Engineering Projects/Car Hack/Howard Community College/Fall2011/501 Autoengineers

Problem Statement

We would like to get a car to start and read diagnosis from the car via a mobile device like a cell phone.

Team Members

Summary

For the first week, Fahad's goal was to gain familiarization on starting a car. He did so by researching how a car starts outside of class. After the first week, he was researching what OBD scanner to purchase and what application can be used to start a car.

Matt's goal was to find a suitable blue tooth receiver, purchase the receiver, and test the range of the receiver.

Andy's goal was to find the schematics of the wires inside of a 1997 Toyota Corolla, the car being used in the project. After that, he went on to determine what voltage and ampere is required to trigger a starter solenoid, the device that starts up the starter that starts up a car's engine motor.

Poster

Pictures are to the right side of the team page

This is a starter solenoid

This is the starter solenoid triggered

This is the starter solenoid once it was released

Story

Car hack is all about being able to get into a car without using the original equipment and be able to access the cars computer. Doing that can enable us to start the car, or unlock the doors and much more. The car hack project is very useful to people who want to push their engineering abilities. The car hack really gets you to use your brain. Using the car's on-board computer that is used to diagnose what is occurring throughout the car, we believe that we can turn on and off the vehicle.

Decision List

1. What On-board diagnostic scanner should we buy?

2. Through what do we make a car start?

3. What wires from the vehicle do we need to start the car?

4. What receiver should we use for the maximum range?

5. Does the vehicle have any type of built in theft deterrent systems that would thwart crossing of wires or hacking the ECU?

Material List

1. a car to use

2.Garmin obd connector Bluetooth to iPhone.(we couldn't get this)

3.relay for the ignition switch.

4.tools to open a steering column of a car.

5.OBD adapter wifi(ordered)

Software List

We did not get to use any software as we did not receive it in time. We were going to use a iphone app called REV to read the codes off the car. Codes such as check engine light can be checked to see what is causing the car to have the light on. We had many software to choose from such as Viper, OBD check, and REV, but none of them had the same ability to read many adapters as the REV did. REV worked with many adapter available on the market.

Time

We spent 3 hours a week in classroom discussing weekly goals and decisions. We then spent 3 hours outside of class individually. In total, 6 hours were spent every week and 24 hours were spent during the entire duration of the project. With 3 team members, the total man hours spent for the project is 72 hours.

Tutorials

First gather all information on the car you are trying to hack. Get the details on the cars computer, find out where the OBD is located. Find out if it starts up normally or is it a electronic start.

Gather all the parts you will need for this project. We gathered information about the possible software we might need for our phones to display the data of the car. We searched to find out possible OBD adapters that work with several cars.

Purchase the items you need. We used an iPhone app called REV which cost about $39.99, we bought a OBD adapter for $80. Links are in team members pages

Next Steps

Find out how the apps works

Get the OBD Adapter connected

Get the data of your car

start working on the Starting the Car