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Nov 12, 2009 23:58:31 GMT
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and another use... the GIMP (Graphical Image Manipulation Program) comes pre installed and is easy to use and produces good results (if you have any talent for it, I don't...) oh yeah, and its free (last time I checked you have to pay for photo bucketshop) edit for freudian slip darn"go pro today" ads... second ed for rubbish bbcoding probably better go to bed.
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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and another use... the GIMP (Graphical Image Manipulation Program) comes pre installed and is easy to use and produces good results (if you have any talent for it, I don't...) Haha, now I know you're just trolling. The GIMP is well named, such a PITA to use that you have to be a gimp to appreciate the punishment.
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"Jeremy Clarkson, a man we motor enthusiasts need on our side like Lewis Hamilton's F1 car needs a towing ball and a Sprite Musketeer" My motor
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what! you saying its worse to use then blender? thats difficult to use, gimp is only a little bit different to what ever your used to.
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Nov 13, 2009 11:43:43 GMT
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^^ gimp IS what I'm used to! But here's a point about last night.
It was after midnight, I was slightly drunk and very tired, I had never used the copy (of GIMP) on the eee before, so no customizing at all. I managed to produce something resembling what I had in my head straight away.
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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This evening I has been mostly talking to a car I have obdgpsplotter built and installed (still no gui tho) so I dug out the old OBD/rs232 modules to try it out. As you can see, I have 5 black boxes. 4 of these correspond to the 4 comms protocols used for OBD (some standard...the SAE forgot to specify how to transmit the standardized data through the standardized plug ) Briefly, they are PWM - Pulse width modulation - Ford VPW - Variable pulse width - vauxhall KKL - Dual K line - some VW's but not others ISO - International standards organization - pretty much anything else so as it's a Ford Scorpio I want to interrogate, it's the PWM module I'm using. Plugged it in, and ran obdgpsplotter andy@andy-laptop ~ $ obdgpslogger -s /dev/ttyUSB0 -t Opening serial port /dev/ttyUSB0, this can take a while Successfully connected to serial port. Will log obd data Creating a new trip
which it did. made a spreadsheet for me too. Trouble is, it's blank except for the timecodes. So I read the man page (command manual - type man [command]) and discovered that I need to interrogate the ecu, get it to report what data modes it supports, choose the ones I want and insert them into the command (in a comma separated list) so the program knows WHAT to log. andy@andy-laptop ~/obd $ obdgpslogger -s /dev/ttyUSB0 -p Opening serial port /dev/ttyUSB0, this can take a while Successfully connected to serial port. Will log obd data Your OBD Device claims to support PIDs: PID: [column] human_name OBD reported NO DATA for cmd 00: NO DATA
> Couldn't get obd bytes for cmd 00 00: [unknown] PIDs supported 00-20
ah. The scorpio is so old it doesn't automatically send its PID info (or make, vin, or any other of the enhancements) so I'm off to a terminal program to ask it nicely ;D you can see in the output the OBD commands (starts 0) and the ECU reply to each query (starts 4) for those interested in what it means, here's a good linkit means that, for example, to read trouble codes you type 03, and receive back 43 followed by several hex pairs representing the fault code 04 resets the codes and clears the memory 09 01 prints the VIN of the car (if supported - it isn't on mine) Anyway, it's all in the link. Even without diagnostic software I can use it directly ;D I now have a list of supported PIDs for obdgpsplotter, but the GPS hasn't arrived (still ) but as soon as it comes I can do a test journey and make a google earth map for you to look at.
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Mine too although I'm enjoying this thread.. mainly for the small sippetts where I actually go 'oh i know what you mean' ;D lol keep it up SOC
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Daily: Spazda Mx5
'A52's Fastest steak eater 2010'
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good stuff, we used to have a "break out" box i.e. a box with a rs232 connector to a laptop that read data, plug a manufacturers computer in one end of the box then the car in the other to "snoop" data being read back and forth. we would then write diagnositc programs based on that data... this was mostly before the proliferation of information on the internet...
used to have a miriad of connectors for different manufacturers before the standard OBD connectors/protocols came out in 1996.
got a load of code somewhere on a computer not too far away with protocols for VAG, FAL, BMW, Merc, Ford and Vauxhall, Rover... also ODB/OBDII... not just OBD diagnostics but manufacturer specific stuff and service light resets/airbags etc.
the company i worked for did the MG ZS electronics just before the demise or Rover... that car could be diagnosed and located anywhere as long as it was within range of mobile telecoms masts... you could beep the horn, flash the lights, turn on cooling fans etc remotely...
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Full of automotive and culinary delights visit: 1994 Subaru Legacy Estate Turbo 1985 Vauxhall Nova SR 1995 Fiat Cinquecento Sporting
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madmog
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 1,160
Club RR Member Number: 46
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101 uses for an eeePCmadmog
@madmog
Club Retro Rides Member 46
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the company I worked for did the MG ZS electronics just before the demise or Rover... that car could be diagnosed and located anywhere as long as it was within range of mobile telecoms masts... you could beep the horn, flash the lights, turn on cooling fans etc remotely... Wow so the central locking could automatically lock and the speed stay over 40 if you were driving through... Liverpool for example ;D
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Nov 14, 2009 11:38:56 GMT
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I have a fairly reliable friend who tells a story about driving a Lotus Esprit at 170mph on an autobahn while it was being live mapped by a guy in the passenger seat with a laptop as there was no time to get it to a rolling road before its next race.
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Volvo back as my main squeeze, more boost and some interior goodies on the way.
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Nov 14, 2009 12:53:32 GMT
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Swollen - you mean to say you have the holy grail of car diagnostics? lol.... can I be your mate? ;D
MY GPS ARRIVED!!!! Playing with it now. (Scorpio still won't log.. I may have to tweak the code a little so it doesn't check and think it's got no data to report)
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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well, I've had the gps 12 hours and I still can't get it to work... I have learned lots of stuff about how bluetooth protocols work, and about gprs (the system daemon).. I have it at the point where I can mount the GPS as a serial device, and read its output in a terminal (it's streaming hex something chronic..) but any attempt to address it bricks the damn thing and I have to take the battery out, power cycle it and re-mount. Hum.
Google says I've picked (at random) a gps with very fussy firmware. There is also a possibility that the last owner left it in a proprietary data mode rather than NMEA, and I may have to open it and remove the backup battery to clear. The bug is documented, I'm working on a solution now.
PS... I enjoy making things work in a way they weren't strictly designed to, and I keep learning really cool new stuff while I do it ;D Windows users get to compensate for the crappy proprietary firmware with a driver disk, I could have bought a GPS I knew was going to work.... hahaha.
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Nov 15, 2009 20:40:18 GMT
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I know how you feel I'm going to spare you all the gory technical detail that I will be passing on to the developers of various pieces of software, but I'm still unable to read the gps. gpsd (contol software that recognizes and interprets GPS signals) can't identify the device. There isn't an up-to-date comprehensive how to guide anywhere but lots of "help it doesn't work properly" posts on user forums, mostly with differing advice about what to do. I suppose it's a bit like posting "car is making a grinding noise" as the same symptom (IE no gps signal) could be any of a lot of things, but after a lot of checking I'm sure it's down to gpsd. I have a stable bluetooth connection, the GPS (a holux GPSlim 236) is showing satellite fix and bluetooth data mode, I have a dev port assigned to the gps, it is streaming data at 36400 baud, you can see it in terminal output, it's mostly binary with the occasional snippet of ascii (things like "comm error" mostly...). gpsd said it has device (null) connected at 9600 baud, so I changed that to 36400, it did, but still can't find the device - the "null" description should change to the type of GPS I have once it detects. The manual says I shouldn't even have to change the baud rate, it should autodetect, and this GPS is on the compatible (but fussy) list, I have found people (via google) who have the same hardware as me and it works for them. Anyway.... much googling later... by the way, I'm quite impressed with the eee. despite the lowly hardware I've got it running 2 desktops, a browser with 4 open pages, one of which is using Java, a PDF viewer, serial terminal, 3 open shell processes, bluetooth running and wifi LAN, I keep stopping and starting services as I test stuff, and it's staying completely stable. Hasn't even slowed down. Fan is running pretty much constantly though. Wonder if I dare open sysmon and look at the processor usage...screenshot uploading, lol where was I? bah. I'm gonna put the kettle on. More in a bit. I know what the problem is, I have 4 possible solutions.
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Nov 15, 2009 21:56:05 GMT
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Ok, back to the problem. I think I was right earlier when I mentioned the data mode. The GPS has 2 output modes, one is NMEA compliant (I can use this) and the other is the binary mode. NMEA runs at 9600 baud (usually..) and is an ascii format output (ie you can read it in a terminal) like this Typical ASCII string $<CR><LF> MRK,0<CR><LF> ZDA,123336.8069,17,06,2001,13.0<CR><LF> GLL,4916.45,N,12311.12,W,225444,A,*1D<CR><LF>[1] VTG,218.7,T,2.38,H,0.18,V<CR><LF> SGD,-1.0,G,-1.0,M<CR><LF> SYS,3T,9<CR><LF> ZEV,0.28745E-006<CR><LF> NSV,2,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,D<CR><LF> NSV,7,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,D<CR><LF> NSV,28,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,N<CR><LF> NSV,1,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,D<CR><LF> NSV,13,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,D<CR><LF> NSV,4,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,N<CR><LF> NSV,25,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,N<CR><LF> NSV,0,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,N<CR><LF> NSV,11,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,D<CR><LF> NSV,0,00,000,00,0.0,00.0,00,00,N<CR><LF> & sample taken from wikipedia Reason for this is that the NMEA standard is designed for ships, and slow serial data comms. My terminal output looks nothing like that. It looks like garbage at 9600 baud, and the user manual for the GPS says to set the com rate to 36400 baud for both bluetooth and cable connect modes. At 36400 I get readable (but still mainly binary) output. A footnote in the compatability lists for gpsd says that the GPSlim 236 (my GPS) works in both binary and NMEA modes on cable, but NMEA only via bluetooth, and a good page I'm reading seems to confirm my suspicions. Problem is, to get the GPS to switch modes I need to connect to it and issue a command. I can't connect cos its in the wrong mode. Catch-22. Kind of explains the 50/50 success rate - If the last user left the unit in NMEA mode it will work, if not it wont (unless you have a data cable, not supplied, is a special cable) so I have a few choices as to what to do. 1. Write a driver that lets the gpsd access the GPS properly via bluetooth instead of its current fudge via NMEA. Problem there is it would take a while. May do eventually for that one 2. Connect the GPS with a cable instead of bluetooth. Although no cable was supplied there is a very tempting looking usb2 mini socket on the bottom of the GPS, but that would be far too simple. And won't work/might destroy both the GPS and the PC. I read the manual already. More explaination later. 3. Use wine (emulator) to load the windows app and try and access that way. Trouble is, Wine uses gpsd to access the hardware so I suspect that won't work either 4. Use a windows PC to access the GPS and change modes to NMEA. But that's called cheating ;D so it's a last resort (besides, i havn't got one at the moment
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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chevazon
Posted a lot
1939 Chevrolet 2 door coupe, `67 `Zon estate, `87 Ragtop Cavalier, 4 x 800 Drifters,(!) 1500 Drifter
Posts: 2,259
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Nov 15, 2009 22:08:21 GMT
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Andy - get back to building hot rods and keeping old cars on the road as I am totally lost with all this technospeak and what you are trying to achieve (secretly jealous of the crazy mind of the SOC) PS. I think I have cracked the G tuning !
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Nov 15, 2009 22:17:02 GMT
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Hehe good for you. I'm getting better at G tuning too, and my slide playing is coming along. It's winter though.. I'm in the house more and I ge bored really easily and besides, I can play guitar and use the PC at the same time ;D Sorry about the technospeak - this thread is as much so I can keep track of what I'm doing as anything else. Other discoveries today - I can use my digital camera as a webcam, and record video feed on demand to the PC. that could also be useful. Mixing a guitar fx processor with PC audio via the mic input is possible, but software mixing uses lots of processor so it's better to route the headphone out into the aux of the fx. Play along with youtube
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Nov 15, 2009 22:28:05 GMT
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I'm normally rather good with technology and car diagnostics alike, we have all the scantools and obd equipment at work, but i got lost off well and truly lol! good on you andy though sticking with it!
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1984 gtm coupe 1979 mini clubman estate pickup 1990 mini racing green 1996 mini sprite 1992 maestro 500 van 1995 fiat cinquecento
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Nov 15, 2009 23:21:16 GMT
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Ooops.. I'm trying to keep it simple too. Think how bad it would be if I included everything Well, brace yourselves, I'm about to explain why I cant just plug the USB lead from the camera into the GPS and connect to it. The USB B mini socket looks like this (bottom one) pinouts for the USB standard are 1 VCC (+5v) 2 D- Data - 3 D+ Data + 4 GND Ground the pin marked "x" on the mini B is not connected, grounded or "special app" outside of spec the Manual for the satnav describes the port as "power jack and data port" says it can be used for rs-232, usb or ATX(PS/2) keyboard plug with the "correct lead". the pinouts were in the full manual, not the user guide. No huge warnings about anything, just "use the correct cable, lol" so, usb mini vs satnav plug (nice of them to print them opposite ways up, lol) Pin 1 (USB4) is GND Pin 2 (USBx) is Vout (could be a problem if your lead takes x to ground....) Pin 3 (USB3) is TXD transmit data (USB is Data+) Pin 4 (USB2) is RXD receive data (USB is Data-) Pin 5 (USB1) is Vcharg (+5v) now, although this looks on the surface to be the same, (barring the unregulated voltage to ground possibility) there is a big problem with the data lines. USB uses a single twisted pair balanced line (that's why it's D+ and D-) same principle as an XLR mic line or an RJ45 ethernet pair. (want me to explain how that works? lol) but the GPS has a TX/RX setup, and from the specified voltage levels I'd say at a guess it's straight TTL direct from the processor. Connecting these together will, at best, not work and at worst fry stuff. I can't imagine the USB stack taking kindly to ttl. So, I need to convert TTL into a useable format for the eee. If it had a keyboard plug, I'd be laughing, thats just wiring a plug*, but it doesnt. and I don't fancy building a ttl tx/rx to usb balanced line converter. I do have a serial to USB converter though, that's a similar protocol and I know it works with the eee. All I need to do is convert the 5v TTL signals into 12v RS232 and make up a lead. That sounds hard, but in fact it's a piece of cake thanks to max. MAX232, to be precise, a very old but useful 16 pin DIL chip. It converts TTL logic into RS232 line levels, powers off 5v, few external components needed. I have one in the shed (I built a converter years ago so I could plug an amiga 1000 keyboard into my CD32 ) I have a multitude of USB leads that could be sacrificed and the soldering iron and multimeter are on hand. Results when I'm done ;D *edit - It's not that simple, I just checked. The amiga ps/2 connector has a serial TTL level port built into it (thats how my keyboard adapter ended up with a MAX232 in it- I used the cd32 as a serial link CDrom on an amiga 1200. Works, but very, very slow). I had hoped the same port waas available on a PC ps/2 plug, but it isn't, and it uses (yet another) different wiring protocol - synchronous line. (send/return on one wire, other wire is CLK/CTS, not compatable with ttl, rs-232 or USB)
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Here's the amiga keyboard adapter Here it is adapted to suit our needs. I've put a usb plug with just the power wires connected in to power the device (black USB plug, left side) and a DB9 female connector to mate up with the serial to usb lead. GPS has a USB mini B plug wired with TX where + should be and RX where - should be. Bad news is it doesn't work I checked it through and you don't get loopback from the TTL side of the device so I'm suspecting that either the MAX232 is dead (it worked last time I used it, about 10 years ago...) or the USB to serial converter can't cope with the synthesized RS232 the MAX chip generates (possible, but less likely. There is also a MAX232 in the output side of the megasquirt, and that works on the same lead. I have a PC with a "real" serial port I can check this on though. But probably not tonight!
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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Nov 16, 2009 14:39:28 GMT
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This is why I can't use aeroplanes any more ;D
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To get a standard A40 this low, you'd have to dig a hole to put it in
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