VW / SEAT - CANBUS VAG.COM interface to CarPC / Software?

Hi guys,

I'm working through my ever increasing shopping list, towards building my first CarPC.

I drive a SEAT Leon, and it would be great if I could somehow interface the CarPC with the cars VAG CANBUS system, for realtime performance monitoring + pulling off diagnostic codes.

Does anyone here also drive a VAG car, who has been able to achieve anything similar?

In the past I purchased the special cable required for connecting in to the car (ECU), to read off the CANBUS Diagnostics, however I have a feeling this cable is not original and I've been having some problems getting software running with it.

Any feedback would be great.

For pulling diagnostic codes and live data there's an excellent program made by Rosstech called VCDS.

What model year is your car and what type of engine do you have? (Diesel or petrol)

Hi p2psmurf, thanks for the feedback. Mine is the (1P) PD Diesel engine, a pre-facelift car.
It would be great to have access to the diagnostics screens at the press of the touchscreen, available at any time.

Do you think it would cause any issues having the cable left plugged into that Port ALL the time (both while driving or parked up)?

VCDS is a program that runs under Windows. I never tried a touch-screen, but maybe it will work.
However, I would NOT use it during driving for gathering information. There are hundreds of screens with info.
The risk of crashing the car while operating the touch-screen is not something you should ignore.

The alternative is reading live data with an EOBD/OBD2 application. That might give you some basic values, but certainly not everything.

See: http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/index.html
And: http://www.ross-tech.com/vcds/tour/obd-2.html

you can do it with arduino and canbus shield:

http://www.skpang.co.uk/catalog/ardu...der-p-706.html

my project:
http://www2.dasilvas.info/home/steering-wheel-buttons