Working on ELMd

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Ok been coding most of the day, funny thing was setting the IDE up and solving library hell took most of the time, bear is rusty

Well going to sleep now and in the morning will be first testing of new plugin in-car... P3rvette should say hello world, lets keep our fingers crossed.

It should greet me with version of the ELM322 IC... i really hope its 2.0 or higher cause otherwise if i read datasheet correct only thing ill be sniffing is exhaust gas

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Ok im gonna need some dev help on this, and what would be better place to ask than dev forum.

Prob is that i cant even run the program on target platform, the carpc. windows complains something about build and says reinstall might do the trick (my understanding of "microsofinnish" is rather limited, damn that i didnt realise to specify while buying the OS that i need english edition), well the .exe is not corrupted it runs on dev pc just fine.

CarPC OS is WinXP finnish home edition SP2, with all .net frameworks(1.1,2,3SP1,3.5) installed. DevPC runs WinXP english tablet edition SP3, with all above .nets and following IDEs installed: MSVC++ 6, MSVC++ 2008 express edition, and platform SDK.

I also tried on third windows system, but no go, same error. But thats good cause now i can test just on it, instead of burning fuel in the car... i already used up 1/4 of tank just installing damn frameworks

program is compiled with MSVC++ 08 under debug configuration, it wont link on release. It also uses PervLib library which is compiled in debug configuration, cause if i use release configuration for library the damn ELMd wont link. Im pretty sure my problem lies right here, but these damn compiler/linker options on MSVC 2008 are so F*CK*D UP i cant even find the option for including all dependencies into output file. Any help aprociated.


GOD please undo microsoft!!! AMEN!!

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

I just wanted to say i solved this problem, dont ask me how, i have no clue im just simple master of computer science i can tell u though it was rather my perseverance than intelligence... yep i invented 5000 ways how not to link MSVC++ stuff.

But now that ELMd finally executes, it turns out that my code doesnt work... oh well back to wasting gasoline... ill get it eventually! besides i heard that world market price for crude oil is tumbling down... funland is magical country though... here only way is up

Oh well tomorrow is another day... time to pop into sauna

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Vette can talk afterall, it just took way too long considering that im trying to complete 2nd degree in communications technology

Luckily it told that ELM322 IC on interface is of the newest batch v2.0, ofcourse i could have confirmed this anytime with hyperterminal, but stubborn bear ofcourse wanted to do it with own soft.

So now its just some bread and butter type of coding and we should have little plugin out... this time though im gonna use different strategy and set the initial goal state very low, cause as uve noticed ive promised too much and deliver too little, this time ill be putting plugin out as soon as there is some useful functionality and improve it incrementally, hopefully this way ill get something out before i run out of motivation

Initial goalstate will be just simple plugin, which retrieves vehicle speed and engine RPM for in-lobby use via pervtalk. These are two most useful of OBDII parameters and will be nice addition to sharkskin displayed in gauges provided by xpert, later i can possibly implement more obdii parameters, per request, or if i find something else interesting for my own purposes. Also loadable file for vehicle specific fault codes is possible future upgrade, they could be presented in form of xl database also, and mayby (though highly unlikely) fetched automaticly from OBDII oriented sites from net...

DIY oriented members of board might consider ordering their ELM chips from elmelectronics.ca right about now so theyll finish etching their circuit boards just in time for the plugin release

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

I lost the motivation for the project for month or so, i was hunting an annoying bug for a week and after i finally found it wouldnt feel like continuing coding + trophy support for uncharted was out Luckily bug turned out to be hard to find threading deadlock, would have killed all the motivation to find out that i would have made some simple error using my own pt-library. Well now that naughty dogs game is more than charted it was time to get back on coding today and i quickly wrapped the plugin up. I was driving around watching speed and rpm within xl as textbased values, But ofcourse gauges are too hard to skin in-car so i took carputer out today for some skin development.

Before i can release plugin however i should do some polishing and robusting with it and i have to say motivation for that is bit low, especially since im pretty sure that theres no interest toward this one and i myself ofcourse can verywell manage with unpolished version. However if there is somebody who would like to betatest this simple plugin volunteer uself up and mayby this will see public light someday...

Plugin works with ELM 322 v2.0 chip, its possible that itll work with other ELM OBDII chips too, but i cant really say...

BTW it seems to me that OBDII reserves only one byte for vehicle speed in km/h so anybody has any idea what it does after vehicle speed goes over 256 km/h? Well im heading to race track on end of the month... have to do some hardcore plugin testing and find out (buffer overflows cant be deadly? right? )

EDIT: also could somebody shed some light why car lies its speed to enduser tru HUD and speedometer... for example when ECU thinks car goes 123km/h HUD shows 134 km/h and speedometer lies about same... i could accept this as calibration error on speedometer, but on digital HUD it simply wont fly... this gotta be intentional, even GM engineers cant feck this up otherwise, can they?

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Just wanted to say i polished the plugin up anyway... who knows mayby there comes somebody who wants to build xlobby based carpter someday... this way he doesnt have to start from ground up.

But before i put it into public beta i wanna testrun it and i cant do it right now cause my carputer is out of car for skin upgrade. So u can wait for the release some time next week, before the raceday at end of the month.

If theres somebody capable of testing it and willing to join my alpha testers, i can make it available within short notice.

EDIT: plugin binary is now available on alphatest area: download here (password required)

Public beta starts as soon as i have change to testrun it myself or alphatesters can confirm that it works. Usage instructions will follow shortly on plugins area.

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

After compliting first pace of ELMd, ive started to write FRd or "flight recorder" device. Its basicly logger plugin, which can record any pervtalk variables into a file. I have need for this cause i wanna record pervettes runs on racetrack, but this can do some trival logging in xlobby as well. Basicly two XL variables which make most sense for logging are to me current screen and now playing. But software can log updates on any variable xPerT has access to, which means all xlobby variables and those plugin variables which are being pushed, or most of plugin variables with using smuggling functionality of xPerT.

Just keep ethics in mind while using this plugin-to-be and respect the privacy of other people, including your infants, k? Target time for public release will be sometime next week, very possibly together with ELMd's public beta. Later i have plans to implement some new graphical presentors to xPerT so u can analyze logged data within xlobby