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VESS - any way to crank up the volume?

19K views 43 replies 18 participants last post by  baldbeardie 
#1 ·
We love our Kona electric, but the one thing that I miss or would like is the ability to make the virtual engine sound system (VESS) louder!
I realise some people like to turn it off altogether, and to be fair most of the time it doesn't really matter, but a few times now I have found myself going slowly around a car park only to come up behind pedestrians having a lovely chat right in the middle of the "road". It seems terribly rude to beep the horn, and obviously there is no engine to rev, so what to do?
Usually, I don't think they do it deliberately, it's just they simply haven't noticed (particularly if it's an otherwise noisy environment).
So here's the thing. Does anyone know if it's possible to alter the volume and just, temporarily, crank it up a bit to get their attention?
I have toyed with the idea of fitting some sort of aftermarket sound generator, but part of me thinks I don't really want to fiddle about like that and all I really need is the option to make what is already there a bit more attention grabbing on occasion.
Any suggestions?
 
#2 ·
Personally, I would like to be able to change the sound via a simple upload system to anything I want, but I have tested doing the opposite, and driven slowly around a car park with the vess thing switched off, most people do actually hear the car coming from the wheel noise so I'm not sure what actual difference the vess noise makes.
 
#7 ·
I agree, it's too subtle and I've used the off/on trick to make myself noticed. There's no way to make it louder without taking the unit out and installing an additional amplifier, or reverse engineering the existing amp to see if there's more gain available. It doesn't help that the front grill is nearly free of openings and the sound itself is not what people are subconsciously litening for.
 
#10 ·
I leave mine off (i3) by default as it irritates me. But if I do find a lost soul wandering aimlessly through a car park then turning it on tends to alert them pretty quickly. It was the same on my old Leaf.

So yeah I think switching it off and on will make it more noticeable.

Or just wind the window down and cough loudly.
 
#18 ·
I usually switch it off but I do find it a good idea for carparks and town driving etc. I wouldn't want to disable it completely, but wouldn't want to be without a switch to turn it off most of the time either.

I heard an e-Golf pull out of a parking space the other day and thought that it did sound slightly like a motor and wasn't obnoxious. Inside the e-Golf it is nealy impossible to hear, why can't they make the Kona/Niro like that?
 
#19 ·
I think it just has to be on by default, rather than switchless.

I generally have mine turned off, but turn it on if people are not paying attention in the car park.
 
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#20 ·
I agree. I think car parks are the biggest danger for pedestrians, although I don't think any driver would deliberately run into a pedestrian (I might make an exception for certain annoying "personalities" :) ). I have on certain occasions had to pip the horn, but a smile and a friendly wave diffuses any annoyance.
 
#27 ·
Hi all. I wrote up the work I've done so far here GitHub - hughsie/mobis-vess: Reverse engineering the KIA & Hyundai Mobis VESS CAN device -- it's very much work in progress -- and now I have to switch back to $DAYJOB. The RS-232 interface that I've connected to has all kinds of interesting commands, including changing the tone, changing the volume and muting the speaker -- although I've been foiled by a watchdog so far. I've also included a dump of the SPI contents; it's Blackfin and so not super easy to work with, but there appears to be some support in Rizin for decompiling that. I don't know how capable the CAN endpoint is, but it seems to allow switching the BF706 into update mode. I'm still not 100 sure which CAN bus the VESS is connected to, but I suspect you might be able to update it using the OBD port.
 
#31 ·
There is raw audio data in the flash from 0x100000
Agree, I see (well, hear!) that too. I assume it's what's written with SAVETEST. Do you have any ideas on how the samples are mixed? I don't know if there are 5 different tones (and one reverse beep) that are available for selection for each car model (and then the sample speed of that tone is affected by the 0x524 speed) or if they are being combined in some way according to speed by the DSP.

Were you running the device on its own
Yes, I was just using the debug port, connecting VDD_EXT, GND, UART0_RX and UART0_TX to a USB 3.3v RS232 cable. I did suspect I was causing a brownout, but even with an external supply powering up the device I got the watchdog reset too. I tried pulling SYS_HWRST up and down with a 5K resistor; no luck there. I do wonder what the CN100:11 and CN100:12 pins are for; I should trace those out another day. It might be that one of those needs to be pulled up, down, or connected in some way. I'll try connecting the CAN interface to see if that's causing a reset when my CAN hardware gets here. It might be possible to "emulate" a can bus with a single resistor, although it would feel a bit odd to require that given the PCB is probably being programmed before it's being inserted into the box, and without the box the CN103 port isn't available.

Also, interestingly, providing 12V to CN103 (as if it's on a car) powered up the DSP, but there was no UART activity.
 
#32 ·
I do wonder what the CN100:11 and CN100:12 pins are for
Pin 11 is WDEN which goes to the NJU7291. Holding it at 3V3 stops the reboot loop. Additionally, putting IG1 to 12V gets me the prompt:

[1m[94mVESS>>[0m
[1m[94mVESS>>[0m>-----


...but alas I still can't seem to echo commands using UART0_TX. Will continue debugging next week perhaps. Either way, there's a bit more information in the github project now.
 
#33 ·
I really want to unplug mine but I can't get my hand far enough into the engine bay to reach.
I permanently unplugged my MG ZS EV's VESS and it was much better.
I find the Kona's quite unpleasant and a study by a UK University found that modern ICE cars can be just as quiet as EV's at low speeds in their testing.
I like the idea of having a dedicated horn that's just for pedestrians. I know a car manufacturer has included one that sounds like a bicycle bell on their new EV.
 
#39 ·
Does anyone have the KIA part number for the 2021 VESS module? I'd also be super interested if anyone has any high resolution photos of the internal PCB of the VESS module. Feel free to DM me or send email (richard_at_hughsie_dot_com) if this is more appropriate, thanks!
Just unplugged mine.....it was driving me and my next door neighbour scatty if i went out early......their bungalow bedroom window is only a couple of foot from my garage door.

 
#35 ·
but alas I still can't seem to echo commands using UART0_TX
I worked it out. I've dumped a lot of debug output in GitHub - hughsie/mobis-vess: Reverse engineering the KIA & Hyundai Mobis VESS CAN device -- when I've worked out how to change the volume of each sample I'll dump the info there too. The output also explains why we have 5 samples, and also how they're mixed. There's a huge amount of ways to change the existing samples :) SOUNDTEST also gives me 20kph VESS sound from the speaker, no CAN connection required...
 
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