Recently a buddy of mine lent me his bluetooth OBDII cable. When I get free time, I'm going to be writing an Android application to do some OBDII parsing for a side project we have going on.

I'm not very familiar with OBDII or ECUs in general, but does anyone know if it's physically possible to modify ECU settings through the OBDII port? Or is OBDII read only?

Can anyone explain how tools like the Cobb accessport work behind the scenes? Something more technical than plug it in a press some buttons would be helpful.

In any event, If it is possible to modify the ECU through OBDII, or by some other means using my Android phone, I would be willing to spend my time developing an application to replicate what Cobb and Osiris do with their tuning chips.

Thanks for the help,

 

Good luck with that idea, not sure if it would work but I have a feeling it wont

 

^ booooooooooo!

doet! sounds like you have a big task ahead of you... let us know of the outcome..

 

I didn't say don't do it I just don't think you could make a programer out of a phone app, but I hope he proves me wrong, cause I post this with my droid!

 

one of my buddies had an app he made for his old sunfire on his palm trio, it IS possible, just fcukloads of work and cooked ecus hahaha

 

It is possible to WRITE settings onto the ecu. It usually depends on the manufacturer. I am ex Audi Tech and we used to modify settings all the time...

 

Yes, the ECU can be written through the ODBII port. The AccessPort utilizes a protocol that opens the read/write mode on the ECU and facilitates the port to make the changes. They use a USB cable instead of wireless because its cheaper. This is very possible, check out WRXModders.com for the OpenECU and RomRaider software. These are open source platforms so you can look at the code and figure out how the protocol is established open on the cars it will work for and develop from there.

Now, the thing about the AP compared to a cell phone that can run an app is that you cant place a call from the AccessPort All the AP does is start a dedicated app that talks to the ECU and performs the procedures to copy the OEM data the first time you connect and then write the "modified" maps to it from then on. In theory you wont be doing anything differently other then not using a cable if you try to transfer the data via bluetooth. You will have to figure out the type of code the ECU can understand (probably a C#/Pearl or some proprietorial language)

Honestly, you might be able to get an AP from Cobb and get their tuner software, study it and develop from how you see it work. Since Cobb has given up on just about all NA cars now (which doesn't surprise me) they might even help you figure some stuff out, depending on how much sweet talking you can do to one of the programmers.

Or, you can talk to one of the current software tuners who writes maps and find out if you can work with them on how to develop an app that will work on an Android phone wireless for real time and base map switching and flashing.

I dont know how much that helped but I hope I started some thinking going on. I personally have an iPhone so it doesn't matter to me unless you can build an app for that too, and if you don't wont to pay Apple for it to be on the App Store just make it available to people who have their phones jail broke, or just me as my phone is jail broke, regardless you would probably have to be running a jail broke iPhone so you could manipulate the bluetooth anyway since Apple has that phone so locked down its pitiful!

 

Thanks that was a huge help. I was concerned OBDII was read only and modifying the ECU would be impossible. Perhaps I'll contact Cobb and see if anyone is willing to help me out with this from a technical perspective. Even if they just told me what their maps actually looked like and or did under the hood would be helpful, since I don't want to write anything to my OBD or ECU unless I was 100% certain it wouldn't jack up my car.

We'll see what kind of progress I make, but I'm not really into iPhone development. Like you said, it's so locked down and with Android I have all of this cool stuff at my fingertips without having to jailbreak my phone or do anything like that.

 

Yeah, stupid Apple! Oh well, good luck!

 

hey man any update on this?

I am planning on doing this for my senior design project at ucf so i would like to see how far someone else has gotten

 

How about an app for us WindowsMobile guys?

 

+1 I am not sure it is going to have the capability...

 

good luck with this

 

I really don't think that Cobb or Uprev are likely to want to assist anyone in cracking the protocol's needed to re write ECU data, when the have probably invested hundred's of thousand dollars and countless hours in programing to achieve a commercial viable product, do you?

But good luck, and i hope you have a few ECUs lined up, thats presuming you have a background in programming.

 

what do u mean by a few ecu's lined up?