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Comment by chinpokomon | Hacker News Reader

But the replacement part and send out the field service technician. Deere wants to own the service contract.

As another example, I had a check engine light on my car. It was ~$500 to check the code fault and replace a sensor. If I had my own access to those codes, I could have done the work myself for a fraction of the cost, but the car manufacturer knows that I'm limited in my options. If I want to renew my car tabs, I'll have to pay them and their service technician to do the work. It's a racket.

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That's the reason for the openness of the basic ODB-II protocol. You can buy a sub-$100 code reader that can read all the basic powertrain codes and can reset the MIL.

That and 2 minutes of Googling will point you in the right direction generally.

My cars haven't seen the inside of a dealer's service bay in over 10 years, other than for warranty or recall work.

But OBD-II only has to (by law) provide certain information to the reader, mostly to do with emissions control.

If you own a BMW, for example, the detailed diagnostic information for the rest of the car is sitting on their MODBUS, which is only readable with a very expensive tool and software sold only to BMW dealers.

I think you mean CANBus. You can purchase very inexpensive CAN transceivers, but you're on your own figuring out the messages. MODBUS is an industrial automation relic (but like all things in ind. automation, still very popular), and not limited to a particular physical layer.

Actually I meant MODIC and not MODBUS. MODIC is a variant of Siemens' D-BUS protocol (not to be confused with the Linux IPC system)

Yes, but those systems are not involved in the grandparent post's problem of a MIL ("check engine light") preventing the car from passing inspection.

Whether or not you can service the rest of the car in a DIY or third-party fashion is a commercial concern, not a regulatory concern. I think BMW makes fine cars, but their anti-DIY stance is why I won't own one. (Porsche, Mercedes, and the VW group are more DIY friendly, though still not totally.)

> As another example, I had a check engine light on my car. It was ~$500 to check the code fault and replace a sensor.

You can get OBD2 readers for not very much money (<$20), which would have let you read the code.

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