Control Mario Kart 64 with your car over CAN bus (2016)

I was involved in a Nissan advertisement project connecting Playstation 4 with a cars as controllers[1]. They did a convention tour with 4 cars playing the same football game in front of a projector.<p>I did everything except front end and CAN interface though, $20 USB CAN reader device + python. I remember it took a while for my colleague to figure out the right input signals as the bus was quite chatty&#x2F;high output, like tailing android logcat on verbose. We didn&#x27;t use any factory unlock codes or anything to get more data.<p>As a gamer it was not really up to par - big deadzone when turning the wheel from one side to the other as we did not have time to get analogue movement read correctly.<p>On that particular car model you had to interact with the touch display every 15 minutes or else the whole car went into power saving mode and the CAN bus stopped sending messages.<p>[1] Nissan Project Driving Controller 2016: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QM958yUbr0Y">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QM958yUbr0Y</a>

I&#x27;m surprised that nobody has mentioned yet that this is a built in feature on Teslas. Not Mario Kart, of course, but a generic kart game that you can play with the real steering wheel.

I love how clever this is!<p>If I wasn’t pretty sure that gunning the engine in park repeatedly is a bad idea (and would draw more than a few stares when done from a street-parking space in Manhattan) I’d give it a try.<p>Would very much like to see a video of someone using this.

Why purchase a racing simulator cockpit or steering wheel when you&#x27;ve already got a perfectly good one at home!?

Today it would be possible to use e.g. a Raspberry Pi Pico (~6€ including VAT, the CAN module would be more expensive than that) and make it identify as USB input device directly instead of connecting a full single-board computer via network.

My favorite part about it is this issue <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;DanH42&#x2F;CatchMeIfYouCAN&#x2F;issues&#x2F;1">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;DanH42&#x2F;CatchMeIfYouCAN&#x2F;issues&#x2F;1</a>

Heh, this would be cool to do with a junk car and a bunch of screens.

when did it become common to have an encoder on the steering wheel in a car, and for what purpose?

I wonder if there&#x27;s a market for VR simulator that uses your actual car as a controller? Mostly for practicing maneuvers like parallel parking, or entering a busy multi-lane turnaround, but also for more immersive racing. It would require ODB-to-Bluetooth adapter and a standalone headset. Main tech difficulty would be dealing with all the different cars, and limitations of standby mode like the lack of power steering.

Can it play Carmageddon?

First and last commit was in 2016 - has anyone ever gotten this working (and perhaps recorded a video)?

“Use item: Activate your winshield wipers.”<p>Absolutely glorious, thank you for this.

Reminds me of the SEGA arcade in Tokyo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3I-a5onDg7s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3I-a5onDg7s</a>

So...who else is tempted to go to a Pick-A-Part now?

throwback to CdT and being around when Dan first posted this project