43 replies to this topic

[fixitsan]

Aye, but you would need to warn anyone doing any servicing on your vehicle, or stand for a very big damages claim!!

 

 

Most cars use just 2 of the OBD wires for communication (as well as the +12V and GND). Those 2 wires (usually CANhi and CANlo go straight back to the ECU in the engine bay.  It wouldn't take too much to put a waterproof 2 way switch in the engine bay to disable the OBD port  (by breaking the circuit on those 2 wires) except for when servicing. The switch could be hidden, it could also be a simple remote switched relay type, where you need a small remote control to enable/disable OBD !

[steve27bha]

When might motorcycles be fitted with OBD - or are some already?

 

Are they a legal requirement on cars (& other vehicles?) or just a feature useful to manufacturers and their servicing agents?

 

I know the boys in blue can access and use the ECU data to investigate incidents.

[leehenty]

Some modern bikes are going keyless but TDM's don't have that kind of data port. Diagnosis is done via dash.
New Bikes already have diagnostics ports now.

[hallrob1]

Triumphs have had an OBD port for a while - my 2005 Tiger came with one.

 

It was quite handy as there are a few software products you can get that allows you to access the diagnostics and perform some service actions. You can even use them to load a fuel map although Triumph are now locking down the ECU to prevent that.

[BSM]

Great one Mr Lee.

[mh1848]

my Buell (2006) has a port to connect via USB to computer for various diagnostics and mapping and tuning - set TPS for example

[fixitsan]

When might motorcycles be fitted with OBD - or are some already?

 

Are they a legal requirement on cars (& other vehicles?) or just a feature useful to manufacturers and their servicing agents?

 

I know the boys in blue can access and use the ECU data to investigate incidents.

 

It's been a legal requirement for many years on cars, ever since the manufacturers lost the legal right to develop their own in house diagnosis system and therefore cut the small garages out of doing basic repairs which required diagnostic tools. It started in response to the need to diagnose faults with emissions control devices

 

Manufacturers can still develop their own diagnostic tools but they must leave in place the OBD system which complies with the legal minimum requirement, providing access to all the important 'PID' (diagnostic codes) data. Examples of those are things like RPM, intake air temperature, oil temperature, ignition coil data etc

 

Even the physical OBD port's location in the vehicle has a specification, and must be within the passenger compartment, and I've read that it must be within 1m of the steering wheel , but don't know if that's true or not. The port in the passenger compartment is almost always just a breakout connector from the ECU, on extension wires, and on most cars you could just cut the port connector off and after insulating the bare ends of wire the car should still work perfectly well

 

Most OBD ports work over the two canbus wires.

 

There are also 'k-line' and 'l-line' protocols which have been used for different things, and you need an appropriate code reader to connect to those. That's often because getting access to the k-line system allows you to change some firmware settings in the ECU, as well as flash new fueling tables in some models. A 'CANbus OBD reader' will only give access to OBD data under those circumstances, even if you have legal ECU programming tools installed on your PC too, because there will be no access to the K-line. K-line is (I think) is the one which theives use to reprogram or bypass the security system on, so disconnecting one canbus wire and the k-line wire would make it impossible to hack (in theory)

 

You can read OBD ports with a basic canbus/USB reader while running terminal software like Hyperterminal on your PC, because there is (by law) no encryption, and so the instruction which you send to the ECU to return the RPM value is almost universal on all cars, which is how we can get free OBD dashboard tools on our mobile phones

 

This Wiki page is quite useful .  https://en.wikipedia...gnostics#OBD-II

 

I don't think there is an OBD specification for motorcycles, yet (may be wrong there, if EU4/5 includes it) , most manufacturers have their own diagnostic systems, but most are based on CANbus. CANbus is just a data communication/transmission protocol, much like ethernet is, and is widely used in industry, so just having a CANbus does not mean you have OBD, although if there is model specific data being transmitted over the CANbus it wouldn't be difficult to figure out what exactly some of the basic data packets referred to.

my Buell (2006) has a port to connect via USB to computer for various diagnostics and mapping and tuning - set TPS for example

A lot of KTM's have a nice open system too

Edited by fixitsan, 22 February 2021 - 03:06 pm.

[leehenty]

So all this digital technology is in fact no more secure that a big steel lock.

[Snowbird]

It sounds to be far less secure than a big steel lock.

[Robodene]

Ah well, every car/motorhome nicked is another sale. Not much incentive to put things to rights.

[fixitsan]

So all this digital technology is in fact no more secure that a big steel lock.

 

 

Probably not, a lot of it is sold merely as convenience too....you know how it is, i could never go backwards to a day when I had to actually put a key into the door lock to unlock my car door......that's for the dark ages and peasants now   !

 

I remember the day when the new British biometric passport was launched, a group of hackers had hired a conference suite in a hotel and livestreamed the event. One of them got his new biometric passport and arrived on site with it on the first day at 9Am. By lunchtime they had managed to electronically clone it, rendering the idea of secure biometric passports pointless (with that particular type of RFID technology)

 

Every failure, is another successful step in the argument that we should all just be DNA screened (no thanks) , but even that has some issues.

 

The story I like at the moment, which is absolutely true - you know how when you visit some websites you're asked to authenticate that you're not a robot, by using 'CAPTCHA' ?  It turns out that the original CAPTCH was bought bought by Google, and was called reCAPTCHA. At the time Google were busy digitising every book in the world, and sometimes the electronic word recognition software would stumble, so Google sent that word image to reCAPTCHA, for us all to say what that word looked like to us, and then Google used the results to fix the digitising of that word.

 

Later, when most of the issues had been resolved they moved to identifying street names and house numbers which had been collected by the Google Streetview cars, and again, any questionable results were put out to reCAPTCHA so that us users could do the work for them

 

In light of recent news that early Uber drivers are considered employees, rather than being self employed, I wonder if we could claim a wage from Google ?

 

The next level of reCAPTCHA is based on identifying road crossings, traffic lights, fire hydrants and other road obstacles, which is said to be used for training Google AI, used in their autonomous self driving cars !

 

There's a bit about it here - https://techwelkin.c...i-bot-mechanism

[Studley Ramrod]

Amazing stuff, pity Google don't make security devices for motorhomes. That said, some might say Google already invade our privacy too much as it is.

[fixitsan]

Amazing stuff, pity Google don't make security devices for motorhomes. That said, some might say Google already invade our privacy too much as it is.

 

Maybe, their analysis tools, used for behavioural analysis are almost as evil as Facebook's. They reckon they can predict people's emotional behaviour, and now they have boasted that they can control people's emotions, to the point that they can sell ad space on your Facebook feed to companies wishing to sell the specific products that they know you're likely to buy when you're feeling down !

 

It's all about ads and click revenues. Reminds me of that old saying that on the internet, if something is for free then it's because you're the product !

[Snowbird]

No matter how good the lock there's always one type of key that will attempt to open it, a pi-key....

[fixitsan]

No matter how good the lock there's always one type of key that will attempt to open it, a pi-key....

  That's a terrible thing to say

 

My wife is a direct descendant of the King of the Gypsies, Billy Marshall - https://jimzglebeblo...or-tinkler.html

 

"He was supposed to have married 17 times and he had a huge crowd of illegitimate children"  , so she comes from a big family

 

Actually, you're observation is probably true !

Edited by fixitsan, 23 February 2021 - 03:09 pm.

[steve27bha]

Fixit / Chris.

 

I thank you for the replies and info. above. It's very interesting and a bit worrying, and confirms my decision to avoid Faceache and the other social media.

[fixitsan]

Fixit / Chris.

 

I thank you for the replies and info. above. It's very interesting and a bit worrying, and confirms my decision to avoid Faceache and the other social media.

 

Steve yes, It is a concern, especially when you see youngsters hooked on those services. Should probably be renamed 'antisocial media ' !

 

I lost Facebook to a hacker last September, and in an attempt to get my account back I exhausted all the normal paper/document verification methods, copies of bills, official council mail etc, but they kept wanting more, eventually wanting a copy of my photo ID, drivers licence or passport. I thought I would see how long I could go without it, and I'm still feeling okay, so they've lost me now !

 

Then I started looking into Whatsapp, also owned by Facebook, and they share metadata together, about who speaks to who, and the locations you visit, if you have gps turned on. (and with less accuracy if gps is turned off)

 

Amazingly to me, since I took Facebook off my mobile phone the battery lasts over twice as long, because apart from user interactions, Facebook apps constantly ping messages backwards and forwards over the internet every few minutes, even when the phone is sat idle. I take it off charge at 7am, and at midnight it is still often over 70% capacity ! Unfortunately my phone is made by Xiaomi, who are sponsored by the Chinese communist party, so I've probably shot myself in the foot already if security is my concern ! !

 

 

Just to get back to campers......like a lot of other people, considering how uncertain the future of international travel now is, we're probably going to be looking to buy one at some point in the future,

[steve27bha]

.....

Just to get back to campers......like a lot of other people, considering how uncertain the future of international travel now is, we're probably going to be looking to buy one at some point in the future,

Promise me you won't take it up North on the NC500, or up the Bealach na Bà, and avoid single-tracks as much as possible!

Edited by steve27bha, 23 February 2021 - 11:49 pm.

[CharlieMac]

Really nice to see that the youngsters have sound hobbies instead of just sitting at home playing computer games or watching Netflix
Let's give these uneducated kids credit for innovation and imagination. We are always too quick to do these kids down. Just imagine what they could achieve with Eton and Oxbridge educations.

[Catteeclan]

Really nice to see that the youngsters have sound hobbies instead of just sitting at home playing computer games or watching Netflix
Let's give these uneducated kids credit for innovation and imagination. We are always too quick to do these kids down. Just imagine what they could achieve with Eton and Oxbridge educations.

They'd be MPs.