PDA Freescan Development by Franceso and Russell

[russellbosier]

We would just like you all to know that we are now making this a joint project. We shall be splitting development work which should hopefully lead to a better all round product, and with the possibility of supporting more platforms in the future. We are open to any ideas or features that anyone may have that could enhance the product.

We are initially baseing development around the Elan Digital Systems CF RS232 card (this is a Compact Flash RS232 card so your PDA will require a Compact Flash slot). This now appears to work, but I would like to do more testing before anybody spends any money on this equipment.

Russell and Franceso.

[fjmuurling]

Hello,

It's good to hear that you teamed up. As you were asking any idea's I have one and that is a playback function (numbers and graphical) of recorded logs. Maybe this can also be incorperated into the normal version of Freescan so you can make use of the bigger screen of a laptop or PC.

anyway keep up the good work,

Freek

[98GT3]

Just a thought.....being able to read digital data of the speed and also the time elapsed, it might be nice to have an automatic 0-60mph (or whatever) timer incorporated, what do you think?

Phil

98GT3

[Tentenths]

Chances of anything for those of us with SD PDAs?

[russellbosier]

Thanks for the suggestions. Keep them comming.

My test software does have the ability to replay data, and also has timers for measuring time between speeds which is an easy thing to do, although the accuracy is very dependant on continuous data from the ECU. This needs a bit more work.

The only communications we have managed have been with the Compact Flash RS232 card. The only other possibility with current PDA's is Bluetooth. I have some RS232 to Bluetooth convertors and will do some testing on those when I get a chance to see if they can support the 8192 baud rate.

However, there may be another way. Do we have any Electronics Engineers/PIC programmers out there? It should be possible to create a simple baud rate convertor for this task. As we require 8192, but nearly all the comms is from the car to the PDA, if the PDA talked to a convertor at 9600, data could be received from the car without the need for any buffering (as the speed needs to be increased from the cars 8192 to the PDA's 9600). The small amont of data sent to the car could be 'spaced' by our sofwatre to allow for the slowdown in data rate, 9600 to 8192, so with this spacing no buffering would be required. I work with people who could develop this, but they have no vested interest so could take some time.

Our current progress:

Francesco has supplied me with the work he has done which is built using the latest development tools. I am in the process of updating my work so it can be built with the same development tools. This will allow Francesco to run it using a PDA Emulator on his PC. At this point we will be able to decide the best strategy for proceeding, and will both be able to develop the code.

Russell.