Part 1: MapEV Diag

[prj]

1. Introduction

I have not written much here before, but this will change. This is Part 1 in a series, which eventually will take a deep dive into the J1 platform powertrain electronics, and hopefully bring some light to some concepts on a level not seen before by the public.

As Part 1, I am releasing a free diagnostics tool for the J1.1 and J1.2 platforms. All the modules in the car are scanned in under 10 seconds, the fault codes fully decoded according to OEM data, and displayed to the user. The full scan can also be saved to a text file for easy sharing.

Here is the download link:
https://mapev.net/download/mapevdiag/setup.exe

Parts 2, 3 & 4:
Part 2: The J1 Powertrain
Part 3: The Quest for the Perfect Tune
Part 4: The J1.2 Powertrain

2. Screenshots

It is said a picture tells more than a hundred words, so without further ado:

3. Requirements

You need a couple of things to run the application:

1. An OBD II to Ethernet cable (e.g. BMW ENET Cable), more about that below.
2. A Windows PC running Windows 10 or later.
3. An internet connection the first time you connect to the car.

The cable used is the "BMW ENET" cable. You can find it on AliExpress or Amazon under $10, a typical one looks like this:

If your laptop does not have an Ethernet port, then you will additionally need an USB to Ethernet adapter. Just search "USB to Ethernet adapter" on Amazon, you should find some below $10 as well.

NB!
It will not work with <insert random cable here>. You need an Ethernet cable, like the one above.
It will not work with your phone. It will not work natively on Mac, it will not work with your Bluetooth dongle, etc.

4. Mechanism of action

The J1 platform has a fully ISO 13400 (also called DoIP) compliant Gateway inside. This means that instead of expensive interfaces, all the modules can be queried using ethernet. The tester (PC) communicates with the Gateway, and the Gateway takes care of converting the requests to Flexray and CAN, communicating with the modules directly.

An additional benefit is, that the Gateway allows communications to a large amount of modules in parallel. This is how the tool is able to scan the whole car in under ten seconds. It talks to over a dozen modules simultaneously.

After the fault codes and the identifiers of all the modules have been read out, the app needs a dictionary to translate the 32 bit code of each DTC to something actually useful to the user. This information is stored on the server, because there are over 700 different variants of data for the J1 platform as of writing, there will no doubt be new variants as updates come out, and it did not make sense to download everything, as each car needs less than 10% of that.

The first time you scan your car, the tool downloads the required dictionaries for the modules in your actual car and caches them locally. On subsequent scans, as long as the dictionaries are present the tool no longer connects to the MapEV server apart from checking for updates on startup.

5. Downloading software from the internet

Downloading software from the internet can be dangerous. Especially when said software is unsigned. In case of MapEV diag, the software is signed by my business, and my company has enough smartscreen reputation with Microsoft, that it does not trigger any warnings. I create tools used by thousands of tuners daily - you can see some of my software here: https://www.vehical.net/

I have explained exactly what the software does to the best of my ability. The software is completely free to use, and if I ever decide to not support the infrastructure behind it anymore, I promise that I will make the software fully open source, so that it can live on.

6. What is the catch?

They say when something is free then you are the product. This is not the case here. There are a few reasons why I have created this software, and I will outline them below:

The first reason is that unlike VCDS for the E-tron, there is no good alternative for the Taycan. Many modules can not be scanned with VCDS, as the ODX variants used are Porsche specific. Because I have commercial software that already has all the DTC information, it was not very difficult to create a spinoff variant just for the Taycan and E-tron GT.

The second reason is, that in my experience the dealers do not proactively fix faults. Every single Taycan I have scanned has had quite a few issues, which the dealer will never acknowledge, unless you tell them. From defect and degraded battery chargers, to simple things, such as the aircon flaps being stuck and blowing cold air all the time. The car knows about all these problems, but the dealer will not do anything until you tell them that something is wrong.

And the final reason - the more keen of you probably noticed the "Upload ASG Data" in the upper right corner. After "Part 2" and "Part 3", which will deal in-depth with the battery, inverters, motors and the ASG, you will be able to order a plug and play ASG controller with more power right from the app.

7. How do I contact you?

You can find a contact e-mail on the website: https://www.mapev.net
Please do not ask me how to fix something on your car though, I probably can not help with that. If something does not work in the app, do let me know.

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[chun]

Your website https://www.mapev.net/, at least in switzerland, is marked as unsecure. Also marked by NextDNS and serveral other DNSes as unsecure.

Likely because it's a new domain, but if you can do something about it, it would definitely be nice

The software is only for diagnostic I assume. Will it ever have re-coding functionality, assuming it's even possible?

 

[prj]

Your website https://www.mapev.net/, at least in switzerland, is marked as unsecure.

Likely because it's a new domain, but if you can do something about it, it would definitely be nice

I think it will fix itself in a few days. Most likely your ISP is using a long lived cache.
The site is new and the DNS might not have propagated yet everywhere.

Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that. Just need to wait a little.
Try opening it on your phone for example, then you should have a different ISP.

This is what it looks like here:

 

[chun]

The software is only for diagnostic as far as I can see. Are there plans to ever have re-coding functionality, assuming it's even possible?

 

[prj]

The software is only for diagnostic as far as I can see. Are there plans to ever have re-coding functionality, assuming it's even possible?

Could I do it? Yes, absolutely.
Is it planned? No. Neither are measured values planned.

I don't want to try to do an OBD11 or VCDS. I just want to give the average car owner as simple as possible way to pull the faults off the car, so they can take their car to the dealer to get things fixed before they go so bad, that it becomes a big issue.

In many cases an intermittent fault starts showing up way before something gives up the ghost completely.

If you want to do coding, you should probably bite the bullet and buy a PIWIS setup.

Think of this software as a quick 10 second health check, with a super low $10 investment for the cable

 

[Porsche-Guru]

And the final reason - the more keen of you probably noticed the "Upload ASG Data" in the upper right corner. After "Part 2" and "Part 3", which will deal in-depth with the battery, inverters, motors and the ASG, you will be able to order a plug and play ASG controller with more power right from the app.

Awesome ... and a big thank you.

I'll be using the tool first thing tomorrow morning. I have located my old BMW eNet cable and have put my windows laptop to charge overnight. Hadn't used the windows laptop/ eNet cable for a few years !

I did a lot of BMW coding using Esys and other tools as a hobby and for free for many forum users for quite a few years until Covid time.

I'd love to start tinkering with my Taycan now.

Eagerly await your part 2 and part 3....

 

[Porsche-Guru]

Used the program just now and pulled the diag report.

Showed a few errors; none serious and all but one were cleared by using the Clear DTC function.

Thank you for the program... very useful. ?

- Eagerly await part 2 and part 3.
- What does the Read ASG Info function do?? Please publish some details...

 

[prj]

Used the program just now and pulled the diag report.

Showed a few errors; none serious and all but one were cleared by using the Clear DTC function.

Thank you for the program... very useful. ?

- Eagerly await part 2 and part 3.
- What does the Read ASG Info function do?? Please publish some details...

The read ASG function reads out some data from the controller that I need to ship a brand new tuned ASG to the customer.

I developed flashing software and have calibrated the Turbo S, Turbo, 4S with both small and large battery, the Etron GT and the Etron GTRS.

I make my living creating factory level calibration data logging software, and I have done that for the Taycan as well. It needs an unlocked ECU with a patch though. But after that I can see and log a little over 33000 parameters from the ASG.

Hence me being able to develop calibrations that surpass what is on the market at the moment. And none of the fake "estimated" numbers, because the car knows exactly how much power and torque it is making on each axle.

I was also able to put the car into factory dyno mode and run it on my 4x4 dyno. It is very much possible.

But more about that in Part 2 and Part 3. Including the power and torque graphs for all the inverter and motor combinations and much more.

 

[Porsche-Guru]

The read ASG function reads out some data from the controller that I need to ship a brand new tuned ASG to the customer.

I developed flashing software and have calibrated the Turbo S, Turbo, 4S with both small and large battery, the Etron GT and the Etron GTRS.

I make my living creating factory level calibration data logging software, and I have done that for the Taycan as well. It needs an unlocked ECU with a patch though. But after that I can see and log a little over 33000 parameters from the ASG.

Hence me being able to develop calibrations that surpass what is on the market at the moment. And none of the fake "estimated" numbers, because the car knows exactly how much power and torque it is making on each axle.

I was also able to put the car into factory dyno mode and run it on my 4x4 dyno. It is very much possible.

But more about that in Part 2 and Part 3. Including the power and torque graphs for all the inverter and motor combinations and much more.

Thanks for the quick responses. ?

1) Does this require the current ECU to be bench-unlocked or is it a remote procedure? Mine is a UK model 2023 T4S with Performance Battery Plus.
2) What are your approximate costs?

Happy to chat on PM if you prefer....

 

[prj]

Thanks for the quick responses. ?

1) Does this require the current ECU to be bench-unlocked or is it a remote procedure? Mine is a UK model 2023 T4S with Performance Battery Plus.
2) What are your approximate costs?

Happy to chat on PM if you prefer....

I do not touch the original ECU ever due to warranty reasons. The ECU has a fully functional TD1 detection system in the HSM, that keeps track of all the flashed software to it ever. This can not be reset. It does not matter if stock software is flashed afterwards.

Piwis and ODIS read out this data even now and send it to the server. You can't MITM it because it's RSA encrypted in the HSM.

Audi and Porsche are choosing not to process the data on the backend at the moment. But that can change at any time and then all the cars that have been to the dealer with a tuned ASG will have their warranty voided, just like on the ICE cars. With a battery replacement costing around 50 000 euro, I don't know why anyone in their right mind would risk their warranty.

The solution is to swap the unit and put the original back every time when going to the dealer. Of course a bunch of stuff in the unit has to be patched in the firmware (not just the calibration) otherwise among other things you lose most of the launch control features and so on... Due to component protection.

In the USA voiding the warranty is more difficult for them, because of the Magnuson-Moss act, as they have to prove that the ECU modifications caused a failure (which they can't). So most likely if you sue them or go to arbitration they will not refuse you warranty.

But in the rest of the world including the EU they can very much void your warranty, as the warranty clauses stipulate that any modifications void the warranty, and these clauses are completely legal in the EU. The only thing they can't take away are your statutory consumer rights, but good luck with that if you got the car on a lease, and it's only one year.

BTW, it's not the dealership voiding the warranty, it's Audi or Porsche themselves. On Ice cars, if the car is tuned the factory refuses to pay for the warranty work and parts, and that's it.

Price will be around 2.5k including the new controller, the VAT and excluding shipping.

I don't want to write in PM. I prefer to have everything out in the open. The tuning scene is rotten to the core with all the secrecy, and 9/10 times this is because the people doing the tuning have little idea about the complete picture. I've been in the industry for close to two decades...

 

[Porsche-Guru]

I do not touch the original ECU ever due to warranty reasons. The ECU has a fully functional TD1 detection system in the HSM, that keeps track of all the flashed software to it ever. This can not be reset. It does not matter if stock software is flashed afterwards.

// ….. //

Price will be around 2.5k including the new controller, the VAT and excluding shipping.

I don't want to write in PM. I prefer to have everything out in the open. The tuning scene is rotten to the core with all the secrecy, and 9/10 times this is because the people doing the tuning have little idea about the complete picture. I've been in the industry for close to two decades...

Thank you for the transparent and open response. ?

As rightly stated by you, the tuning scene (across most car makes) has gotten poor and credibility has been lost over the years.

Great to see an honest broker and an open discussion.
Look forward to this…

 

[ct14garage]

ODIS Engineering works with BMW E-Net cable as well and you get
Actual Values + Coding and Programming

That’s how we convert the region of the PCM to change the maps. Using ODIS Engineering.

great tool

 

[prj]

ODIS Engineering works with BMW E-Net cable as well and you get
Actual Values + Coding and Programming

That’s how we convert the region of the PCM to change the maps. Using ODIS Engineering.

great tool

Yep, it absolutely does!

Also, if someone wants to see exactly how the tool works and maybe tinker themselves, you can just use Wireshark to sniff the communications and see exactly what it's doing.

 

[okkotonushi]

Any chance to get it for MacOS?

 

[prj]

Any chance to get it for MacOS?

No, sorry. You will have to use Parallels or something similar.

The app is a native WPF application. To get it running on Mac, I would have to re-do the UI in something else, and most likely parts of the networking code. Not to mention I would have to pay Apple for the privilege of deploying the application.

It will stay Windows only for now. I have nothing against Apple, but it is just not worth the financial and time investment.

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