TRAINING FROM INTREPID CONTROL SYSTEMS
Vehicle diagnostics are the command‑and‑response protocols that allow engineers to communicate directly with an electronic control unit (ECU) — retrieving deeper parameters, adjusting configurations, and troubleshooting system faults beyond what’s available on the vehicle’s normal communication buses.
Christine Harbort spoke with Matt Snyder, Senior Field Applications Engineer at Intrepid Control Systems. Matt has spent more than eight years specializing in automotive networks — including CAN, CAN FD, and automotive Ethernet — and works closely with OEMs integrating Intrepid technologies like the Fire 3 compute into next‑generation vehicle ecosystems.
Why Vehicles Need Diagnostics
Modern vehicles are packed with ECUs constantly communicating during normal operation. That communication is safety‑critical, and the bus bandwidth must remain reserved for real‑time, dynamic traffic.
Diagnostics step in when engineers need additional data the vehicle doesn’t broadcast during driving, such as:
- Deep ECU parameters
- Fault information
- Configuration changes
Flooding the CAN bus with diagnostic data during driving could cause controllers to drop offline — a serious safety risk. Diagnostics provide a controlled way to access richer information during development, repair, and service when the vehicle is in safe operating conditions.
REGISTER FOR UPCOMING TRAINING
How Diagnostics Are Evolving
As vehicles grow more complex, diagnostics must keep pace. Matt highlighted two major shifts:
- CAN‑based diagnostics are hitting bandwidth limits. Traditional CAN offers 8 bytes per frame; CAN FD expands that to 64 bytes, but modern vehicles generate far more data than that.
- Diagnostics over IP (DoIP) is rapidly expanding. It wraps familiar CAN‑style diagnostic services inside an Ethernet header, enabling higher throughput and supporting the increasingly networked architecture of 2026‑era vehicles.
In short: diagnostics are moving into new physical layers and network types to support richer data collection.
What Engineers Need to Get Started
According to Matt, the essentials are straightforward:
- A CAN interface, such as Intrepid’s ValueCAN series
- An API if you prefer writing your own software
- OEM‑provided dependencies like ODX files, DBC files, or ARXMLs for decoding diagnostic and normal messages
These tools form the foundation for anyone beginning work in vehicle diagnostics or automotive network engineering.
REGISTER FOR UPCOMING TRAINING
Intrepid Control Systems offers free in-person and online training —covering Vehicle Spy Basics, CAN/CAN FD, Automotive Ethernet, Data Logging, and more. Each session is taught by experienced engineers who can answer your real use-case questions and help you refine your approach.
Explore upcoming classes at intrepidcs.com and level up your engineering toolkit.
Intrepid Control Systems is helping engineers prepare for this future through its global training programs—available virtually or on‑site at its Troy, Michigan headquarters. | MORE INFORMATION: SDVs Today: Driving Factors, Role of AI & Trends on the Horizon Automotive Ethernet & The OPEN Alliance Intrepid’s YouTube Channel |
Recent Comments