Design and implementation of a CAN Bus data logger with multiple communication interfaces for vehicles

Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, May 2022Modern vehicles have been equipped with electronic control units (ECUs) to control the electrical systems of cars. Although this system is built for the car's performance and provides manufacturers data to improve future designs of vehicles, it also presents an opportunity for vehicle data to be retrieved and analyzed to manage the car better. These ECUs can provide information about the car's health status, readings of various sensors, and several vehicle parameters. The data can be analyzed to determine driving behaviours that can improve fuel consumption rates and gas emissions of the vehicle. The data can also be used to diagnose vehicle faults. This project built an embedded device capable of reading and sending vehicle parameters to a remote database for future analysis. The device interfaces with the ISO15765 protocol, one of the five protocols of the Onboard Diagnostic System (OBD-II) available in all modern vehicles, to read data from the car. ISO15765 implements the standards of sending data on the Controller Area Network (CAN), a communication protocol for ECUs in vehicles. The data is transferred to a remote database or a mobile phone through Bluetooth when the Internet is unavailable. The data in the database is displayed in a mobile app. This project proves that vehicle data from ECUs can be transferred to a remote database through a wireless embedded device.Ashesi Universit