A vehicle telemetry system using a diagnostic interface and low-power wireless connection.

Description

/ 8 A vehicle telemetry system using a diagnostic interface and low-power wireless connection. Field of invention

[001] The invention is characterized by a system composed of a hardware device connected to a smartphone. The hardware device, named ALIVE, has the ability to connect to a vehicle's in-vehicle network via the vehicle diagnostic interface (OBD2) and read and perform telemetry of data transmitted on the vehicle's CAN bus. The system is capable of reading CAN data from different vehicles using the OBD2 interface. The device connects to the smartphone via a low-energy connection (Bluetooth Low Energy - BLE), making it possible for the user to extract and remotely monitor the data. The device is equipped with algorithms for identifying the type of service and parameters available in each vehicle, a user interface, a BLE connection interface, and offers functionalities that allow the user to monitor the health of their vehicle. Fundamentals of the invention

[002] Vehicle data monitoring and diagnostics are important features for various audiences, and can be applied for personal use or within the core of a business. Furthermore, easy-to-install monitoring systems are cost-effective solutions in the long term, and can be used for predictive maintenance, helping to reduce costs caused by parts replacement, and increasing the operational uptime of mobility services.

[003] Document WO2021179992 dated September 16, 2021, concerns a method for detecting disconnection of an OBD2 module connected to the vehicle's OBD2 interface. The method uses an MCU to detect if communication between the OBD2 module and an electronic control unit (ECU) in a vehicle is abnormal. There is no indication of remote monitoring from this solution. Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 5 / 12 / 8

[004] Document CN112241158 of January 19, 2021, concerns an invention that provides a method for identifying the CAN bus pin in a motor vehicle. The method detects voltages on the pins of the vehicle's OBD2 interface and identifies the baud rate on each pin, thus identifying the pins that are part of the CAN communication. There is no indication of remote monitoring from this solution.

[005] Document KR1020230093085 of June 27, 2023, concerns a vehicle control system that learns and uses a driver's driving pattern based on location information obtained from a GPS, information from a vehicle OBD2 interface, and environmental information obtained from a black box. The idea is to differentiate drivers and promote discounts for drivers when renting motor vehicles.

[006] Document KR1020230105929 of July 12, 2023, concerns an invention that describes an algorithm for detecting and predicting malfunctions due to a sudden acceleration error that may occur during vehicle use. Throttle information is extracted via an OBD2 interface to enable such preventive diagnosis.

[007] Document JP2024010130 of January 23, 2024, begins with the description of a problem to be solved, which seeks the development of a device capable of suppressing the occurrence of danger caused by an elderly person driving a vehicle, using a front camera and an OBD2 interface. The solution was developed by extracting images from a camera and some information from the OBD2 interface, and providing a warning notification when the elderly person is about to cause an accident with the vehicle.

[008] Document WO2014036333 dated September 26, 2012, concerns an embedded diagnostic system for rental vehicles, connected to the OBD2 port, which collects odometer, time, and location data. It can also connect to a taximeter and / or wireless devices via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. However, nothing is specified about monitoring accelerations or angles.

[009] Document WO2017128333 of August 3, 2017 refers to a vehicle alert system that, using the OBD2 interface, collects and displays vehicle data in a Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 6 / 12 / 8 mobile device via Bluetooth, allowing real-time monitoring of parameters such as fuel consumption and battery voltage. The system compares this data with reference values ​​and issues alerts to the user in case of anomalies, being ideal for vehicles without advanced on-board computers. However, nothing is mentioned about the attribute of location or reading of vehicle error codes.

[0010] Document PT109799 of December 12, 2018, concerns a monitoring system for motor vehicles aimed at improving vehicle diagnostics and safety through advanced detection and recording of problems and accidents. It performs continuous self-diagnosis of vehicle parameters and its dynamic condition, using sensors and GPS to monitor and analyze data in real time. Furthermore, it performs remote diagnostics, allowing the reading of error codes and parameters via mobile network. However, it does not mention the aspect of sectioning functionalities into different modules, or configurable acquisition rates. Brief description of the drawings

[0011] The invention may be better understood through the detailed description in its preferred and non-limiting embodiment, which is made in accordance with the attached figures, provided for illustrative and non-limiting purposes only, in which: Figure 1 presents an overview of all the elements that make up the hardware device and the vehicle network. Figure 2 summarizes the device's functionalities and interfaces. Figure 3 shows the elements of the CAN Module. Figure 4 shows the elements of the Driving and Tracking Module. Figure 5 shows the execution flow of the two cores in the MCU. Description of the invention

[0012] The present invention is capable of reading data transmitted on the vehicle's CAN bus via a hardware device connected to the OBD2 port, having access to vehicle information in real time through a Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 7 / 12 / 8 mobile device, such as a smartphone. The hardware device applies a specific algorithm that allows it to identify and operate two different types of vehicular communication networks, CAN or CAN FD. While CAN networks are limited to messages of up to 8 bytes, the CAN FD protocol allows messages of up to 64 bytes, which implies being able to transmit more data in each message, in addition to allowing a greater range of vehicles available on the market.

[0013] The device is equipped with wireless communication interfaces, being able to communicate with cloud services and smart devices such as cell phones, tablets, computers, or any machine equipped with Bluetooth technology, Wi-Fi networks, or with direct or indirect access to the Internet.

[0014] The device consists of a dual-core processing unit (MCU) responsible for all device processing, a CAN module responsible for communication with the vehicle using the OBD2 interface, a driving and tracking module (MCL) responsible for extracting driver driving characteristics and vehicle traceability, and a connectivity module responsible for communication with the outside world. To this end, some additional sensors are used: GPS, MPU, CAN transceiver, and SD card.

[0015] Data acquisition and processing functionalities are located in Core 0 (CORE 0) of the microcontroller, while communication functionalities are located in Core 1 (CORE 1). The MCL is capable of locating the vehicle and tracing the route traveled by the vehicle; it also has the ability to obtain accelerations, decelerations, and angles during vehicle driving, filtered using the Kalman method. The CAN module is divided into a controller and a transceiver. The controller is responsible for managing the logic and communication protocol of the CAN, handling message formatting and verification, error control, priorities, and message filtering. The transceiver converts the logical signals from the CAN controller to the voltage levels of the physical CAN bus and vice versa, adapting the electrical signals so that they can be transmitted over the bus and received robustly.

[0016] Initially, the module must be configured via SPI commands sent by the microcontroller, with the transmission rate set to 500000 Kbps. For the Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 8 / 12 / 8 objective reading of data with Message ID for OBD2 port, the message filters and masks are configured at 0x1FFFFFFF and 0x18DAF110, respectively. The handling of messages arriving via CAN bus are treated as interrupts in the MCU.

[0017] The CAN reading system requests information from the vehicle bus, using different message structure formats, modifying the modes and identification parameters. The message sending frequency can be defined for each identification parameter, depending on the update requirement.

[0018] In the CANdata thread, the content of the CAN message is allocated and converted into physical unit parameters. The GPSdata thread collects location information from the GPS at a frequency of 0.05 Hz, while the ACCdata thread collects accelerometer information at a frequency of 2 Hz.

[0019] The communication core is responsible for transporting the compressed information to the user via a wireless network present at the installation location of the device targeted by this patent; through the BLEdata thread, it is possible to send the information in real time to the user; allowing the user to view their vehicle data on personal computers or mobile devices such as cell phones.

[0020] Figure 1 illustrates the general diagram of the installation and operating environment of the hardware device. The figure shows the vehicle (1) with a standard female OBD2 connector (2) that has an interface for connection to the vehicle's CAN bus, and another male OBD2 connector (4) that is part of the developed hardware device, making the application easily attachable (3) in a minimum space in the vehicle. The present invention (5) is equipped with wireless communication interfaces (6), being able to communicate with mobile devices, such as cell phones, tablets, computers, among others (7).

[0021] As shown in figure 2, the device (5) is connected to the CAN network (8), via OBD2 interface and is composed of an MCU (11), responsible for all processing of reading and sending messages to the outside world, a CAN Module (9), responsible for receiving and sending CAN or CAN-FD messages to the vehicle, Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 9 / 12 / 8 and Intelligent Driving and Tracking Module (14), responsible for acquiring accelerations, angles and latitude and longitude coordinates, and which can be detailed in figure 4.

[0022] The CAN Module is capable of reading and sending CAN bus messages, whether normal (CAN) or extended (CAN-FD). This module consists of the controller (19) and transceiver (17), in accordance with figure 3 attached, and is connected to the microcontroller (MCU) via the SPI bus (10). The Intelligent Driving and Tracking Module (14) has as its main function to identify and store acceleration and deceleration values, angles of inclination on inclines or declines, as well as the geographical position of the vehicle. This latter module consists of an accelerometer (21), a GPS (20), and an SD card reader (22), connected to the microcontroller (MCU) via I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit), RS-232 (Recommended Standard 232) and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) communication respectively (15).

[0023] The MCU has an initialization routine (101) which is responsible for generating the threads (CANdata, GPSdata, ACCdata and BLEdata) that will execute on the two cores of the MCU, namely CORE 0 (102) and CORE 1 (103). The first step of this routine is the initialization of the UART and then the initialization of the CAN module, and if there is a failure, this process is repeated until communication with UART and CAN is successful. Next, the MCU's Watchdog timer is configured, responsible for monitoring the MCU Threads, to see if they are out of control or have stopped working correctly. Then, the available PIDs on the vehicle's OBD2 CAN interface are checked. This PID reading is important because each vehicle makes its parameter list available via OBD2 and in this way, we can scale the problem to other vehicles available on the market.Next, there's the initialization of the message timers, responsible for creating a time base using the RTC (Real-Time Clock) available in the ALIVE circuit. This time base is crucial for knowing the message's arrival time and for generating security attributes to minimize cyberattacks. Following that, we have the initialization of BLE for the ALIVE hardware, responsible for sending the compiled messages through a BLE connection with the mobile device. And finally, the initialization of the GPS and accelerometer. Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 10 / 12 / 8 responsible for generating geographic positioning and speed information, respectively.

[0024] Figure 5 illustrates the MCU with its two processing cores, where the intrinsic characteristics and responsibilities of each core can be observed. The MCU's activities were divided into two main cores: Data Core (102) and Processing Core (103). The Data Core (102), shown in Figure 5, orders the sending of messages to the vehicle and also the acquisition of GPS and accelerometer data in a buffer with a FIFO logical sequence, and is composed of three threads, each for handling different data. The CAN data thread is responsible for converting CAN bus data into physical quantities. The GPS data thread processes the data coming from the GPS. The ACC data thread is responsible for processing and filtering the data coming from the accelerometer.

[0025] Once the data has been processed, the Communication Center (103) is responsible for sending this information to the user via the available communication interface. When connected to a device via Bluetooth, it is possible to send vehicle information in real time to the mobile device.

[0026] Reading the CAN or CAN-FD network via hardware allows for vehicle fault diagnostics by reading DTC (Diagnostic Trouble Code) codes through the OBD2 interface and recommending a possible solution to the problem to the user. This feature reads the service (0x03) from the PID list, which allows for the reporting of diagnostic fault codes available on the vehicle's OBD2 interface following the SAE J1979 standard.

[0027] Telemetry of all data available on the CAN or CAN-FD interface is relayed via BLE messages to the mobile device. In addition, analog sensing data can optionally be integrated into the BLE message. These messages arrive at the mobile device, which has services that allow anomaly identification through machine learning algorithms trained and available on the smartphone device.

[0028] ALIVE also allows for real-time and offline vehicle tracking using GPS and IMU. It is noted that connectivity with the Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 11 / 12 / 8 mobile device, thus, the present invention locally stores traceability information until there is again connectivity with the smartphone and the data can be downloaded via BLE.

[0029] The vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBDII and BLE (ALIVE) also allows maintaining a data history containing all data available on the OBD, integrated with additional GPS and IMU sensors, stored on a smartphone, with limited size and configurable by the user. This helps to avoid overloading the mobile device's memory and keeps the application always operational.

[0030] ALIVE also allows for annotation of the database generated from field tests, through the use of a push button available on the hardware device, connected via OBD2, which allows for the evaluation of different usage scenarios. This type of annotation is quite important to serve as input for training machine learning programs that are applied to different vehicle components, such as batteries, air filters, throttle bodies, etc. Examples of embodiments of the invention

[0031] A first example of implementing the invention was to develop a field proof of concept of a system composed of a hardware device and an Android smartphone connected via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). A functional prototype was developed and field-tested using two real vehicles: a 2015 Jeep Renegade and a 2021 Fiat Mobi. The invention was validated in the field with real data from vehicle sensor readings, and diagnostic reading tests were also performed using warning messages. Petition 870250065512, dated 07 / 29 / 2025, page 12 / 12

Claims

1 / 2 CLAIMS 1. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) characterized by a hardware device capable of detecting and performing vehicle telemetry of all CAN and CAN-FD network signals of a motor vehicle through the OBD2 interface, composed of a processing unit (MCU) with 2 cores, a CAN module, a Driving and Tracking Module (MCL), responsible for extracting driver driving characteristics and vehicle traceability which includes GPS, MPU and SD Card sensors, in addition to a connectivity module, responsible for BLE communication with the smartphone mobile device; 2. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 1, characterized by automatically detecting different types of data communication protocols, namely CAN (Controller Area Network) and CAN-FD (Controller Area Network Flexible DataRate), which uses a pair of CAN HIGH and CAN LOW wires to transmit sensor data and control information in different formats, either an 11-bit identifier for CAN along with an 8-byte message or a 29-bit identifier associated with a 64-byte message; 3. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 2, characterized by enabling vehicle fault diagnostics through reading DTC (Diagnostic Trouble Code) codes on the CAN network via the OBD2 interface and recommending a solution to the problem to the user; 4. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 2, characterized by enabling the identification of anomalies in parameters available through vehicle telemetry (OBD2 parameters) and additional sensing (GPS and IMU) via machine learning algorithms trained and available on the smartphone device; Petition 870240110256, dated 12 / 26 / 2024, page 14 / 20 2 / 2 5. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 2, characterized by allowing real-time and offline vehicle tracking, making use of GPS and IMU, and considering that there is not always connectivity with the mobile device and that the present invention locally stores the traceability information until there is again connectivity with the smartphone and the data can be downloaded; 6. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 2, characterized by allowing the maintenance of a data history containing all data available on the OBD2, integrated with additional GPS and IMU sensors, stored on a smartphone, with limited size and configurable by the user; 7. A vehicle telemetry and diagnostics system using OBD2 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as per claim 2, characterized by allowing annotation on a dataset and conducting field tests considering different usage scenarios through programming the usage mode via a push button, available on the hardware device connected via an OBD2 interface; Petition 870240110256, dated 12 / 26 / 2024, page 15 / 20

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