CAN-Bus Remote Monitoring: Standalone CAN Sensor Reading and Automotive Diagnostics

A vehicle may be a font of data for some applications in safety, maintenance, and entertainment systems, once its electronic control units are connected to each other by a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. By plugging a compatible device on the vehicle onboard diagnostics interface, reading raw data or conducting automotive diagnostics by International Standardization Organization 15765 and Society of Automotive Engineers J1979 is possible. The usual low-cost CAN data acquisition devices do not allow the connection to a cloud service for remote monitoring. Looking at this issue, this work proposes a low-cost NodeMCU CAN shield for data acquisition which is able to read the CAN frame of a Steering Angle Sensor, in Scenario 1, and standardized information from a vehicle such as its speed, identification number, and engine coolant temperature by automotive diagnostics, in Scenario 2. Both vehicle and standalone sensor data will be made available to the system user by the Thinger.io^® Internet-of-Things platform by means of a smartphone 4G internet connection, aiming at remote CAN sensor diagnostics and vehicle monitoring.