Car button-press simulator box thing

[perthdrivers.txt]

Chaps, has anyone seen such a device that when wired in to your car, simulates pressing all those buttons in modern vehicles that you always have to press each time you start it? Like Sport buttons, Traction control buttons, Stop/Start off, that sort of thing?

Even a generic circuit that is powered up by the ignition and you wire across the terminals of each switch you want to be activated.

Surely someone has come up with something? I know for some things you can program them via OBD but not for everything...

[Shonky]

Definitely try for coding where you can.

Anything generic "pushing buttons" (or shorting terminals) is going to be a bodgy hack I reckon. Also difficult for the device to know the state and when to press the button. e.g. say you stop and turn off ignition, button/feature doesn't revert to default start state and button gets pressed again when you start car. That may be acceptable to you though..

[Impakt]

if they're all on the same CAN network then coding something should be simple enough. The hard part is building the hardware and figuring out what to send.

[davel]

There was talk a while ago on the IPRA forum that someone with a BMW had done basically this because it couldn’t be coded around. Unfortunately that’s all I remember. Try posting over there (if you need to register, use 999 as your membership number)

[Roadsailing]

would be doable with an arduino if there is nothing available off the shelf.

[Aaron]

I did something like this when XR6 Turbos were new hotness. It mimicked the button press of the Traction Control about 5 seconds after the key came out of the start position. Honestly dumb idea but wasn’t that hard to do, but in those the button was pretty easy to press. Depending on the car though the button could have quite a bit of smarts in it.

[PLAYA]

Pretty sure Walt can press your buttons?

[Norbie]

if they're all on the same CAN network then coding something should be simple enough. The hard part is building the hardware and figuring out what to send.

If it's anything like my Century every single button press is a message across the CAN network, so it would actually be fairly easy to tap into the CAN wires and attach a Raspberry Pi with a CANbus adapter then write a simple script to sniff the CAN packets going past. Wouldn't take long to figure out which code corresponds to which button press. Then you can place the same CAN packet on the network any time you like, hey presto button press.

I've played with CAN stuff on a Raspberry Pi before and it's not that hard once you know what the network speed is, but a bit of trial and error can figure that out if you don't know it up front.

Of course if the car is too old for CAN ignore all of the above.

[Impakt]

If it's anything like my Century every single button press is a message across the CAN network, so it would actually be fairly easy to tap into the CAN wires and attach a Raspberry Pi with a CANbus adapter then write a simple script to sniff the CAN packets going past. Wouldn't take long to figure out which code corresponds to which button press. Then you can place the same CAN packet on the network any time you like, hey presto button press.

I've played with CAN stuff on a Raspberry Pi before and it's not that hard once you know what the network speed is, but a bit of trial and error can figure that out if you don't know it up front.

Of course if the car is too old for CAN ignore all of the above.

In reckon a pi would be overkill (in terms of hardware required). Can do all that with a microcontroller. I played with CANbus and PIC microcontrollers years ago, and that too wasn't overly hard. Admittedly using a pi would probably be easier though

[Norbie]

Yeah if you're a pro a microcontroller would be the preferred option, but for amateurs like me hacking away at it the Pi as far more approachable.

[perthdrivers.txt]

Definitely talking CAN-era vehicles here, its all the modern cars ive driven that for various reasons have the momentary-action controls that auto-reset every time you start the car.

Kinda surprised no one has come up with anything, especially for features like pissing off Stop/Start

[Shonky]

Definitely talking CAN-era vehicles here, its all the modern cars ive driven that for various reasons have the momentary-action controls that auto-reset every time you start the car.

Kinda surprised no one has come up with anything, especially for features like pissing off Stop/Start

I think for the stop/start in particular it can often be coded out so maybe that's why and every vehicle is different of course. Coded in this sense is not writing code but just programming the vehicle.

Definitely can in BMWs, I'm pretty sure I've read here about doing it on Mazdas. No extra boxes etc. Just need the right OBD tool and some software - sometimes easily available on the phone app stores.

[bboy]

This stop/start memory module remembers the last state of the button. If it's off it stays off, on stays on. Should work on any of those momentary auto rest buttons?

http://www.4gochip.com/
https://www.cete-automotive.de/en/To...top-automatic/

Have seen plug in kits for some cars