My Take On...
J1939 and the Society of Automotive Engineers

According to Wikipedia, the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet, "SAE J1939 is the vehicle bus standard used for communication and diagnostics among vehicle components, originally by the car and heavy duty truck industry in the United States." Beyond that statement there is only few information to find on J1939 and the same is true for the entire World Wide Web.

The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), like many standardization organizations, is keeping a close lock on their written works and profound information on their web site is sparse. Downloading the J1939 PDF documents comes with a hefty price tag, even for SAE members who receive a discount not worth mentioning.

At this time the only available and complete technical reference on J1939 is provided by the SAE for a price tag of US$595.00 (Single-User, one-year subscription). Books dedicated to J1939 and available for a reasonable price did not exist as of 2007 and, as mentioned previously, valid references on the World Wide Web were extremely sparse.

Beyond the commercial aspects there is also the issue of educational value and readability of these standards. Standards, like those developed for J1939, are not designed to educate or, God forbid, entertain.

Microsoft (not a standardization organization, but nevertheless a perfect example) is one of the worst when it comes to provide comprehensible and readable documentation of their software products, which in turn creates revenues for technical writers who know their job.

As a result of the above described situation I have started The J1939 Reference Guide Compilation Project. The project is an attempt to create a complete and readable J1939 reference freely accessible for everybody. The information provided on this web site is based on publicly available information such as, but not limited to other web sites and printed literature as well as contributions by engineers familiar with Controller Area Network and the J1939 protocol. The information on this web site, while based on the J1939 standard, is not a reproduction of any copyrighted SAE document.

If you are an expert in regards to Controller Area Network and/or J1939 and you want to contribute to the discussion about J1939 by providing insights, comments, etc. please feel free to contact me or join our forum.

We also invite everybody not familiar with the topic, but curious enough to learn about J1939, to join us.