Get a free Giffgaff Sim

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Arduino + canbus + megasquirt = win.



Well few weeks ago I had another look at getting my arduino and an mcp2515 to play nice, not knowing where to start I had a search to see if anyone had made a lib that was easy to understand and found canduino.

Had a play with that and after a few emails back and forth to the owner I had some response from the 2515 Yay!

The next task was to configure the chip to receive messages so after reading the datasheet and the megasquirt can docs 500 times I got a response from the MS2.

After Some more tweeks to the code and plenty of head scratching I set one of my MS2 ecus to can id 1 and connected it to the arduino, switched em both on and hey presto the buffer full led lit up and , some data values were in the serial monitor :)

Now the code is a bit scruffy and getto but its working so far, I need to do some more reading on how to request the rest of the data but its a result.

Few pics of the setup as it is.


more soon!

Wednesday 17 November 2010

DIY SOIC 20 TO DIP 20...

Hats off to TI ordered my TPIC8101 sample and it turned up in less than a week..

As I'm impatient and broke I thought I'd have a go at making my own SOIC TO DIP adapter
so I can easily attach it my my arduino..

Heres afew pics!

Thursday 11 November 2010

Winter electronic projects...

Finally I've got a s2000 cluster to play with, So my mission is to get my Arduino to get that working pretty with the old honda sensors, should be fun as they look sick!

I've ordered a few samples of the TPIC8101 knock sensor interface as I fancy getting that to work as I'm after a decent knock monitor that isn't a piss take price wize.

Hack a day had a link to a competition for designing stuff with a stm32 cortex 3 arm bla bla and for entering you supposedly get a free stm32 dev board so will see if that turns up, should work well with the knock chip.

Some dude is selling clone squirt v2.2 boards on ebay so I bought one as a tester not bad for a tenner so that to be built with leftovers...

I feel the features of ms2 has out grown the available pcbs and need way to much modification to work with even the simplest setups.
The microsquirt is halfway there a but even that is limited. Im really tempted to design an all singing board for usquirt modules and brand it as my own with the above knock shit built in and not a sucky db37, or fingers crossed B&G build a Microsquirt with MS3 chip...

My laptop took a shit with all my nokia code on but i've finally got the hdd out and i've uploaded the basic stuff to google code here

http://code.google.com/p/pytunems/

Sunday 22 August 2010

"It has direct port nitrous injection, Yeah and a standalone fuel management system. Not a bad way to spend $10k"

Bit of a random one but a few months ago I got asked to look at "Fast and furious car"
as it wouldn't run after the engine had been rebuild.

Went to have a look and it ended up being one of the eclipses from the first faf film.
Anyway after messing around trying to fix it I couldn't find any faults so offered to install a Megasquirt.

At some point its had a few quid spent on it and now has a turbo, unfortunately its been done a bit poor and was only "mapped" with a safc.

Anyway its about 80% sorted and I've had it running again to some extent but I've still to fit the voltage reg for the alternator.

So its another big up for Megasquirt as iirc its one of the only ecus to run the 420a crank teeth pattern.

Hers a few pics a mate took while I was making the loom.



Wednesday 12 May 2010

This week I have been mostly doing...

Very little.

My pos Civic is back in its spot on the drive! Hopefully once I get it running (only need to fit the tank, battery and finish up the loom). I've also order a 128x64 glcd to replace the temp and fuel gauge and try to pull data from the stock ecu.

My sample order from microchip finally came so I can start messing around with my arduino and canbus. been trying to find examples how to use it but they all seem to use a lib that some German guy wrote and at the moment its way over my head :S.

Also managed to start some py cairo stuff have worked out how to draw a circle that resembles a gauge.



Thursday 22 April 2010

Puma turbo goes 12.8 @ 116 MPH


My mate Lewis has shoehorned a Zetec turbo into a Ford Puma.

I've done all the wiring on the car including fitting and mapping a Megasquirt ecu.

It went to pod last weekend (17/04) and managed a best time of 12.8 on its first outing!

Its still on stock suspension so there is plenty of potential left and still needs dyno time.

Megasquirt and Arduino

After playing with my Nokia 770, and getting pissed off with python I've gone back to making an Arduino display data on 20x4 lcd.

I'm a noob at coding with an Arduino but I'm finding it easier to pick up and I've managed to get it working pretty reasonably.

I've bought some parts from bobsbits.co.uk to make an arduino shield for my lcd and fit it all in my project box, as its spaghetti at the moment.

I've also requested some samples canbus chips. the idea is have it connect to the canbus stream of the megasquirt2 & 3 and possibly other devices like, Honda obd0, OMEX, innovate, plx etc.

Megasquirt on nokia 770

I was thinking the other day how good would it be to have some gauges and basic tuning abilities on the nokia 770 as its based on linux and gtk I thought it shouldn't be that hard to write something in python, but thought why start from scratch when there's megatunix.

I've had a tiny look into building it from source but it seems a chore just to even get scratchbox working..
So I thought sod it and started learning python and pygtk and after about a month of head scratching and swearing.

this happened

Image



I'm still working out the kinks but its not bad considering its my first proper python app.

The next things I'd like to learn:
  • ecu version detection
  • ini file parsing to support multiple firmwares
  • guage customisation
  • bluetooth scanner and connector (have to do it in the command line atm)
  • learn cairo and maybe create some proper gauges
  • histograms?
  • datalogging to sd card?
There's a plenty to do but I need a bluetooth to rs232 board as I've been using my laptop as a bridge and its a bit glitchy keep getting drop outs.






First post...

I've had the blog for ages so may aswell keep a record of what I've been upto..