Ever thought of connecting with your car? I created a prototype to do so...

My most recent project was a hardware prototype to interface with my car. I know that there are hundreds of sensors in everyday cars in Singapore and they are often networked to a central brain, which is known as the engine control unit (ECU) in the auto industry.

I wanted to interface with my car because there are tons of possibilities once the connection is made. For instance, I could monitor the health and performance of my car, even in real-time. I can also create a profile of my driving behaviour (and that of my spouse for comparison's sake). I may be able to control certain functions of my car remotely. There are many more possibilities.

Well, cutting a long story short, I was able to successfully create a prototype on a breadboard (photos below) that worked with an ECU simulator imported from the US. I can request specific data from the ECU (e.g. engine coolant temp, RPM, air intake rate and many more).

The electronics part involved quite a fair bit of tinkering and understanding of the ECU, its communication protocol, voltage/current requirements, instructions to read/write data, programming the microcontroller, etc.

I will dive into the details in subsequent posts. Or, if there are specific requests, please leave your comments.

The port in my car where my hardware interface will be connected to...

One of the modules - with 2G transmission capability

The set-up (excludes 2G module) that successfully extracts data from the ECU simulator

Hardware electronics projects - Who works on them these days?

Several years ago, I was an electrical engineering major in the National University of Singapore. I enjoyed working on circuits, microcontroller programming and the like. In one of our main project modules, my team designed, created, tested and eventually produced an amphibious vehicle that could move on land and in water. Great fun and sense of accomplishment, to say the least.

Now, other than students and engineers at electronics companies, who works on hardware electronics projects today?

The other two groups of people I can think of are hardcore hobbyists and startup teams.

I'll be interested to hear from people who are working on any form of electronics projects, whether they are using PIC/ATmega microcontrollers, Arduino development boards, Eagle for schematics and/or other tools.

Before I share my latest projects, here's a link to our humble amphibious vehicle project.

http://youtu.be/_fzTGUhV7Mg