Auto.pi telematic unit/car hacking discussion thread.

Hi everyone! I'm starting this thread for people like me, who wants a place to discuss projects and share information with others who also have a Prius and want to "bring their car into the future" with the autopi dongle and others like it.

Here is a link to the autopi website if you have no idea what I'm talking about https://www.autopi.io/

 

I just barely could afford it but it's something I really wanted to get into. I'm in my prius way more than the average person as I do door dash full time.

This device will help me streamline some aspects of my job as well as provide some fun projects to keep my nerd brain happy.

I plan to use this thread as more of a "car hacking for dummies" tutorial type info dump thing? I don't really know how to describe it other than that lol.

It's going to be a while before that happens because support quoted me 3 months before they start shipping out to customers.

 

I've finally got an update on delivery for my autopi device. One of the guys I emailed said end of June but we'll see.

In the mean time I've discovered that there is a torque app plugin that can sniff the can bus but that's it and it's slow.

 

Yeah well that's the way things are now with low volume production. Chip shortages and such

 

I had an idea today while waiting for a tire balance job. (Strap in it's a long one)

If you have spent a significant amount of time using the hybrid assistant app like I have you would know that the hybrid system is obsessed with maintaining around 60% SOC.

If you are above or below 60% the hybrid system will force Regen untill reaching 60% or operate in ICE assist mode until hitting 60% assuming you are driving normally.

My thought was that if we were able to intercept can bus traffic to and from the ecu's responsible for Regen operation, we could achieve a sort of flexible 60% SOC where instead of constantly trying to maintain 60 it would be happy with plus/minus 10% of 60% allowing the driver more time to Regen power when it's actually efficient to do so. (Like slowing for a stop light/sign)

Obviously the interception would be automatically disabled below 35 SOC as to not damage/over discharge the battery.

I'm confident this would help efficiency In the city and the highway.

Say you knew you were getting on the freeway soon, you could enable a mode where it would be happy to charge up to and maintain 80% SOC until you hit the highway where in my experience seems to be the best time to use ice assist.

In my research I found that
It only takes 14-15kw of ice propulsion to keep the car going at 60mph on a flat road, however when the hybrid battery is above 60% It sips 1-2 kw from the battery draining it slowly and offsetting the ice reducing that ice propulsion demand to 12-14 kw.
Resulting in 10-15 mpg gain while in assist mode.

Another plus is that if you run into traffic early on in your highway trip then you can use it then instead.

All this being said I don't really feel comfortable doing this to a non lithium swapped prius. There's just too little margin, total available charge and discharge cycles and efficiency for it to be worth it.

 

Like I said I dont think this would be a good idea for people without a lithium swapped hybrid battery. lithium doesn't bulge unless something was VERY wrong, has no problem being at 80soc and has plenty of extra charge cycles to spare.

 

FINALLY. AND UPDATE. ITS HERE. (Tldr at the end)

It's huge. Twice as big as I thought it would be. It's similar in width to a brick but, not as long and half as thick.


Anyways I got it up and running and linked with my autopi account late last night, and was sniffing the canbus within an hour. (Would have been 10 mins if I had read the getting started guide)

After about 5 mins of screwing around I realized doing some of the things I wanted was going to take many hours so I went to bed.

Next day I plugged it back in and repeated the steps I did last night but no more can data was coming in no matter which protocol I used.

I thought maybe my OBD2 port was damaged somehow, but I was still getting can data coming in with my OBD2 Bluetooth elm adapter via one of the torque pro plugins.

TLDR: my autopi dongle was working however the next day it Suddenly stopped being able to sniff the can bus for no reason that I could see.


In conclusion I'm currently in an email back and forth with support (who got back to me within 12 hours) and I'll update here once I get it working again.

 

HOLY cow guys im back.

Back and forth with support for months and I finally got it working. I'm able to record and play back can messages.

HOWEVER according to this document on page 5
http://static.hybrids.ru/files/OfficialToyotaInfo/RepairInformation/RepairManual/MP%20-%20Multiplex%20Communication.pdf
The Prius has 3 can networks

1 normal running on the ISO 15765-4 protocol running at 500,000bps (which i can read and play back)

and 2 other Toyota proprietary protocols {BEAN} and {avc-lan} (i cant read or play back.)

The support guy says that they do not support these proprietary networks which is understandable, however, they said that the data might be able to be read with "lower level can tools" whatever that means.

Im basically at a brick wall. The main reason I got this thing is for automatic windows (approach the car and windows go down AC kicks in, start car windows go up.) but I cant do that because window control and climate control is managed on the BEAN network

and some other things if possible like allow ev mode with engine cold.

Unless there is some way to tap into the gateway ecu that all 3 networks feed into, through the obd port i think this project was a bust.

 

edit: keep forgetting to only click reply once