zapta/linbus

LIN Bus Hardware Question

jmciver1 opened this issue · 3 comments

jmciver1 commented

Your LIN Bus project is very impressive and I am wondering if I can use it for a car project I am working on. I have two unused buttons in my car that I want to control aftermarket accessories via a standard digital relay.

These buttons in my car communicate with the car via both the LIN Bus and the CAN Bus. I have already confirmed the CAN Bus communication with these buttons using a CAN Bus sniffer. I have the schematics for my car which confirms that these two buttons also communicate via the LIN bus as well. I originally was going to use the CAN bus for this project based on this example here on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK2GefWiG4w

However, after further research which includes discovering your LIN Bus project, it seems that using the LIN bus to achieve my goal is a better and cleaner solution. So, my questions are as follows:

  1. Will one of your LIN bus devices (the analyzer or the injector) work in the manner that I need to control a digital relay?

  2. If one of your LIN bus devices can't do it independently, can it work with an Arduino type micro controller (such as the Uno, Leonardo, etc) to control a digital relay, similar to the CAN bus example I provided above?

Thanks in advance for the help!

zapta commented
jmciver1 commented

Well, I am VERY new to this type of programming and the micro controller hardware that goes with it. I stumbled across the YouTube video which gave me the idea of what I could do with those unused buttons in my car. I also found the Arduino code (or sketch) to use with the CAN Bus shield in that video in an online forum. I have looked at some of the coding tutorials on the Arduino site to get a better understanding of the coding, but that is it so far. So my programming skills is "sub novice" at best - but I am willing to learn to get the project operational as it is what I would want for the accessories I want to control in my car.

I could probably figure out the CAN Bus version as there is already a lot of info available and there are several example sketches that I could probably figure out how to modify. I was already able to use an "off the shelf" CAN bus sniffer to identify the address info for the buttons in question. However, after seeing your stuff, I think the LIN Bus interface for my project is the better way to go for several different reasons. Unfortunately, with the exception of your LIN Bus project, there is not much LIN Bus "novice" support on the net compared to CAN Bus - to include no real LIN Bus hardware options like the stuff you created.

If you say your hardware can do it, I am willing to go ahead and buy it to play with it (from the site that you submitted your designs to) - but I will need some help on the programming side admittedly. I just wanted to know if it would work before I bought it.

jmciver1 commented

Also, I have purchased a DFRobot Beetle to play with and learn about Arduino (it is based on the Leonardo chip). I originally though I would connect a CAN Bus shield to the Beetle to get this working. But as I said above, I think the LIN bus is the way to go. So, I was hoping that either your device could do what I want by itself or I could connect your device to the Beetle (just like a CAN Bus shield) and use the LIN Bus. Either way, the coding for the LIN bus interface would be different, which is where I would need the most amount of help.