RHEANNE MCCORMICK

PORTFOLIO / DRIVING BY DESIGN / HACKER GARAGE / HMI CONCEPTS

THE HACKER GARAGE

During my time researching in-vehicle HMI and levels of technology in the modern car, I developed an interest in investigating for myself how the computer systems inside my own car worked. I learned that there is a diganostics port just under the steering wheel of all cars made since 1996, called the OBD2 (On-Board Diagnostic.) From that point, I totally fell down the rabbit hole.

I began by researching car hardware and how to get data from the internal CAN network, out - to something I could work with. I quickly found the opengarages.org site, which houses ‘The Car Hacker’s Handbook’. I learned that there are ports in the car that let you connect directly to the car’s ECU (electronic control unit), which controls everything from fuel injection timing to door locking. I hadn’t previously understood that these individual electronic controls passed through one central computer - I had seen the inner wirings of cars before but wrongly assumed most controls had independent analogue wiring. I have a strong computing background, I am intrigued by how they work on a deep level and the vast range of possible systems that can be built with them, and this discovery gave me a completely new conceptual model on how cars worked and what I could do with this computer.

*UPDATES ON PROGRESS WITH LIVE DRIVING DATA VIZ FROM 2003 VW POLO COMING SOON