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Congress May Force Revealing of Car Computer Secrets
marksven writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that there is a bill with 86 co-sponsors in the House to force automakers to open up their proprietary interfaces to car computers. Small car repair shops are more and more becoming locked out of the repair business because most late model cars can only be fixed by accessing their computers with codes that are secret."
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.
But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles, they're all for it.
Why won't they make up their minds?
I used to work for GE Medical Systems, and there was a similar case there. There is (or was?) a company out there doing third-party servicing of CAT and MRI scanners, place called "R-Squared". They took GE to court saying that we should share with them our service tools, because by not doing so it was unfairly excluding them from competing with us.
Ended up having to make it possible for the competition to get our service tools, but I don't remember that we were required to make them available cheaply or quickly. Not sure how things are there today; knowing GE they probably would solve the problem by buying out the competitor.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
had to take my car to the dealership this weekend because the shop down the block didn't know what the codes meant. Turns out it was a misaligned break caliper, cost me $225 at the dealership, would have been about $130 down the street.
But its a bit more complex that just that.
From the article;
>Automakers are fighting the legislation; they believe the real goal is to obtain proprietary "calibration codes" that are the blueprints for how parts are made. With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing.
So maybe its the same issue. A group wants to control their property by using technology which locks things up.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
If this works for previous model years instead of just new models, I'll be really happy. There's a small but loyal group of people like me that are trying to get a supercharger for our car. A company has quoted if they could produce it, the supercharger could conservatively raise the car from 174hp to ~260hp (300 lb-ft torque) thanks to a solid engine. The physical supercharger is the same as any others, but the problem is that no one has been able to crack the Hitachi (I think) computer so the programming knows about a supercharger and doesn't compensate for it negatively.
I often think that if you could get one car executive to take a 'chance'...and try the old idea behind the original GTO's and later other muscle cars...throw a monster engine into a decent body of a car...keep the interior minimalist...with real perfomance, and keep the price reasonable. I gotta think these things would sell like hotcakes...
Oh well...as long as we're dreaming here...I'd also like a pony...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You also handle the point that allowing users to get into the inner workings of their cars is not inherently evil.
I foresee some argument along the lines of "If we do this, <insert terrrorist/criminal organization here> will be able to soup-up the performance of their cars, and escape capture.
People working on their cars at low level resembles people working on Linux From Scratch, with the difference being that a core dump is only embarrassing, whereas an engine becoming several hundred flying sub-engines at the I95/I495 interchange, known with affection as 'the mixing bowl', could have substantial costs...
I hope the safety gestapo doesn't win the argument.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As someone who's part-way through the 100+ hour task of reverse engineering the computer in his '86 Mazda RX-7, I can say this truely is a great thing.
The are all kind of problems that are extremly difficult or impossible to diagnose and solve without the ability to REALLY talk to a car's computer.
I think most people don't realize just how much is coming under control of the car's computer these days. It used to be the computer just controlled the injectors, then it was spark. Now the computer might also control your ABS, traction control, regulator-less fuel system, electric power steering. In many modern cars (A 2000 Corvette would be an example) there isn't even a direct link between the throttle body and the gas pedal anymore. The gas pedal has a sensor and the TB has an actuator.
The government needs to junk ODBII and come up with a totally new approach. They allowed too many manufacturer-specfic exceptions, and made it require too much special hardware.
ODBII deliberately uses a nonstandard baud rate, to make it difficult to interface with a PC. The result of this is that an application (with cable) to read codes with your laptop will cost you $100+ instead of the $40 it should.
It's damn frustrating to have to buy a $160 computer to tell you that you car needs a $5 set of spark plugs. (It would have cost $70 just to get a shop to tell me the same thing).
A new interface should be designed that is a standard serial port, and allows for VERY few "undocumented" codes.
Life is too short to proofread.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'm a gear head. I know lots of geeks who are gear heads. I, however, have never encountered a problem due to inability to access 'calibration codes'.
I know that you can hook your laptop up to your OBDI/II based vehicle. What can ya do?
-monitor telemetry in real time [RPM,Throttle position, timing, fuel inject pulse lengths, etc.]
-read error codes stored in computer [terse format]
-reprogram the computer[really the data on which decisions are made, not the heuristics themselves]*
*You can't change stuff on earlier computers! Must be that we don't have the 'calibration code' to make a PROM into an EEPROM?!
Seriously though! What you need to 'know' to fix a car is:
Interface specification
Table of error/condition codes and triggering parameters.
Wiring diagrams, mechanical diagrams, parts lists, etc.
how modern cars work
From what I understand, the Interfaces are standardized [think ISO,IEEE, not RFC]. The error codes, and at least short descriptions, are available. The diagrams, etc. are available via repair manuals/KB Systems. I know that at least some manufacturers publish/authorize official such products. As for knowledge, can't legislate that:)
What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?
And what are 'calibration codes'?This is not exactly true... modern cars have a "closed loop" system where various sensors feed data into the computer which it uses to tune engine parameters. Thus, the computer is "self learning"... about a decade ago, Ford recalled a number of Tempo's. They replaced the injector and downloaded the engine calibration data -- they used a federally mandated recall to collect this "millions of dollars" worth of data.
:-)
In fact, it actually takes a mere afternoon to build the calibration data. It takes a fair bit of equipment (diag station, dynamo, etc.), but the process is rather simple. (that is, for those that know how to do it.)
Ironic side discussion... the only real difference between the VW 1.8T engines (150hp and 180hp anyway) is the ECU programming. I can "upgrade" my engine with a serial cable
I had a problem with my '99 cavalier; the engine would drop it's RPMs by several hundred every once in a while; almost, but not quite, enough to stall.
Took it in to the dealer, they said 'is the check engine light on?'
'Nope,' I replied, 'but here's what it's doing...'
'Sorry,' came the reply. 'If the check light's not on, there's no diagnostic codes for us to look up. We can't fix it unless we know what's wrong.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
This is good news for those of us who like to tinker with our cars, too. A while back I looked into available OSS interfaces to various models. It was a moot search. You ought to be able to plug your friggin' car into the serial port of your laptop and run diagnostics on emissions, compression, etc., as a matter of course.
It should also be noted that legislation addressing this issue was originally championed by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of MN.
It should also remind us how close we are to similarly prescribed access to the internals of a general purpose computer. Wouldn't some interests like to see a *No user serviceable parts inside. Opening case voids any warranties or EULAs associated with this machine.* sticker on your next box.
illegitimii non ingravare
I've been training as a mechanic and in most of our classes we use computer diagnostic tools as one step in verifying the problem.
First off, while the error codes are usually VERY accurate to what POTENTIAL problems are, they DON'T always tell you exactly what the problem is. Case in point: '96 GMC Yukon, the Service Engine light comes up every few days. Running the computer codes, it spits out a problem with an O2 sensor in the exhaust system, saying there is too much O2 in the exhaust. Now, this could be a number of things wrong...from problems with plugs and whires to bad gaskets, etc. that allow O2 leakage. However, the problem is nothing more than a crack in the weld on the exhaust pipe that leaks air into the exhaust system before the sensor, causing it to go off.
Secondly, last time I checked, I could buy manufacturer-specific computer equipment to diagnose cars from the manufacturers as a mechanic. Yes, the're about $600-700 a pop. (Snapon in turn sells a computer for that price and sells modules for each manufacturer for diagnosis).
Also, these performance maps and such you think aren't necessary...are. Why? because, during diagnosis, one of the things we look at is engine performance to verify that the engine isn't having trouble. The computer calculates and spits out performance data for the technician based on the information in the computer. No, we don't get to see all of the information on the chip directly, but for the sake of diagnosis, our tools have to be able to access it in the event that the car's performance is lagging behind what it should be and we have to diagnose it.
Thank you for our time.