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How to kill CarNet (also, what's inside the box and buttons.)

shuko

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Houston
Car(s)
2008 GTI
I posted this on Vortex, but figured ya'll may want it here too.

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EDIT: As several people have added to this thread, this is NOT the proper way to take apart your interior trim pieces. The "pull on it" method works, but will break some of the plastic retaining tabs on the AC vent trim and whatnot. My interior snapped back together just fine, but your results may vary! There are some great tips posted by others in this thread; please read them before attempting.
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I won't delve too much into the "why," but suffice to say that some of us don't want a telematics box plugged in to our car's systems. I wanted to disable CarNet, which led me on this journey.

Thanks everyone for the help in my original thread. Since people are asking, I figured I'd make a summarized post.

PLEASE post if any of the information does not apply to your MKVII or does not have the same results. I have only my car as the guinea pig, which is a 2015 Golf TDI S. Also, PLEASE post if you know a way to completely disable the module through VagCom, in order to avoid taking apart the dash.

I'll show how to get to the box, but first, what happens if you just unplug the connector?

1. CarNet will not work anymore.
2. The buttons will not do anything, and LED indicator will be off. The buttons will still be illuminated when the headlights are on.
2. Bluetooth will continue to work (apparently built into infotainment system now.)
3. The microphone will not work, so hands free calling is a one-way endeavor, and voice controls won't function. This can be fixed by installing a jumper on the CarNet connector.
4. GPS to the infotainment appears to work. (someone with navigation please confirm.)
5. A lot of DTC's will be thrown from various modules, but no dashboard CEL will result. This can be mostly fixed with a coding change.

Now, on to the fun stuff!

You'll need to take off several trim pieces in order to access the rear of the cluster. Please note, this is probably not the "proper" way to take apart the interior, but it worked for me.



Partially open the storage compartment door so you can grip the underside of the trim piece that surrounds the HVAC controls. Don't try and pull the storage compartment out without first removing the trim - it will get stuck!



Pull up on the bottom side of the HVAC control trim. It should pop free, and you can pull out the top now.



Now do the same for the display trim. Carfully pull on the edges to release each clip. You will probably break a few of the plastic tabs, but I haven't noticed anything terrible as a result.



Pull the trip piece free:



Everything exposed:


To facilitate removing the left side vent, I like to remove the headlight control. Push in the switch and turn to the right, which allows it to be pulled free.



Disconnect the connector to the switch, and remove the single screw inside the housing.



Now you can push the vent out from underneath:


And pull it free:


Now pull the plastic trim cover above the wheel out. It just pops off:



Remove the two screws:


Now pull the trim piece off the cluster. Be as gentle as possible.



Now the fun part. You have to pull the cluster free, which is attached by four points. I found it helped to use a thin flat blade screw driver to kind of release the tabs, but in the end you really have to yank on it to get it free.


And there's the CarNet box!


Remove the two connectors. You could leave it in place, or remove it. To do the latter, you have to release two little tabs on the sides and it slides out toward the driver.

The CarNet box:


To get the microphone audio working correctly again, you can install two wire jumpers in the CarNet connector pins as shown:



Put some tape over the top of the connector to protect the jumpers.

Now put everything back together, and you're done. (I'd recommend testing out the microphone before reassembling to make sure you have the right pins!)

To get rid of most of the codes (lots of "Can't communicate with emergency call module" etc.) just untick Telematics from the CAN installation list. There's a single code that will still pop up from central electric, but I'm sure that can be fixed (RossTech has not released LCH tool for this generation yet, so I'm pretty clueless.)
 
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shuko

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Houston
Car(s)
2008 GTI
Since I was very curious, I popped open the CarNet box.

Hmm... Do you think they mean the CarNet warranty is void, or the entire car?


Meh, VW's 3 year warranty sucks anyway.



Inside we find a pretty dense multi-layer circuit board. Compared to my Nexus 5 cell phone, it has way more components. (Makes you wonder what each one of these little boxes cost!)





Under the board is a loose plastic bit with some terminals. Definitely the cell antenna:







Just removing the antenna did not disable the communications. It was able to connect as if nothing was wrong, even after I tried shorting the leads together.

So what's on this board?





Note that this is uses a few different components than were identified by this guy, who hacked the previous revision of the CarNet box.

You may also notice that there is no SIM card, so no easy "pull to disable" there either.

I'm sure that this thing could be hacked and repurposed to do all kinds of fun things. If only VW would give us the source code!!
 

shuko

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Houston
Car(s)
2008 GTI
And to finish things up, I busted open the CarNet button module from the overhead console.

It's a much simpler setup, with only a 2 layer board and a few components.







Using a meter and examining the traces, I was able to come up with a schematic for this module:



Available as a PDF here.

Pins 3 and 4 tell the box what button is being pressed. Here's what resistance is seen across the terminals in each case:

Nothing pressed: 6.91 kohm
i button: 1.023 kohm
wrench button: 3.03 kohm
SOS button: 0.5 kohm

Using an Arduino or some other microcontroller, it would be pretty simple to read the button status from pins 3 and 4 by using an A/D converter. I had planned to do this, but ended up putting a radar detector display in place of the CarNet buttons.

And that's all for now. If you have any more information to add, please post!
 

Deviation01

Go Kart Champion
Location
St. Louis
Painted purple toes??? :p
 

Miguel1

Ready to race!
Location
Houston
I saw you disconnected the antenna from the CarNet module, does that affect signal in the car at all? I vaguely remember someone telling me our cellphones can use the signal from the car if you've connected through MMI I think.
 

farcyde11gti

Ready to race!
Location
|\|¢
You're not suggesting telematics could be used to invade your privacy, adjust your insurance rates, or worse are you? ;)
 

BoardSnow6

Banned
Location
WPA
Car(s)
Capita Scaremaster
This whole thread is strange. The knowledge of electronic parts. The anxiety. The purple toes. All of it.
 

Sailor737

Ready to race!
Location
America
You're not suggesting telematics could be used to invade your privacy, adjust your insurance rates, or worse are you? ;)

Big brother at its finest. Well actually the Corvettes have their onboard video system which is even worse because it can be played back visually and tell a lot more of a picture in court...
 
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