Hacker George Hotz introduces dongle for collecting car data
George Hotz releases a universal interface for cars for $88. The dongle allows technicians to gain insight into vehicle data. At the same time as the hardware, the hacker publishes software to interpret the data and communicate with the car.
The dongle is called Panda and it connects to the OBD II port of cars. This on-board diagnostics interface is on all cars after 1996. The Panda supports the can, lin and gmlan protocols for car networks. The interface has WiFi and USB and can also charge smartphones.
It is the first hardware released by George Hotz, known by his hacker alias geohot, after scrapping the Comma One kit to make cars autonomously driving. That happened at the end of last year after criticism and demands from the road safety committee Nhtsa.
Hotz writes that when he started his plans for a DIY kit for autonomous cars, he ran into the problem that obtaining car data was expensive, cumbersome and unnecessarily complex, while the amount of information obtained was also limited. On it, he built his own interface, which eventually led to the Panda.
The dongle is compatible with some apps from Comma.ai, as Hotz’s project is called. For example, there is the dashcam app chffr, which can analyze images from dashcams and data from all sensors. With pandacan, the can and lin bus can be accessed via USB or WiFi with both read and write access. The driving agent openpilot offers the possibility to communicate with the car and to operate the steering wheel, throttle and brakes. In addition, there is the can-anaysetool cabana. This tool interprets the data from the sensors and signals in car networks. According to Hotz, there are few tools that do this well. He only mentions CANalyzer, which carries a price tag of ten thousand dollars.
Comma.ai gives away Pandas to developers who are actively contributing to the project. The individual dongle costs $88. Delivery will start in a month. Hotz is targeting fellow hackers and other technicians with the Panda.