What I would like to see is USB plug in every car, which provides diagnostic and maintenance data according to a standardized format. This should be available to the owner and to any shop they authorize to work on the car.
The OBD2 standard does this today. Not pretty, but works well enough. I always check my fault codes before going to the mechanic.
>which provides diagnostic and maintenance data according to a standardized format.
Except the values you get won't make any sense outside of your particular model. Its like reading SMART data from a hard drive. Okay, you can generate this csv and have all this data, but without the manufacturer telling what thresholds matter (and these are arguable), its kinda meaningless. SMART was supposed to predict failures and do all sorts of things, but its kind useless in practice. I think most controllers just stupidly rely on bad blocks appearing than trying to interpret the tea leaves of SMART data.
With OBD systems, all this information is internal and we get a fault code when we pass a certain threshold. I think this makes it a lot easier for mechanics and lay people to work with. Data addicts, of course, will never be satisfied unless they can pull every bit out of the system, but that may not be practical or useful. I could see a hybrid system where a car has the old fashioned OBD2 protocol and something else for nerds to download.
Getting at that level of data would be possible if you could access the CAN bus. It's part of the OBD-II standard, but most manufacturers don't forward the CAN bus data to that specific connector hidden under your steering column. However, a few do, and there are other connections in other locations for the other makes.
You can access the CAN bus pretty cheaply (there are several cards available around $200 with linux drivers, maybe cheaper if you're willing to do more than plug it in and turn on wireshark). That said, the last time I worked on ECMs, the messages were not standardized at all. You needed a spec to define what variations of ECMs were available as well as what the individual values would mean. I feel like GM was standardizing this more than others in an effort to consolidate ECMs they were shipping (runtime config via "calibrations" I believe), and all manufacturers might be using standardized parts now, but you'll still need to know not only the message inventory for your vehicle, but you'll want to know whatever diagnostic protocol that your manufacturer uses to sit on top of CAN. Keyword Protocol 2000 was used by DaimlerChrysler was used when I was still in the business and GMLAN was used by GM for these purposes.
The Goodthopter [1], an offshoot of Travis Goodspeed's 'GoodFET' project, allows CAN access for about $35 all in. It's basically a MSP430 + a CAN controller.
Even 'simple' CAN protocols, like J1939 used in trucks/agri/marine, are purposely non-standard. It's rather annoying.
I'm curious as to what systems will emerge from Mercedes/VW/BMW (and I guess Google) as more high speed sources like LiDAR, active dampening, etc become the norm. The current BMW 5/7 series and Mercedes' S-class already have separate CAN-like systems for high speed buses.
> but without the manufacturer telling what thresholds matter (and these are arguable), its kinda meaningless
I know exactly what you mean. Through random forum postings I found which index my SSD uses for "wear level", only nobody knows what the units are or what they mean.
There's actually this sort of thing in the car via the touchscreen. If you hold down on the "T" at the top center of the screen, it will prompt for an access PIN and behind there is all the diagnostics you could dream of. Unfortunately, that's all hidden from the consumer for now :/
Basically there is a way to gather fuel usage, fuel levels, speed, Mass Air Flow Rate, rpm, etc etc. Adding accelerometer and GPS to the mix pretty much gives you a decent start to the vehicle analytics platform.
On heavy vehicles or if you want more data on light duty, tapping into CAN is the only way, but that can get very manufacturer specific...
Some of these are massively overpriced, but they are useful looking.
If I had a bit of cash I'd consider putting a 7" Android tablet into the dash (you'd need a double DIN slot) and install the torque app, with a custom moulded surround to make it look stock. Live engine data to satisfy your inner nerd!
Wow,the price is really steep, but I also could not find info on the hardware they use to interface with OBDII for Dashcommand. I think there is most likely additional cost for a wifi enable d device that plugs in to OBDII and forwards this data to the mobile app.
Yes, I noticed this too. It really hard to invest time with such a restrictive license. Do you know by any chance if Odometer value is a real odometer or distance since MIL or something else. Odometer is not a standard PID and I was curious to see if Ford opened that up.
OpenXC had a really easy to way to get odometer readings, otherwise according to [1] "For a Ford vehicle, the odometer can be read via a mode $22 PID of $6180 for km clusters, and $6182 for mph clusters.". [2] Also talks a bit about reading Odometer. Shame there isn't a standard for reading it.
Head over to Amazon, buy a bluetooth OBD2 dongle. Plug it into the port in your car, typically under the steering wheel. Load up the Torque app on your smartphone. You now have real-time direct access to all the diagnostics, fault codes, and can clear your own Check Engine light. With the app you can create your own dashboards of gauges, monitor all your car's sensors while driving, and log everything for export.
