Thread: Build on Linux

The mac will magically make the connection for you as soon as you try to actually *use* it. ie, just try launching gpsd -Nn /dev/cu.{whatever it is}. You don't need to "connect" to it first.

I was experimenting again with linux bluetooth last night, and while it was pretty doable, there were still the odd difficulty [such as ubuntu 8.10 not actually making a connection if I went through the GUI]. I'll gladly provide some help when you get to that stage, too :-)

Gary (-;

Right you are, thanks, as soon as I ran gpsd (which on my Mac is gpsdX -- is that the same for you?) the G-Sat started blinking blue once per second, which is its signal for being connected, and the Bluetooth Prefs Pane showed it as connected. Wonderful.

Then I started up obdgpslogger

Code:

./obdgpslogger -s /dev/cu.BT-GPS-37C5BE-BT-GPSCOM-1

and I got this

Code:

Opening serial port /dev/cu.BT-GPS-37C5BE-BT-GPSCOM-1, this can take a while
Successfully connected to serial port. Will log obd data
Successfully connected to gpsd. Will log gps data
Didn't get parsable data back for cmd 05: 25,17,168,,21,15,109,,09,06,058,,07,04,320,*7B
$GPRMC,161420.760,V,,,,,,,220509,,*22

And a bunch more $GPRMC lines after that. I get more of those $GPRMC lines every few seconds, always preceded by the line saying it didn't get parsable data back for cmd 05. Does that refer to the OBD dongle? That's my guess because I am in fact in my living room, not sitting in my Jeep with the dongle.

So that's all pretty good. I was doing that on my Mac from a Terminal inside your OSX package (in /Content/Resources/bin). Next thing I'll try to do is to sit in range of my OBD dongle, and I'll try running the GUI.

I also have downloaded the source from SVN but haven't built it on my Mac. I got stuck on the first step, which uses cmake. I figured I didn't have cmake because I didn't have the Apple dev tools, but then I installed the dev tools and still don't have cmake. Did you just manually install that? I googled and see that there are some Mac packages for cmake.

Oooo.

The -s parameter to OBD GPS Logger is for the OBD device, not the GPS one. Just run

Code:

obdgpslogger --spam-stdout

And you'll see the gps stuff being reported. That's all there is until you sort your OBD device.

I'm not actually using gpsdX; I'm using a gpsd that I downloaded and built myself from the gpsd homepage


I should clarify; By using gpsd, you don't have to configure anything in obdgpslogger to work with the gps; it magically just works.

Gary (-;

Great! I passed the next hurdle. I went out to my Jeep and sat there with my Mac, my GPS, and the OBD. I ran

Code:

obdgpslogger --spam-stdout

And I instantly saw some GPS output

Code:

gpspos=58.304787,-134.410629,59.500000

Then I added the OBD to the mix:

Code:

./obdgpslogger -s /dev/cu.CANOBDII-DevB-1 --spam-stdout

And I saw both GPS and OBD data!

Code:

>BD reported NO DATA for cmd 10: NO DATA
GPS acquisition complete
gpspos=58.304760,-134.410614,64.500000
temp=43.000000
rpm=906.000000
vss=0.000000

So that is great, it means all my hardware works, at least minimally. So at times I would see the note saying NO DATA for cmd 5 or 10 -- I'll look in the code to see what that means. Also, I tried without success to use the GUI. I launched it, and when I went to choose my OBD dongle, when I select the dongle in list in the dialog box, the application seemed to hang. I have it a long time to process, maybe five minutes, but eventually I force-quit.

I am now trying the convert log feature. Hmmm... when I click Convert the progress bar says Conversion Progress, but nothing else seems to be happening, no progress is ever shown.

So in theory, I should be able to forget the command line stuff, launch the GUI, set my GPS and OBD, then press Go, and everything would work. Is that the right idea?

Weird problem with selecting the dongle, not sure what's up with that; there's nothing that really happens when you click on the item in the list, all the "magic" happens when you hit go.

"NO DATA" means that the obd device literally returned the string "NO DATA". Perhaps check that the obd device is plugged in completely? [I've had mine come loose a couple times and cause similar issues]

Yep, the eventual idea is that once it's all set up, launching the GUI and clicking "go" should be all you need

One other thing that occurred to me; there's no locking on the serial port; if you attempt to run two loggers at the same time, or [as I have accidentally done], minicom and obdlogger at the same time, then you'll find a lot of garbage being reported.

Gary (-;

Hello. I reinstalled Linux and immediately tried to download and build obdgpslogger. (To update my previous statement, I had to install gpsd, libgps-dev, fluid, and cmake.)

I followed your instructions: mkdir build, cd build, cmake... At this point I got an error, as cmake needs to be told where the source files are, so in my environment it requires cmake ../src. Fine, but when I run that I get this error:

Code:

CMake Warning (dev) in CMakeLists.txt:
  No cmake_minimum_required command is present.  A line of code such as

    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)

  should be added at the top of the file.  The version specified may be lower
  if you wish to support older CMake versions for this project.  For more
  information run "cmake --help-policy CMP0000".
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

That is weird because your CMakeLists.txt file *does* have that command at the top of it. Any idea what the problem might be? Although the Mac builds are useful for me to test the software, in the end it's important to run it on my Linux netbook, which is a better size for having in a car on road trips.

That's because the CMakeLists you referenced was the one in ../src/ instead of the one in ../; only the top-level one lists that requirement. It's worth noting that you're exceedingly unlikely to get a successful build if you don't get CMake to run the entire tree starting at the top.

Try cmake .. instead of cmake ../src/

I see the issue, though; cmake doesn't want to know where my "source files" are, it wants to know where *its* source file is - ie, the top-level CMakeLists.txt

Gary (-;

Well, I've been having some mixed success. I learned about how to set up bluetooth devices on Linux and I did that. I edited /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf to create rfcomm0 (which is my GPS) and rfcomm1 (which is my OBD). I can do

Code:

rfcomm connect 0 &
rfcomm connect 1 &

to connect to the two devices, and I get output suggesting that the devices are connected.

Then I run

Code:

gpsd -N -b /dev/rfcomm0

to start gpsd, and the blue light on the BT359 starts flashing once per second, which means it is connected. At this point I can launch xgps which shows me some GPS data, which means I'm successfully getting location data.

Then I can run

Code:

obdgpslogger -s /dev/rfcomm1 --spam-stdout

and I see what I saw previously on my Mac: a few lines of basic engine data (temp, throttle, vss) and a line of GPS location data. New data dumps to standard out once per second.

So that's not bad. The next thing was to run obd2csv, which did produce the file obdlogger.csv, but that file contained only a header row with no data rows. That made me wonder whether or not the data gets logged to the database with the --spam-stdout option.

In any case, I then opened up the GUI. Like before, I couldn't get it to work. The best I found is that if I show the "raw output" and connect to stderr, then when I click the Go button I see an error about file not found. The error does not specify what file is missing, unfortunately. Do you agree with my inference that something which exists in your environment is missing from my environment?

I'm making painfully slow progress but I'm very happy to have this basically running on my little Linux netbook. I'll be a lot more interested if I can get all this setup automated better.

So that's not bad. The next thing was to run obd2csv, which did produce the file obdlogger.csv, but that file contained only a header row with no data rows. That made me wonder whether or not the data gets logged to the database with the --spam-stdout option.

Definitely shouldn't be a problem. Can you post your obdlogger.db file somewhere? It's a simple sqlite3 database with three tables in it.

I'll be a lot more interested if I can get all this setup automated better.

Yeah, Linux bluetooth setting everything up by hand kinda sucks.

The best I found is that if I show the "raw output" and connect to stderr, then when I click the Go button I see an error about file not found.

Can you show me the full output from that window?

Gary (-;