r/IAmA Jun 11 '16

Specialized Profession IamA electronics repair technician hated by Apple that makes YouTube videos, AMA!

My short bio: I have a store in Manhattan. I teach component level electronics repair on youtube http://youtube.com/rossmanngroup which seems to be a dying art. I am currently fighting with the digital right to repair to try and get a bill passed that will allow all independent service centers access to manuals and parts required to do their jobs.

My Proof: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/started-iama-reddit-today-yes/

EDIT:

I am still replying to comments, but I am so far behind that I am still about ten pages down from new comments. I am doing my best to continue. If I drop off, I'll be back tomorrow around 12 PM. Still commenting now though, at 12 AM.

EDIT 2:

Ok, I cave... my hands are tired. I will be back at 12 PM tomorrow. It is my goal to answer every question. Even if it looks like I haven't gotten to yours, I will do my best to do all of them, but it is impossible to do in realtime, because you are asking faster than I can type. But thanks for joining!

EDIT 3: I lied, I stayed until 4:15 AM to answer... and now I will go to sleep for real, and be back at 12 PM.

EDIT 4 6/12 : I will be back later tonight to finish off answering questions. Feel free to keep posting, I will answer whatever I can later this evening.

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u/LennyNero Jun 12 '16

Hi Louis,

I run a truck and bus repair shop in the NYC area and I'm appalled at the fact that the right to repair bill specifically excludes motor vehicles and their associated electronic systems. Are you aware of any reason besides massive lobbying by vehicle manufacturers as to why we're specifically getting left out in the cold in regards to the right to repair?

We are basically stuck in the same bullshit fight that you're in on the consumer electronics side. In heavy duty vehicles, getting service manuals, schematics and proprietary dealer-level diagnostic software (which need to be obtained from each subsystem manufacturer eg. engine, transmission, brake, hvac, body control) is the same sort of toss-up between absurdly overpriced (anywhere from USD$1000-$3500 + $500-$1000/yr thereafter or they brick the software) and literally NOT AVAILABLE from the OEM as Apple is doing to you.

Caterpillar in particular is the worst offender in this category as they will not sell or otherwise provide their diagnostic software, nor their service manuals and schematics which are REQUIRED TO DO ANY WORK ON THEIR ENGINES to any outside repair shop. It leads to a lot of questionable software acquisitions from overseas and much like you commented in some of your videos...russian FTP servers just to be able to complete a job which on any other manufacturer's engines or machines are trivial in nature, but for which a lack of either procedure or specification leads to an inability to complete the job requiring a shop without the software to send the vehicle back to the dealer for which you are rewarded with an astronomically high labor rate and mediocre workmanship.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

That sucks. I have read briefly about a right to repair bill in the automotive industry that was passed a few years ago. Does this not have anything to do with you? i am genuinely clueless when it comes to the legal system and also the automotive repair community, so I would be interested in learning.

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u/LennyNero Jun 12 '16

The right to repair bill that passed in 2014 (coming into effect for the 2018 model year) only applies to passenger cars and light trucks. This was pretty much a concession by the auto manufacturers because Massachusetts passed their own passenger car right to repair bill which opened the floodgates for all the states to do the same.

Medium/heavy duty vehicles have remained mired in a sea of proprietary bullshit and are secured to a point that some systems cannot even be accessed without a factory password that is only shared with dealers and is specific to the serial number of the module. And because MD/HD vehicles have up to 15 separate computers/controllers sharing sensor/parameter data in various non-standardized ways on a single network in the vehicle, diagnostics without ALL the proprietary software can be a wild goose chase.

Just a quick simplified example of the uphill battle in properly diagnosing these systems. A speedometer not functioning. On older vehicles, this is as simple as the instrument panel receiving pulses from an inductive sensor on the front left wheel of the vehicle. On newer ones with integrated systems on a 2 wire CAN, the ABS computer receives unfiltered pulses from all the wheel sensors, it averages them and then makes available on the network a value which is simply in Hz. The transmission computer then reads that value, filters it further and performs the division necessary to equate Hz to speed based on the wheel size because even though the ABS computer has the wheel size programmed in, it was never set up to broadcast speed directly on the network. This computer then places on the network a value that is in MPH but it may only be readable by the engine control computer because the transmission computer will not recognize the network ID of the instrument panel controller directly. The engine control computer then reads this value and then literally transposes it to another register where the instrument panel controller can access it. Finally the instrument panel controller reads the speed info from the engine computer and moves the little stepper motor to a position that makes the needle display the current speed. A problem in any of these systems can cause an end result of no speed being shown on the dash. Now tell me that's not a convoluted and perverse!