Thread: New, Free, OBD and GPS Tool

At the moment it's a bit hypothetical - I'm still waiting for the post to arrive so I can start tinkering - there's a whole metric ton of things I want to explore but for a track day (making quite a large assumption that I can secure my laptop sufficiently) I'd like to compare quite straightforward stuff like throttle pos / speed with a handy way to correlate it to my position around the track.

It's purely as a toy, there are quite a few track-day data-logging boxes that also have extra sensors to record acceleration etc. it's the DIY part that attracts me.

Before I get everything together what sort of CPU load does it draw ? I'm imagining not very much but if it'd be little enough to use my old G4 powerbook reliably I'd be much happier butchering that or clamping it in place in the car than having my MBA sailing through the ... er ... air during cornering!

I'll be back in touch once I've installed everything.

Jon

I'm imagining not very much but if it'd be little enough to use my old G4 powerbook reliably

Actually, one of the machines I'm using for development is my old powerbook G4... Works perfectly, although I haven't taken it out for a drive with the new UI yet. And as far as securing it goes, a roll of gaffer tape is worth more than that piece of junk :-)

This is probably fodder for a new thread on the forum, so if you have more, more specific, things, then we can discuss it separately - makes it easier to find for other people seeking the same path.

It's worth noting that when your samplerate is zero [ie, "as fast as possible"], the code still spends most its time blocked in read()s on the serial port [as opposed to spending most of its time blocked in select()s if you have a lower samplerate]. Either way, I drink heavily from the Stevens kool-aid, and the app is a traditionally well-behaved POSIX thing.

Gary (-;

Pretty cool. Is this using Google Earth as the on screen display output for the GPS and the OBDII?

No, Google earth output is a post-trip converter you run on the log.

As of yesterday there's a new version out with a UI that shows dials as you're driving, but as a whole the point of the software is to log trips/races/whatever, and then look at them in detail later.

Gary (-;

I had been using an ELM327 based (Elmscan Kit, self assembled) with an old Win notebook, but since my switch to a macbook I had no luck connecting to that *using a Taiwan USB-232 converter). Before I spring for a new OBDkey I would like to hear from existing users how it works for you guys.
I am interested in the OBDKey Bluetooth. Will that connect fine to
a) MacOSX (using this nice new project) and maybe also pyobd
b) My existing WIn32 software running in a VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine?
Is the bluetooth connection even visible in that (or would I see the Serial port that is exposed by the macosX driver and be able to use that in the vmware)?

Secondly, I would like to find out whether with the OBDkey (and this software) I need to have the notebook connected to the car (vie bluetooth) at all time to record the data, or whether the OBDkey can collect the data over time (like it seems CarChip can) and then extract it later? I am not ready to buy a fullfledged carPC at this time to collect this info.

Would a CarCHip work with this tool to to both realtime data collection using the macbook and/or download of data collected by the carchip over time?

FWIW, I've been using a bluetooth obdkey to do all my development on obdgpslogger using my mac. I don't know how well it works with VMWare, but assuming vmware works the same way that virtualbox does, you should be ok. I've been genuinely happy with OBDKey. For specific manufacturer advice, I believe OBDPros *should* work well, too.

One issue that has presented itself is with bluetooth specifically on the mac; when I configure virtualbox to present /dev/cu.OBDKeyWhatever to the VM as COM1 [and similar for other bluetooth devices], if it cannot connect to the bluetooth device at VM boot time, then it refuses to boot. This may not be a problem with VMWare fusion, but for virtualbox it was a blocker.

What's your cheap USB device? It's possible that OSX drivers exist for it...

OBD GPS Logger only collects data on the fly. It's a logging app first, and a couple tools to convert those logs second. If you want to do logging using your own device, then feel free, but to use obd2kml you'll need to present the data in a way that obd2kml understands [I will gladly help if I can]. Keep in mind, also, that without accompanying gps data, the output from obd gps logger is a lot less interesting.

Gary (-;

Hi there,

Really into what your doing here, I have wanted odb osx for ages now.
I'm having a bit of a problem compiling the programme.
Hoping maybe you could steer me the right way.

After typing 'make' this is what happens:

michaelbdgpslogger-0.4 michael$ cd build
michael:build michael$ cmake .. #
-- The C compiler identification is GNU
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/gcc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/gcc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Couldn't find libgps
-- Looking for XOpenDisplay in /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.dylib;/usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.dylib
-- Looking for XOpenDisplay in /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.dylib;/usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.dylib - found
-- Looking for gethostbyname
-- Looking for gethostbyname - found
-- Looking for connect
-- Looking for connect - found
-- Looking for remove
-- Looking for remove - found
-- Looking for shmat
-- Looking for shmat - found
-- Looking for IceConnectionNumber in ICE
-- Looking for IceConnectionNumber in ICE - found
-- Found X11: /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.dylib
-- Found FLTK: /usr/local/lib/libfltk.a
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /Users/michael/Downloads/obdgpslogger-0.4/build
michael:build michael$ make
Scanning dependencies of target cksqlite
[ 4%] Building C object libs/sqlite3/CMakeFiles/cksqlite.dir/sqlite3.o
Linking C static library libcksqlite.a
[ 4%] Built target cksqlite
Scanning dependencies of target obdgpslogger
[ 8%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/database.o
[ 13%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/gpscomm.o
[ 17%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/gpsdb.o
[ 21%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/main.o
[ 26%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/obddb.o
[ 30%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/obdserial.o
[ 34%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/tripdb.o
Linking C executable ../../bin/obdgpslogger
Undefined symbols:
"_creategpstable", referenced from:
_main in main.o
"_creategpsinsertstmt", referenced from:
_main in main.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [../bin/obdgpslogger] Error 1
make[1]: *** [src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2


Any idea what to do now?
Thanks.

Code:

[ 17%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/obdgpslogger.dir/gpsdb.o
...
Undefined symbols:
"_creategpstable", referenced from:
_main in main.o
"_creategpsinsertstmt", referenced from:
_main in main.o
ld: symbol(s) not found

hrm. Those symbols should be in one of the object files that's created there...

Ohhh! It didn't find gpsd, so most of the gps code is #ifdeff'd out. But it's still trying to create the gps table in the database, so that later SQL joins won't throw errors.

A quick easy fix is to install gpsd. You can put it in the usual places [I see you have fltk in /usr/local/], or my cmake module will also find it in $HOME/gpsd [ie, gpsd ./configure --prefix=$HOME/gpsd/].

It's a two-line fix to fix this code, but I'm unwilling to do a commit until I've been able to build it, and I don't have a machine I can build it on immediately to hand.

You might also want to use the svn version instead of the latest official release. I need to do a real 0.5 release, there are some huge changes that have gone in [saliently, it now creates genuinely useful numbers, instead of blindly converting returned values into integers]

Gary (-;

It's a two-line fix to fix this code, but I'm unwilling to do a commit until I've been able to build it, and I don't have a machine I can build it on immediately to hand.

Committed. Feel free to update to the svn version and try it out

Code:

svn co svn://icculus.org/obdgpslogger/trunk obdgpslogger

Gary (-;