What is this? - Chip hardwired to OBDII Port

OP, Will you take a picture of the back of the board and a higher quality pic of the front? At first glance, @tacoma_ca appears to be correct... That is absolutely a signal converter.

Seems unlikely if there was no data connection using a dealer OBD reader.

 

Yeah I have done some bit mangling on the CAN bus lately. Pretty sure it is a CAN to another protocol tranceiver. Something else would have to talk to it in the converted protocol to do anything. One of the headers is for the CAN. The other header is for whatever talks to it, e.g. a microprocessor to request then read responses from the CAN.

 

^ ding ding ding ^

I think we have a winner. That two of the wires were tapped into the CANBUS harness is an indication the microprocessor was decoding CANBUS signal packets from the engine computer and/or control modules and the signal relay was transferring that data to a scanner or handheld or something like that.

Very unusual way to go about it - unless you're an absolute computer geek on a budget with a lot of spare time. LOL.

 

Thanks everyone for the help and insight. Below are close up pictures of the chip/circuit board

 

It looks home-made. The big chip is a 32-bit ARM cpu, and the ZUE chip I can't find any info on. It may be some type of amp or timer, as it has 8 pins. On back, you have a DPDT relay, a zener diode, a voltage regulator, and the larger black thing is either a Schottky diode or a decoupling capacitor....I can't read the numbers. The relay seems to be switching a 12 volt load, although it's hard to tell. The other stuff on back is just power regulating stuff. My guess is that this thing was monitoring the CAN bus, and switching on or off one or two circuits to something.

 

Very interesting.

Could it have been part of some type of "immobilizer", like for breathalyzer before starting? Just a wild quess...

 

Some type perhaps, but not the breathalyzer/Intoxalock in particular. Those don't use an external chip.

 

Just a thought, but could this be from a very crude "heads up display" from alibaba?

 

any typical option seems weird to me, as all of the normal modifications would have a plug, and not be hardwired into the obd port.

my next thought seeing the relay on the back was going to be a nitrous system trigger(watch for full rpm, open valve)

the only real way to know would be to dump the contents of the cpu...

but i also don't think it's a homemade, or one-off board. given the green solder mask and the single-sided screen printing, it had to go through a board house-- while i know it's possible to do at home, the processes aren't worthwhile for a singular project of that size. the screen printing to me looks like one of the many budget chinese board shops-- it offers enough detail for crude placement reminders, but lacks the upgraded expense of clear and separate identification of each component location.

 

Thanks! Unfortunately, I dont have/use facebook anymore, but feel free to post my pictures on there if you'd like!

 

The engine is stock as far as I can tell and the dealer hasn't pointed anything out, so no support mods that can handle a nitrous system. There hasn't been any changes to the performance of the truck since it's been taken off - it's been about 5 days, and I've done a good amount of driving on the highway and in the city since then. Gas mileage seems about the same, and nothing really seems out of the ordinary from a driving experience perspective.

 

My guess:

The original machine had a base plate of pre-famulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fam.

 

I don't think so. There is no provision for a display output. There are 4 inputs wires and 4 output wires, which seem to be all from the relay. It was switching something based on data gleaned from the CAN bus is my guess.

 

Ahhhh the turbo encabulator

 

Everyone knows that is a HP boost chip. Adds 125 HP instantly!

 

Is there any chance that this chip could be part of the TAG Tracking system? However, I suspect that the TAG Tracking chips would still allow OBD data to flow through the port.

 

I believe this was a reference to the older, retro-encabulator from Rockwell Industries.

 

Gonkulator?