Vehicles have come with diagnostic ports for many years now, and there are a host of easily available tools to interrogate them. Despite that, there are still proprietary aspects that remain out of reach. For one of them there may be a way to know more though, as [Daniel Henzulea] has made what he describes to us as a dealer-grade diagonostic tool for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. These machines don’t come with the familiar OBD-II port.
The Harley diagnostic port is a custom six-pin socket that carries a CAN bus. Into this is plugged a CAN transceiver, and to that is connected one of the Xtensa-based ESP32s. The magic then is in the software, which exposes and makes accessible every function. What used to be closed source and prohibitively expensive, is now open to all.
You might not be surprised to read that this isn’t the first time we’ve featured a project diving into a Harley-Davidson’s data bus.
Header: Reinhold Möller, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awesome! This is a huge. We’re going to see more and more of this in the coming years, and I’m all for it. People are waking up to right to repair and the tide is turning. Expect the backlash. Corporations are going to start trying to lock things down even more. EULAs are going to try to take more and more of your rights. Whenever possible, avoid closed source software and closed hardware. When not possible, avoid the worst offenders. People deserve to make a living, but no one deserves to rip others off.