Claude Code and Codex reverse engineered my 1994 Jeep's ECU over a $3 Arduino [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPj3aQ-xxpI&t=275s

> Claude suggested that it would run the fuel pump on its own. Um and I said, "Hey, if you can do that, why not? I don't think you can do that." And it started priming the fuel rail and it kept priming it and kept priming it. The fuel pump was on for about 10 seconds and I started to freak out uh and requested it to stop because that was the first time that Claude had actually done something inside of the computer to have a change.

Although we've seen this play out with handing cloud keys to Claude and it just going off on its own, seeing it poke around and make physical, real-world changes in its clumsy, cavalier way is both awesome and terrifying.

This is why AI hype isn't overrated. When you are able to have an idea, and then use AI to move meaningfully in the direction of that goal so quickly we are going to see the entire landscape change. We really are nearing the singularity.

LLMs end up changing the consumer market not the way big corporations would like to. It is impressive to see that we'll be able to give ownership back to the customer, or enable others to do so. Very nice demonstration.

Sonnet 5.5 threw a guardrail for me trying to create a test fixture to generate data in a dev environment with no PII.

How tf are you getting it to RE?

The really interesting part to me is how he ends up by saying "I recommend you feed this repo into the agent and just have it help you set it up, it's super easy ..."

The average person is likely to feel overwhelmed by this, which I think is what is likely going to shape the new economy gig of "AI engineers". Those that aren't overwhelmed by it and that may not only enjoy doing this but also potentially figure out a way to scale operations that allow doing these kinds of DYI reverse engineer hack jobs.

Too bad they are going to nerf its reverse-engineering capabilities significantly. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3274819/claude-wont-reverse-...

To protect "corporate interests" :( That article is about gaming, but this will only be the start of it of course.

I made an obd reader https://github.com/mianos/canmqtt for my bike that is based on the Wavehare canbus board. The handy thing about the board is it already has buck converters for the bike power. Once it's in the bike (I put it permanently in the tail) It's in the wifi and mqtt so I can point an llm at it.

Would love to see this being used to add keys to cars. A lot of cars now have tablets and screens that could be used to do this, but for some reason (money) I have to take my VW to the dealer...

I think the whole market for aftermarket keys could be completely eradicated with good software UX (and low pricing).

Fascinating, but if he had low pressure on the rail that would point to a clog or possibly a pump issue, right? Wasn’t really clear whether the lean condition was due to the map or a mechanical issue.

I have a dirtbike and experienced some stuttering and stumbling under load after getting hot. Used Claude to help troubleshoot, as the plug was white and it was real lean. Replaced the pump (a 300$ module) and saved a ton of money and annoyance having a shop deal with it. 2000mi later zero issues. Absolutely game-changing. I use a dumb aftermarket fuel controller to add fuel under certain conditions, but would love to try and tune it myself some day.

can someone explain the root cause of the smog test failure to me ? it sounds like the car was using a California smog test-specific fuel map at the speeds of the test. Wouldn't that make it pass the test, not fail it ?

very cool project anyway.

Spent so many wasted days reverse-engineering older systems to get them tto work again or prevent eWaste. In a perfect world all CAD files should become open source when the product becomes EOL

Really cool, but what's the weather-sealing like on all that circuitry? He mentioned stuff flying around when you turn hard, which doesn't sound great.

I have used Claude to build https://obd.wtf to essentially create a commercial grade diagnostic tool for cars. Now working on new version.

But don't use it, obd read functions are fine but other functions for other diagnostic/actuator etc stuff is not.

The tech is impressive but the animation in the video are too, anyone knows what was used to generate them?

All those sites that currently recommend you do "curl | bash" are going to change to "curl | claude" and that scares me a little.

I’ve seen Claude run a cooler on a chip to -20 without saying anything. There was humidity in the air, and the condensation fried the board after a few days. Thanks Claude. Maybe trying to keep the junction temps super low wasn’t such a bright idea.

I use anthropic models for some of the diagnostic reads on https://crewchief.cc, it's been a lot of fun hacking on obd2 things that used to take much longer to decode before LLMs

100 points for car hacking fun. -60 points for "not needing a mechanic or anything". A good mechanic would have fixed it up in a half hour. Guy took 3 days and god knows how many tokens.

Claude reverse engineered his car, drew the animations, and wrote the script for video. Incredibly weird meat proxy moment.

"Everything is 'open source' if you read machine code."

That's been a tired old saw in computers since my career began in the 1990s. Who knew it would be so applicable in the age of AI?

Manufacturers are going to start cryptographically locking everything down rather than relying on the time and skill needed to do reverse engineering.

Love seeing unique youtube projects on here for a change!

I enjoyed watching this a couple days ago -- super cool as someone also into slightly older vehicles.

Oh hey I saw this post on Reddit, super cool!

Reminds me when I dropped a binary file from an eeprom and asked Claude why device would display "Error.". It figured out what the processor was, how it talked to LCD and then from there how it displayed messages and then listed conditions for which Error would appear. Amazing.

[flagged]

[flagged]