EFI Live, HP Tuner and all these things seem like just simple software programs that grab data from the OBDII port and edit it. Do it Yourself OBDII scan tools and software has been around forever.

Anyone here actually make their own OBDII connector and Tuning?

 

I bet some grad student from MIT has done it, but for the regular person programming is just too complex. But then again I bet someone on here has done it.

 

I mean obviously all these tuner companies have programmers who do it. I'm sure there is a school to learn this stuff. The software has got to be out there. I'm surprised there just no open source stuff for these things. I see OBDII hardware for Palm Pilots, Laptops, Pocket PC's etc. I just can't believe there arent easier methods to just plug into an OBDII system and edit ****. I mean heck, theres Xbox Mods, PS2 mods, a lot of hardware out there that requires more skill to crack and mod than a vehicles OBDII system.

 

I work with vehicle ECU software as my job, and it is not nearly as easy as it sounds. First you have to get through the security, trivial on some units, a bear on others. Then the hard work begins. Because we are a legitimate OEM, we have access to what are called ASAP2 files (sometimes referred to as A2L files because of the file extension). These files describe all the parameters (over 1000 for our devices), their location in memory, and the scaling factors used to convert the binary values into real-world units. People like HPTuners and EFILive do not have (or should not have) these files, which means they have to discover the information themselves. This means many hours of painstaking disassembly, simulation, and other reverse engineering efforts, all very costly in terms of time, which is why such companies jealously guard their products. In addition, all this information changes for every revision of the software. We update our software about once a year, but some companies do so about every 2 months. The bottom line: too much work for a non-commercial enterprise.

 

Interesting info

 

if you can break down all the code, let us know.