For the longest time my daily driver has had a feature where I can wind down all of the windows remotely while approaching the vehicle. This is wonderful for clearing the initial hot air from the cabin. It is also very useful in the opposite direction, ie winding all windows up whilst walking away from the vehicle.
I have a desire to replicate this functionailty in my ZE1 model Leaf. I had hoped that the windows may be controllable via one of the CAN busses, alas it appears that isn't the case. Looking at the block diagram below it appears to me that the only connection from the BCM to the window ECU is in the form of a power supply (no data or other signal). Furthermore, the window ECU (which I believe is located within the main power window door lock/unlock switch assembly) appears to drive all 4 windows directly rather than eg sending packets to another door controller.
However I am not deterred and I believe these limitations can be overcome. Some options I've thoght of so far are:
- tap into the wires on pins 1-6 of conector D37 and drive their signals using transistors to emulate a human pressing the buttons (in addition to separately supplying power to the window module if the BCM isn't)
Or
- write/program new code to the CPU inside the window module
Or
- hack a new 'brain' into the module, ie replace existing CPU with ESP32
Or
Replace entire module with new home-made module with new CPU and FETs, still interfacing to existing buttons
I'd be intersted if anyone has any experience with any of this hardware or any other suggestions of approaches I hadn't considered (other than "why bother", and "just leave the windows down a bit" etc - ie I'm looking for constructive comments).
I haven't opened the window module yet to examine it's CPU archetecture. I'm inspired by FalconFour's work back in 2015 where they dumped the contents of the VSP ROM though
Leaf's a hackers delight!
I have a desire to replicate this functionailty in my ZE1 model Leaf. I had hoped that the windows may be controllable via one of the CAN busses, alas it appears that isn't the case. Looking at the block diagram below it appears to me that the only connection from the BCM to the window ECU is in the form of a power supply (no data or other signal). Furthermore, the window ECU (which I believe is located within the main power window door lock/unlock switch assembly) appears to drive all 4 windows directly rather than eg sending packets to another door controller.
However I am not deterred and I believe these limitations can be overcome. Some options I've thoght of so far are:
- tap into the wires on pins 1-6 of conector D37 and drive their signals using transistors to emulate a human pressing the buttons (in addition to separately supplying power to the window module if the BCM isn't)
Or
- write/program new code to the CPU inside the window module
Or
- hack a new 'brain' into the module, ie replace existing CPU with ESP32
Or
Replace entire module with new home-made module with new CPU and FETs, still interfacing to existing buttons
I'd be intersted if anyone has any experience with any of this hardware or any other suggestions of approaches I hadn't considered (other than "why bother", and "just leave the windows down a bit" etc - ie I'm looking for constructive comments).
I haven't opened the window module yet to examine it's CPU archetecture. I'm inspired by FalconFour's work back in 2015 where they dumped the contents of the VSP ROM though
Leaf's a hackers delight!
