CI-BUS sniffer
The mobile-home industry uses the communication standard CI-BUS. Unfortunately this bus specification isn't publicly available, so non professional makers will need to sniff this bus to learn how to use it. This project is an attempt to do just that.
I own a Hobby caravan from 2021 that uses the CI-BUS standard for communication between different subsystems in the vehicle. From a central display node I can view and control things like the heating system, battery status, lights as well as reading the water level of the tank and temperatures both indoor and outdoor.
Unfortunately this communication bus specification isn't available outside member companies, which makes it hard for makers and startup companies to develop new additions and solutions for the mobile-home sector.
This project is a first step to gain knowledge of this communication bus, to later make it possible to invent some cool additional functionality to the mobile-homes.
The first step would be a communication protocol sniffer to examine the messages on the bus.
As I've understand it there isn't any requirements for the physical layer of this bus, so I assumed that the LIN-bus would have been selected, because it is cheaper than CAN and still common within the vechicle industry, but from what I've been reading on the internet it is also common to use the RS-485 as the physical layer.
This means that some measurements have to be made to determine which physical layer that a specific manufacturer has choosen.
If you have any knowledge of this, feel free to add information in the comments or contact me directly.
Unfortunately this communication bus specification isn't available outside member companies, which makes it hard for makers and startup companies to develop new additions and solutions for the mobile-home sector.
This project is a first step to gain knowledge of this communication bus, to later make it possible to invent some cool additional functionality to the mobile-homes.
The first step would be a communication protocol sniffer to examine the messages on the bus.
As I've understand it there isn't any requirements for the physical layer of this bus, so I assumed that the LIN-bus would have been selected, because it is cheaper than CAN and still common within the vechicle industry, but from what I've been reading on the internet it is also common to use the RS-485 as the physical layer.
This means that some measurements have to be made to determine which physical layer that a specific manufacturer has choosen.
If you have any knowledge of this, feel free to add information in the comments or contact me directly.
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