Playing with CAN

This was the subject of my presentation of this year's LSEWeek. Slides (english) and the video (french) are respectively available here and here

Update 2017: This was also part of our talk at 34c3. slides and stream now available!

Sum up

I was curious about learning what makes a car. As time went by, I started taking a look at cars internal systems, and finally ended up playing with CAN. This repo is all of what I understood, read, wrote, and experienced with.

The repo is split in different parts:

• can_logs: Different CAN output while testing different things on different vehicles
• canpad: FaaG (Fiat as a Gamepad) - Play video games with your Fiat 500
• docs: PDFs and documentation I used during my analysis
• notes: Written notes and sum ups on different subjects (OBD, CAN, environement setup, ...)
• scripts: python-can scripts to play with the CAN bus

Tools and cars used:

• PiCan2
• VW Polo (6R, 6C) 1.2 (2009-..., 60 CH)
• Fiat 500c 69ch (2010)
• Lancia Voyager (2014)

CANPad

CANPad allows one to pilot in video games by using real cars via CAN. This repo contains two versions:

• v1: Creates a virtual controller via libuinput to control simple games that don't require real controllers (like VDrift). Tested on ArchLinux with VDrift. Demonstration video available here
• v2: Allows one to play more interesting games (like Dirt Showdown) on Linux by hijacking a real XBox like controller. Tested on ArchLinux with Dirt Showdown (Steam version) with an official XBox controller. Demonstration video available here

Some codes are manufacturer specific (brakes pedal, clutch, steering wheel, handbrake) and thus will only work with Fiat cars (maybe even Fiat 500 only, maybe even Fiat 500c 2010 only, etc, I don't know). Feel free to try this on different cars, and submit via pull requests new versions of CANPad!)

"notes" disclaimer

These notes are a sum up of what can be found on the internet or in the various documents presents in ../docs. Everything comes from my understanding of what I read and thus must be taken with care, since mistakes can be (and have been) made during these researches.

For any question, feel free to send me an email at p1kachu@lse.epita.fr

Other links

• https://hackaday.io/project/6288/logs
• http://jazdw.net/tp20
• https://hackaday.io/project/6288-volkswagen-can-bus-gaming
• http://illmatics.com/carhacking.html
• http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/
• http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=4983
• http://www.ti.com/lit/an/sloa101b/sloa101b.pdf
• See 'notes' for more