Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "John Deere employee responds to Right to Repair" video.

  1. I partially agree the John Deere line with emission controls. Diesel engines do emit sooth particles and NOx emissions without special tweaks. I'd argue that sooth particles do not matter a bit on rural areas because it's only carbon and is not a problem in small amounts per area. As such, DPF can safely be bypassed. NOx emissions are problematic no matter where it's emitted around the globe so I agree that deleting NOx emission controls is a bad thing in all cases. However, that doesn't mean that engine control unit couldn't clear the error codes from the user interface. The most important NOx emission control system is EGR and the system can figure out in maybe 10 seconds if it doesn't work while the engine is running. So allow do clearing the codes but maybe reduce the engine power when EGR system has failed. That would allow completing the workday with the tractor but would put some incentive to actually fix the EGR. (Usually this requires replacing the EGR valve and I think a competent farmer could do that in 15 minutes unless John Deere has even worse design than VW car diesel engines which I assume is unlikely.) As for the software, the problem is not the required software but the protocol between the computer and the tractor. Again, speaking with experience with VW car software, there VW has a secret protocol handshake which is required until you can speak to all controllers. Other than that, the interface follows publicly available standards with different settings channels (basically memory addresses to software engineer) and values for those channels (basically memory values to software engineer). If these protocol handshakes and channels were publicly documented, there would be no need for the OEM software. Basically the required info is along the lines: "Engine Control Unit has identifier 01, the subchannel 13 is the turbo boost, unit is absolute mbar as integer". If you want to monitor real time turbo boost, you connect to the CAN BUS (the standard part of this whole system), do the SECRET handshake, connect to unit 01 and select channel 13 and read the value. If it says e.g. 1325 you know that the current boost pressure is 325 mbar above the atmosphere or about 4.7 psi boost pressure for US readers. Reading through all channels would allow creating a backup of the current configuration and if the owner then messes something up while tuning the control unit, all values could just be restored from backup. For VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat (all manufactured by VAG), you can use software called VCDS by Rosstech where the founder of Rosstech reverse engineered the secret handshake and created business by selling MUCH cheaper software than VAG to do every thing that the OEM programming unit can do, too. And the VCDS has superior user interface compared to official unit. As such, Rosstech is doing much better work than VAG. However, if the protocol (including the secret handshake) were public then we would see much more software developers creating tools to program VAG cars. Currently we have the official VAG tools and Rosstech VCDS, but I think company called OBDeleven has also completed the reverse engineering part to create their own tools. In the end, the secret part of the protocol DOES NOT prevent 3rd party developers from creating software, it only raises the bar to do so and increases costs for all customers. I think John Deere should be totally okay with setup where user must unlock their tractor by requesting serial number specific unlock code to remove all secret handshakes and control unit locks. John Deere could require user to accept that warranty is void if the unlock is completed. Some Android manufacturers already do this. For example, to unlock any Sony smartphone, just follow the official instructions at https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-started/unlock-bootloader/ - there's absolute no reason why tractors or cars couldn't work the same.
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