SRS Crash Data EEPROM reflashing

Hello Everyone!
So I have been doing mobile diagnostics for about 3 months now. I finally quit my day job and went into business for myself. I find it funny considering I too am an automotive instructor that does freelance mobile diagnostics like Paul. Anyway, I service about a half dozen of vehicle re-builders that have been very good to me. I do most of their key coding, reflashing, and CAN diagnostics they don't have the equipment of know-how to do. I was asked today about clearing crash data out of airbag control units. Whenever airbags are deployed late model airbag control units store data and can not be reset by even the factory scantool. Ther are a variety of sources my rebuilders use to send out and have this done. I have been looking into purchasing equipment to do this, but find it to be a very vague subject. I took a chance tonight and ordered a "carprog" eprom flashing tool. It was pretty inexpensive, but looks like it will covers a lot. Eprom flashing is pretty simple and isn't a big deal. the difficulty seems to be in finding a database with current good clean flashes. Has anyone gotten into this? Any info would be great to discuss.

Thanks,
William Trapp

The guys that do this kind of work are like a secret society they tend not share.

Bin files are created by the manufacturer. To my knowledge, there is no paid acess to this information. I believe, know good bin files are taken from good modules. Or people are really good at reading hexadecimal. Essentially you're hacking the eeprom or reverse engineering the eeprom. Their are car hacking communities but it's has been far above my realm of knowledge and sparse. If you search car hacking, eeprom programming, can buss decoding. It will definitely be in the realm of knowledge you are looking for. I wish I had more time to really deep dive into this. Cause I would love to do the same.

Well, it's not that cryptic as it might appear at first sight....

Crash data is stored in some erase/write protected areas in memory devices. Mostly crash data is cleared by software. You have to read the memory device, then filter the bin file thru a program to clear it and then write the complete file back to the device. Often it requires you to desolder and solder; onboard programming almost never works ou t(in my experience).

There are only few people who actually know exactly where ( and how) the crash data is encrypted. The softwares are commercial and are a huge bypass instead of investigating each and every single dump which is very timeconsuming.

The whole process is comparable to immo off solutions, egr delete and so on. For the ones involved into programming /reverese engineering crash data clearing is just one partof all the tinkering with electronic control devices.

Nevertheless, this kind of tinkering goes along with a HUGE responsibility: often times into the control units acceleration sensors, gravity sensors
, inclination sensors etc are built in. These devices can get compromised and/or damaged during an accident or crash event.So just clearing the crash data without verifying the functionality of the system as a whole is DANGEROUS. This is the reason why the manufacturers irrevocably call for replacement of the involved control units.

The carprog unit is a powerful tool concerning programming microcontrollers and memory devices. The cheap chinese clones are hit and miss, with good luck they work on the most prominent chips, some of them will be blocked after some time ....

I attach pictures of softwares for the interested ones.

Great info. I agree about crash data. Modifying safety systems is a big no. It would be nice to be familiar with it, for diagnostics reasons. What do you use for chip programmer/reader when you desolder the eeprom. I will look into the software you screen copied. I want to get into module and cluster repair. I haven't been able to successfully do a bin dump from a eeprom. I also haven't been able to invest to much time either, that one is on me haha