Create your own CAN controller/gateway! For a few bucks ;)

I really loved learning about the whole CAN bus, and it was really fun to discover the car in a new way. Breaking into wires, searching with that oscilloscope. With the right information in the course i found it quite easy to find my way in it.

But after i was able to get to the can messages, i could't really do anything with it. Looked around on the internet, and most things i find are expensive ECU's or PDM, found several other controllers worth hunderds of euros and i didn't know if i could do with it what i wanted.

So i was looking around and found a "Speeduino" ECU, and i already had a Arduino starter pack laying around. and i started searching how this could work with CAN. Being able to program my own unit, with the benefits of CAN, seemed like a whole world opening up again!

After trying with the Arduino, i have been able to make my own controller, filter out the can id's, and which byte to look for in that message. Being able to control relays through the code, i was able to code it in a way to trigger the relays when certain buttons where pressed in the car. And it wasn't even that hard to learn!

So if you want to interact with the OEM Can, with all OEM electronics, and don't want to spend a lot of money. Look into Arduino, create your own controller if you just want to be able to achieve simple small stuff!

I started out with an Arduino Uno, the CAN-BUS shield V2 from Seeed Studio, And the Relay Shield V1.1 from Elecrow. And i made an controller for several lights, and to control the exhaust valve in a certain gearbox mode.

Now i have ordered a Arduino Giga, and i am looking into making my own controller screen, with all the parameters in 1 place (temps, rpms, you name it) and to have a controller to control aftermarket lights, exhaustvalves, rpm led indicators, and much more. You can even make you own parking sensors, temperature sensors. Really endless possibility's!

it's absolutely possible to do so with arduino, i opted for stm32 microcontrollers and the stm32cube hal framework on my projects. arduino framework left me with a lot to be desired outside the main while loop,

while intimidating at first, it's saved me many times over, especially when debugging with openocd.