****... I still need to INSTALL my damn power fc before I try playing with it!!!

Sounds pretty cool though.

Integrated into a 5" LCD would be cool.. Well, useful anyway

 

I have a small c-programmable touchscreen with built in 232 and 422 ports. It also has some digital I/O...

It would fit nicely in place of the radio.

 

That sounds real nice johnchabin! I think that it would be a sweet idea. Plus the screen would probably be lighter than a radio anyway. Plus, who needs a radio when you have more than 400rwhp.

Zach

 

My AVC-R screen seems to be a VFD, with a black background and blue foreground. I would think the S-AFC display would be similar.

Touchscreen wouldn't be very useful without some new software, since there is nothing to "touch" on the normal display screens. Having the little buttons mounted somewhere and using the existing software seems like a much more economical choice.

The Datalogit guys obviously decoded the communications between the Commander and the PowerFC.

But I expect that the Commander has some software (and hardware to run it on) built-in to the Commander unit. So I don't think decoding the communications signals between the Commander and the PowerFC would lead to new display options unless you also created a hardware/software package to drive the display and communicate with the PowerFC. I don't think the Commander is a simple terminal that displays screens from software running on the PowerFC.

-Max

 

Agreed. But I already have this screen left over from a work project... it's not a 'dumb terminal', so can be programmed to display whatever is desired.

I suppose the question is how does the datalogit connect to the PFC? Plugs directly into the serial port on the PC, or is there a 'box' on the cable between the devices?

 

is it possible that the datalogit guys can make the datalogit work on another screen (aftermarket car mobile video). it does not have to be touch screen but uses a remote. does anyone have there email or know how to contact them with this idea. if this works alpine monitor here i come.

luigi
94 rx7 no longer for sale and awaiting mods

 

It's an interface between the PFC and your laptop. I'd imagine it translates the data into something the software can understand. That for sure is RS-232. Between that and the PFC though is the question. Those who have one and are good with electronics can probably crack one open and reverse engineer it. If you can crack the ROM in it, then you can get the code and do with it what you will.

 

I hate it when somebody makes a post about something really cool and doesn't deliver. I don't know how many times someone was going to make a sleek headlight kit for cheap, works great, no cutting and makes your car faster. Please keep us posted, and give us a pic. Thanks

On the brighter side, I love the whole monitor thing. You guys work it out and I'll buy.

 

So are confirming there is a device on the cable between the PC (datalogit) and the PFC? Or is it just a simple serial cable?

 

Yes. There is a box that sits between the PFC and the laptop. It connects to the PFC where the commander normally goes and the commander then hooks to the datalogit along with a DB9 serial port to the laptop.


Here

 

Very much interested if you guys work this out.

 

I've toyed around with this off and on for awhile. The datalogit comm protocol was posted by Goblin over on the Power FC forum about a year ago. I and others have written software for a laptop to communicate with the PFC, but it still requires the datalogit (basically just a new Datalogit interface). You could always just run a video out from a laptop with custom software to a lcd screen, but that would require the laptop semi-permanantely mounted in the car.

The one thing I can tell you is that the protocol from the datalogit box to the pc is definitely RS-232: 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, at baud rate of 57600. Goblin surmised that the datalogit box was simply a pass-through, and that the protocol he deciphered was Apexi's. I tried (with my admittedly limited knowledge of serial communications) to trap messages sent from the commander to the pfc and got nothing but garbage using a variety of comm settings (but never diverting from RS-232).

If you crack open the datalogit box, you can trace the etchings and see what goes where. You'll also see that they've dremeled off the serial numbers on their chips (I though I read somehwere that they're PIC chips). At one time I thought I had most of it mapped out, i.e. which pins were power, ground, input, output, but that was months ago. It'd be fun to pick it back up if some of you guys are serial gurus.

Scott

 

Bottom line is that by connecting the PFC to the datalogit and taking the DB9 serial communications to a laptop (I currently use an old Fujitsu 100 AMD touch screen Point 510) you can have almost any kind of display colors you want and have total control of ALL the functions of the ecu.

The problem is finding a 5 inch DIN mountable touchscreen computer. . . . or at least a 5 in DIN mountable touchscreen that accepts Monitor OUT signals from a laptop that could be mounted permanently in a bin or under the Passenger seat).

We have all discussed this in the past and maybe there will be a way in the future. (wireless lan etc).

 

Well, let's look at PDAs and IR or bluetooth combos. How hard would that be? So long as you have line of sight for IR (shich could be easily done behind the dash and IR components would be relatively small).

For example...take a PDA screen which it already a touch screen. 320X240 is plenty for this type of information. Mount the screen seperately from the rest of the unit (which will be the IR transceiver).....wait....scrap that.

The unit (datalogit) already has a serial interface. You can convert that to a USB cable. If someone can port the software to run on CE or PPC 2K3 then that's your solution. Don't need to do anything fancy. Just get en el cheapo PDA with a color screen and there you go. If you want to do extensive logging, split the interface (or A/B switch) and hook up a real laptop.

THIS CAN WORK!

 

Can we get the delete feature to work!??

(Read: double post)

 

I have one...

 

One what?

 

Major problem is that the datalogit software cannot be ported to CE. Therefore the sole solution is to make the CE a remote client for the laptop server and have the communications be via wireless lan.

 

But why can't it be ported? Has someone tried? What about PPC? I don't know the details about anyone trying, so don't think that I'm trying to come off as a smartass 'cause I have no idea what's been tried to this point.

Hell, someone made Super Mario Bros. for PPC, so this can't be too hard.

 

Why not rewite the VB code for the Pocket PC? I've seen the screen shots, and there just isn't much to it...

 

my brother and i were actually talking about this the other night. a quick internet search yielded this:
http://www.littlepc.com/products_p4littlepc.htm

granted, this is not very easy on the wallet, we were kind of day dreaming

we got to talking about the pros and cons of having an onboard computer, and we couldn't really come up with any cons, except for the overall price a project like this would be. i mean, with something like this, you could do so much stuff. a couple small webcams, recording to the hard disk. a monitor to make it all worthwhile. you could run your stereo off this (mp3s), wireless networking for loading maps, tunes, whatever. dvd playback, even though it's not really needed. the possibilities are pretty much endless.

 

Didn't take it as being a smart-***.

The strip.ocx that FCEdit relies on cannot be ported to CE for some reason. I am not a programmer but the guys from Datalogit discussed this problem a long time ago and so there has been no further attempt to port FC Edit to PPC (CE 3.x) or any plain vanilla CE.
While admittedly rewriting the entire programming code for CE could be done, it may not offer sufficient bang for the buck.

I have been singularly unimpressed by software that interfaces with Palms anyway (TE has a logger for v 1.0-1.5 and 2.0 that works to a palm, as does FJO), I just don't see the advantage of yet another teeny tiny screen.

 

I ran into a couple of threads a while back about PowerFC mounting and came a across a couple of people that had separated the screen from the touchpad part using 12 pin(?) ribbon cable. Pretty slick.

I wonder if this guy is trying to do something similar except using a better screen than Apexi did.

This thread's scope definitely took on a mind of its own

 

lol yea i think that was the original idea of this whole thread

 

WHY HASN'T THIS THREAD BEEN MOVED TO THE PFC FORUM WHERE IT SHOULD BE???????????????????