Udemy – CAN Bus Reverse Engineering: Control Real Car Dashboard

Welcome to this practical course where we will reverse engineer a car’s dashboard system without having any documentation.

Our mission is to take control of certain dashboard functions — such as turning blinkers on/off and changing the displayed vehicle speed — using CAN Bus communication.

We’ll go step-by-step, from connecting to the car’s electronics, analyzing the traffic, to writing custom CAPL scripts and creating a virtual dashboard replica.

By the end of this course, you will gain a deep, practical understanding of topics such as:

• Identifying the correct CAN pins on a vehicle connector, even when there is no schematic or pinout available — using methods like continuity testing and trial analysis.
• Determining the correct CAN bus speed (baud rate) using Logic analyzer
• Capturing and analyzing real CAN bus traffic to identify frame IDs associated with specific dashboard actions — such as blinkers, speedometer updates
• Decoding message payloads, by interpreting the bit-level structure of the data fields inside CAN frames and understanding how individual bytes represent physical values.
• Using CAPL scripting in the Vector toolchain (such as CANoe) to simulate and test message injection,
• Building and refining a DBC file, which is a powerful way to describe and simplify the interpretation of CAN frames, making the data readable and easier to work with.
• Creating a virtual dashboard replica, allowing you to visualize and control the dashboard behavior

This course is designed for a wide audience, including:

• Automotive reverse engineers who want to dig into vehicle internals and uncover how systems communicate.
• Embedded software and hardware developers looking to test their own devices or gain better insight into how to interface with OEM car electronics.
• Diagnostics and service tool creators aiming to create their own solutions for vehicle testing, maintenance, or feature expansion.
• Car hacking enthusiasts who enjoy learning how modern vehicles operate and want to explore beyond the surface.

Everything will be introduced and explained in a clear and accessible manner. Whether you’re working on your own car, building a testbench, or simply exploring for fun, this course will provide you with the skills and confidence to successfully reverse engineer CAN-based dashboard systems.

DOWNLOAD LINK: CAN Bus Reverse Engineering: Control Real Car Dashboard