Onstar before? At least with my Grand Prix you just push the blue button, it cuts out the radio and you have hands-free communication with the person. It's kind of neat, but I've never used it so I didn't renew it when my free 1 year was up. The only advantage I saw was that if you're in an accident and the airbags deploy they'll call you to make sure emergency services gets to you. I didn't think it was worth $17 for this safety package though since I have a cell phone already. I never used it for directions since I'm a man... we never ask for directions!!! Now, if I could use my otherwise useless onstar system built into my car with a laptop then I find it interesting.
I agree. It seems like the point of this "hack" is to get access to the GPS unit. Seems like a bad idea to mess with an expensive unit and possibly void your warranty, especially when you're just getting access to a $20 OEM GPS unit.
I'd say the main thing about doing this is that they've already mounted the GPS antenna and routed the cable. This is going to be cleaner looking and probably get better signal than slapping a GPS on the dashboard. It'd be nice to make a little box that sat under your dashboard, or maybe in your glove box, that you could just plug your laptop into.
I've had a little experience with the OEM GPS units in embedded systems. They send the standard NMEA strings so any GPS program can use them. The main issue is that they output TTL level (0,5V) rather than RS-232 (-12/+12). Your laptop probably won't care but some PDAs won't be able to read the data. I'd just mount the thing on a little breadboard,wire up th e power leads, run the two I/O wires to an DB-9 shell and the antenna input to the appropriate connector. Then unplug the GPS antenna from the onstar unit and plug it the antenna jack. The advantage of this is that there are no warranty issues; just plug the antenna lead back into the onstar unit when you take it in for service and nobody's the wiser.
You can get completely assembled, self contained, true RS-232 units for about $120. For less than $200 more, you can have differential GPS with 3m accuracy.
Another option I've messed with are little bluetooth enabled GPS receivers. These would be very clean and unobtrusive on a dashboard.
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