Elanscan upgrade

[ratman]

I was thinking about the changes that elanscan, in my opinion, needs in order to make it more useful.
Pocket pc version
It would be precious to have the possibility to put flags on the record during the journey with a quick key. So it would be really easy to read the data at the exact point when you were feeling troubles
It would be precious to run the data like a real player and no only step by step.
It would be precious to compare different logs in a parametric way. i.e. comparing the TPS signal of two cars a the relatives outputs.

what do you think about this???

[ESM]

I've added that to my 'to do' list. I've got it scheduled in for 2028, probably March or April

[Sy V]

F*ck, I'll be 69 by then!

[Oliver]

Hello all (Geoff!),

Any developments on a working N/A version ?

Regards

Oliver

[ailwyn]

Hello all (Geoff!),

Any developments on a working N/A version ?

if you want a working NA version, insulting Alan (ESM) is probably not the best course of action

Alan,

Would it be possible to modify the existing routines in ES to use a brute force approach to finding the correct request for an NA?

At least if the data is coming back it would be possible to start decoding.

Ailwyn

[GeoffSmith]

Oliver,

Speaking as a hardware engineer, that's software and as we all know, software is always late, overpriced, over budget, doesn't meet the requirement specification and has bigger issues than the bloke standing outside Tescos.

I hadn't forgotten that a couple of you (at least) need NormScan. I talked to Nige about being a guinea pig a month or so ago, but I haven't taken it any further I'm afraid. I didn't want to burden Alan with it but maybe he could quickly modify ElanScan to scan for the correct trigger words and then, as Ailwyn says, to capture the raw data.

I'm afraid I'm off on holiday next Wednesday for 2½ weeks so I won't be able to do much for a month or so. If you have a problem, feel free to post and my guilty conscience will probably take it from there

Geoff

[Oliver]

Hello Geoff,

Don`t worry, i only mention it in passing. As you know, my old thing is running well at the moment, so it only has interest value at the moment. I`m sure it would come in handy in the future though. Have a good holiday.

Regards

Oliver

[GeoffSmith]

Oliver,

I've had a flash of inspiration and I'm on a roll.

Do you have a laptop, NormScan interface and a version of Excel to hand? If so, what issue of Excel? See, I told you software engineers never get it right! Oh and is your e-mail address the same? I may send you a small spreadsheet.

Geoff

[rip]

Hello Geoff,

Don't worry, i only mention it in passing. As you know, my old thing is running well at the moment, so it only has interest value at the moment. I'm sure it would come in handy in the future though. Have a good holiday.

Regards

Oliver

Not only interest value.
It would be easier to diagnose a problem if you can compare a scan with one taken when the car is running properly..

So it would be very useful indeed to scan your car while it is running well.

[al]

Speaking as a hardware engineer, that's software and as we all know, software is always late, overpriced, over budget, doesn't meet the requirement specification and has bigger issues than the bloke standing outside Tescos.

I put it to you that in fact it's often the case that software has to work around issues caused by dodgy hardware implementation; an example that springs to mind is the pentium floating point bug. The defense rests, mi lud

Anyways, what I really came to say was that I like the idea of the mini-elanscan, and I just discovered out that expansys are selling Nokia N770 tablets for the princely sum of 73 English nicka:
http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=141019&se=324

I've ordered one to have a play about with, won't have too much time for the next month or so as I'm a bit busy at work and then off on hols, but could be an interesting project... ESM, you want to play too ?

[lotuska]

Been playing with a PIC processor and 20x4 LCD display...and now have a version that talks to the ECU and displays data.

Was eventually hoping to have a self contained version that could display data and decode fault codes so that you didn't need a laptop etc. Also possibly have facility to dump data to a memory card so that you can upload onto the PC later.

Anyone interested?

[ESM]

Oh alright then

Try the program below on the NA using: Setup¦Autodetect ALDL frame id

If it detects an id then it should be able to log - the calculated parameters might be rubbish though.

[GeoffSmith]

Mark,

That's the route I'm planning on going.

I'm waiting for my tame PIC expert at work to finish of his magnetometer design with USB and GPS interfaces. The plan is to have add an RTC and large flash memory to continually log data in the background. Possibly also a "panic button" to store a chunk of data when there is a problem.

It may be worth us having a chat.

Geoff

[GeoffSmith]

F4 seems to be a common message ID - see here.

Does it read the returned data to see how many bytes are coming and store then yet Alan?

[ESM]

The new routine tries makes a series of mode 1 requests using ids from $01 to $FF. If a reply is received the frame length and id are set to the new values so logging should subsequently work. If the main parameters are at the same offsets in the datastream then everything should work reasonably and if not then the calculated params will be garbage. Some params will be wrong anyway, for example the calibration is for a 2bar not a 1bar MAP sensor but if I get a reasonable log from it I'll be able to make a new definition .ini file for it

[F1 LOTUS]

Been playing with a PIC processor and 20x4 LCD display...and now have a version that talks to the ECU and displays data.

Was eventually hoping to have a self contained version that could display data and decode fault codes so that you didn't need a laptop etc. Also possibly have facility to dump data to a memory card so that you can upload onto the PC later.

Anyone interested?

Sounds like a great idea!

[al]

Been playing with a PIC processor and 20x4 LCD display...and now have a version that talks to the ECU and displays data.

Was eventually hoping to have a self contained version that could display data and decode fault codes so that you didn't need a laptop etc. Also possibly have facility to dump data to a memory card so that you can upload onto the PC later.

Anyone interested?

That's pretty cool !
Debugging PIC code is a pain in the ass (and I'm quite lazy) so I didn't really think too much about this route, but having an LCD available would make life a lot easier (once you've debugged the LCD driver code )

I remember reading somewhere that it's pretty straightforward to drive an MMC card via the UART in PICs ?

Anyways, I'll help out where I can if you like.
I think I'll still crack on with the N770 route, mainly for the 800x460 display.

Hmm, what would be really cool would be to add bluetooth serial to your pic, and write a plug-in for TomTom devices to interface to it, since pretty much everyone already has a tomtom, then you get the display and touch screen for free. No idea if that's feasible though, the TomTom SDK costs aroud £150 I think (stupid not to make that free!)

Ok, enough rambling.

[dapinky]

All this is well over my head

But i like the idea involved and i'm sure i could be pursuaded to buy a finished product!

[Enright]

All this is well over my head

Glad I'm not the only thicko round here!
Does it mean that any pocket PC with Pocket Excel installed, and an input which can plug into the USB Elanscan interface will be able to read Elanscan data?

But i like the idea involved and i'm sure i could be pursuaded to buy a finished product!

Ditto that too.

[ailwyn]

Does it mean that any pocket PC with Pocket Excel installed, and an input which can plug into the USB Elanscan interface will be able to read Elanscan data?

Yes, provided that you are using Mobile Windows '28 you'll be fine

All you really need to make ES portable is to port ES to Java ME (so it'll work on a Java enabled mobile), and have an RS232 to BT adaptor that can transmit/receive on the RS232 line at the correct baud for the ECU and send the data via bluetooth at 9600, 14.4k or other commonly supported BT rate.

To me the second part is the hardest (not that I'd find the Java programming a walk in the park) - the main advantages:
1. Portable
2. Hardware (i.e. phone) readily available
3. Most (if not all) phones have memory expansion - my 1GB miniSD could store enough ES data for anybody's needs
4. Fairly cheap - my off the shelf RS232/BT adaptor cost ~£50, would imagine that the pic setup to connect to the ECU would be around £20 max.
5. No extra equipment to keep around that some f****r would put your window through to get his or her grubby hands on if you forgot to lock it in the glovebox etc.

If someone would be willing to look into the BT/RS232 hardware then I'll spend some time trying to get something working in Java.

Ailwyn