Our work · Case study

Car Wash Automation

A car wash operator was running its bays on legacy control boards with no documentation, no supplier support and no way to manage customers centrally. Codium reverse engineered the boards, updated their firmware to talk to the Autowash PLC, fitted RFID scanners at the bays and built a cloud platform where customers hold an account, recharge it and wash, with every transaction reported back of house.

Cloud applicationHardware integrationReverse engineeringRFID
Car wash management dashboard on a counter with an RFID card reader and a stack of customer cards
  • ClientAn Australian car wash operator
  • IndustryAutomotive services
  • The workHardware reverse engineering, firmware, RFID bay scanners and a cloud management platform with reporting.
  • HardwareATmega8 control boards, the Autowash PLC and RFID readers at each bay.
The brief

Undocumented boards, decoded one packet at a time

The bays were driven by ATmega8-based control boards talking over UDP, and nobody had the protocol. We put the boards on the bench, captured the traffic and rebuilt the specification ourselves: which bytes were the header, which were control bytes, which carried data such as the bay and the amount, and how the CRC check bytes were calculated. With the protocol documented we could change the firmware, talk to the Autowash PLC and put a modern platform on top of hardware the operator already owned.

01

Protocol reverse engineered

UDP traffic between the boards captured and decoded, then regenerated and documented byte by byte: headers, control bytes, data bytes and CRC checks.

02

Firmware updated

New firmware on the ATmega8 boards so they speak to the Autowash PLC and report to the platform, without replacing the hardware.

03

RFID at every bay

Scanners fitted at the bays so a customer taps a card, the platform checks the account and the bay starts.

04

Account recharging

Customers hold a balance and recharge it online, so the operator is paid up front and there's no cash in the bays.

05

Cloud management platform

Sites, bays, customers, RFID cards, transactions and system status managed from one web dashboard.

06

Back-of-house database

A new reporting database behind the platform, with every wash, top-up and bay event recorded for reconciliation and reporting.

Bench with the bay control board and RFID reader beside a laptop running Wireshark on the UDP traffic
Reverse engineering

From raw UDP bytes to a documented protocol

Packet sniffing on the bench gave us the raw traffic. We worked out the structure by replaying and varying packets against a live board: a fixed header, control bytes that select the command, data bytes carrying values such as the bay ID and the amount, and a 16-bit CRC over the payload. The result is a written specification the operator now owns, and firmware we can keep evolving.

  • UDP capture and replay against the ATmega8 boards
  • Control, data and CRC check bytes identified and documented
  • Firmware updated to talk to the Autowash PLC
  • RFID readers wired into the bay controllers
Technology stack

How it's built

The platform combines firmware on the bay control boards, a bridge to the Autowash PLC and RFID readers at the bays with a cloud web application for sites, bays, customers, cards, transactions and reports, backed by a new reporting database.

Single page application

Built in Vue.js as a single page application, for a fast experience without page reloads and the flexibility to evolve as the system grows.

API-focused backend

The backend is built in Laravel and MySQL with an API-first interface, so the web and mobile apps share the same endpoints.

Continuous integration

Automated testing and deployment let us test new builds and update production quickly, so we can release as often as required.

Managed hosting

Amazon's Elastic Container Service runs each service in its own container within a cluster that scales up and down as needed.

Managed hosting

Running a site on hardware nobody documented?

We can put it on the bench, work out how it talks and build the platform your business needs on top of it. Tell us what you're running.

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