LCA: HackAbility [LWN.net]

LCA: HackAbility

Posted Feb 5, 2010 12:05 UTC (Fri) by robbe (guest, #16131)
Parent article: LCA: HackAbility

> Cars can be fixed easily; anybody with a few skills can start a car
> repair business.

Not if the car is anything modern. To touch the on board computer(s) the
normal way is to license hilariously-expensive tools from the
manufacturer. Reverse engineering is made difficult by encryption (often
of the trivial-to-break-but-enough-for-the-DMCA kind).

Even if the main repair job involves no computers, it's often necessary
to access the on-board-diagnostics to reset the service-me light.

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LCA: HackAbility

Posted Feb 8, 2010 6:30 UTC (Mon) by set (guest, #4788) [Link]

What, has something changed in recent times? Last time I had a 'service' light go off, I went to the store and bought a CAN/ODB2 scanner that
did *way* more than I actually needed. (It was the fanciest one they
had at around $100) You can just visit a parts store
and they will go out and hook up a scanner for free. It pinpointed the
problem system and the repair was easy.

Besides, on a 'modern' car, most of the repairs are replacing consumables
like brakes, rotors, shocks, filters, exhaust, tires, etc. Maybe if you
specialize in fancier repairs/enhancements like transmission and engine
rebuilds or modifications you might need special tools.

Is CAN/ODB2 no longer relevant standards?