Home › Car › ZE50: A different beast

ZE50: A different beast

Posted on Posted in Car

A friend of mine received his ZE50 last week. Only a few days later we had a successful “CANbus sniffer session”. As I indicated in another post it seems the E-bus of the car, which in the past was wired directly to the OBD2 (SAE-J1962) connector, is now firewalled. And indeed, in the list of ECU’s of the ZE50 there is what is called a “Secure Gateway”.

First indications are the gateway needs to be mildly coaxed into letting us through, but for non-evasive stuff like CanZE does, there is no cryptographic authentication involved.

There are a LOT of new boxes in the ZE50. Some have 11 bit addresses, some 29 bits, and some seem to be able to use both. Let’s call that “interesting”.

So where are we now? Well, we have a few reasonable assumptions now. At the moment, I am making minor changes to the CanSee dongle so it supports 29 bits addressing and it’s internal table of ECU’s contains the new boxes. That is reasonably straightforward and almost done.

Next, I will add a simple screen to the experimental section of CanZE and see if we can make that work flawlessly. Just a few fields. To test that it will require another round trip to my buddy who will kindly let me plug in my gear into his car. This is a crucial step. If this goes as expected, the remainder is just work.

We need to upgrade the driver for the ELM dongles to enable 29 bit mode, and finally we need to go over each and every field to see if we can use the old definitions or need to adjust.

So, there is a plan now, there is decent logging data, and fairly good field definitions. But first I need to get rid of the flu 🙁

41 Comments on “ZE50: A different beast”

  1. Good afternoon! It’s great that you have a plan and a possible way forward. Thank you for all your hard work, once again. I hope your flu gets better. Get some rest!

  3. Bonjour,
    Nickel, ce n’est pas une Zoé 2 qui va vous arrêter.
    Vivement la mise à jour de CanZE.
    Bon courage.

  4. Super nouvelle ! Je dispose également d’une Zoé 2019 s’il y a besoin de faire des tests, je serais ravis de filer un coup de main !

  5. Hi Jeroen! I got my ZE50 for some days, and also have a Carista dongle and a generic ELM327. Is there anything I can do to assist you? If you need a tester, I am at your service (android user). Thanks for the good work 🙂

    • Thanks. I will roll out something in the open beta hopefully in a week or so, but it’s only fair to tamper expectations somewhat, as it needs both opening the gateway, using different addresses as well as making the dongle use 29 bits addresses on some (not all!) requests. It looks like all three are fairly easy but without a car at hand it’s easy to make an error in either one and not seeing which. Stay tuned, things WILL happen.

  6. Hi

    My ZOE50 will come at the end of March and I would realy like to “spy” it.
    I already installed CanZe (Google Play) and ordered 13,86 € dongle via Aliexpress (Super ELM327 New for Konnwei KW902 Bluetooth OBD-II Car Diagnostic Tool Elm 327 OBD2 code reader scanner better than elm327 V2.1) and I hope it will work.
    I’m looking forward ZOE50 upgrade.

  8. What are the minimum requirements to install CanZe on smarthphone.
    I have Android 4.1.2 with 4 GB internal storage and 16 GB SD card I would like to use it just for CanZe app.
    But searching for CanZe in Play Store there is no results.
    Thank you

  9. Howdy Jeroen

    Assuming you work out how to ‘coax’ the gateway into letting you through, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could let me know how (via email etc).

    I’m on a months-long adventure to retrofit a used ZE50 Easy Link (A-IVI) radio system into my ZE40 Zoe, to get Apple CarPlay (and, by happenstance, a nicer UI in general), but it looks like I’ll need to dump & replay CAN messages from a ZE50 to successfully wake the radio. Once I can wake it, I should be able to configure it to wake *on power* (or another, more compatible, wake method for the ZE40), rather than via ZE50-specific CAN messages. (Failing that, I can replay the required messages via an add-on module, but …either outcome will seemingly require a dump)

    Big thanks!

    • What I have seen “opening” the gateway just opens it for diagnostics commands. I have not found (but admittedly also not searched for) a “transparent” mode where you can sniff all traffic. Opening the gateway is fairly simple. Send ISOTP 0x1003 to 0x18daf1d2.

  10. Hi,
    I have build the app with the latest commit from Github, installed it on my phone and connected my ZOE 50.
    I did see some stuff, however, I also didn’t see a lot of stuff and saw Debug messages with fails. But I don’t know, what should work and what doesn’t.
    If I can be of any help with diagnosing stuff for the ZE50, let me know, I am a software engineer.
    Thanks for all of your work and best regards,
    Robert

    • Thanks Robert. At this moment the thing that I know should work are the ZE50 test (pedal position) and the LBC, read, cell temperatures and voltages. Also a few parameters on the advanced charging screen work, as is the Max battery Charge/Regen kW in the charging screen. Probably a few other will too. Torques do not work for sure at this moment.

  11. I am pretty new to all of that, however, I have a CANsee working with CanZE on my ZE50 – for what is supposed to work. I tried using another app in another car with my CANsee but that doesn’t seem to work. Can CANsee be made “compatible” with regular OBD2 apps?

    • CANSee implements actually a dedicated data transmission protocol which other app’s do not understand. But you may recode the firmware, if you want to … 😉

  12. Is there any progress in using the CanZE app and the Konnwei KW902 dongle with ZOE50?
    I just received a Konnwei KW902, plugged it in and started CanZE (beta). The dongle and the app do connect via Bluetooth, but nothing happens in the app – no readings.

    Thank you very much for your effort and wish you (and me too :-D) success in near future.

    Stay healthy

      • Would commitment from the community to purchase a “premium” version of the app be sufficient motivation for continued development? I’d rather throw 10, 20 or even 30 euro your way, than finding ways to borrowing or procuring official diagnostics tools. Last option is available to me, but I am afraid I’ll crap my knickers when I find out what they cost…. 🙂

        • Hi Jesper, I can say that I would be willing to pay for a premium version which includes the ZE 50..

          Greetings from Tyrol, stay healthy

          Hans

      • Hi Bob,

        I can report the same… R135, Konnwei 902, canZE (Beta) no connection…

        Thats a pity because canZE is working so great on a friends old Zoe…

        Wishing that you will get a ZE50 in the next future to get motivated that canCE is working for the ZE50.

        Greetings from Austria… Tyrol..

        Hans

    • Hi, can you explain how you achieved these readings? I am still struggling to read out. Using 1.52beta5 (2020-03-15) with Konnwei OBD2 adapter.

      Thanks

      @Bob, Jeroen: I am as well open to pay for a “premium” version…..

  15. Hi any news on ze50 support yet ? Willing to buy pro version if can get ze50 info thanks

    • If you have right hand drive car it’s by your feet on the right hand side plastic trim about half way up

  17. @LHD it is under dashboard on the left. Just above restplace for left foot.
    @RHD just mirrored on right side.