Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were several posts about data aquisition from the power fc.. several people were able to rig up some hardware to datalog and what not from the commander port of the power fc.

And now the posts have been eradicated. Was hacking the powerFC too contravercial for this forum? Have they been moved to somewhere else? Or just nuked? Is there still an effort?

Thanks

Dave

 

I met a guy in Austin who's working on it. Can't remember his exact job title, but he's a computer engineer of some type. Seemed like a very intelligent guy; Im sure he'll post if he makes progress.

 

I have a feeling the benefit v effort ratio is too far out of wach for any reasonable computer science geek (ops-"engineer") to undertake it on a fulltime basis.

Personally I think the better solution is to get a rip of the Excel software. Make no mistake, if it was available I'd buy it-for at least the price of a commander. I think it's absolute bs that apexi, a company founded by avid street racers, would choose to leave their customers at the mercy of the few "chosen" power excel shops.

-Chris C

 

^---Smart Man!

Working on it part time sucks. Having to do new things like programming PIC chips is fun, but takes time.

Quality takes time, effort/resources and $.

 

Even with the Excel software you would need a hardware interface between the FC and your laptop. I don't know this for sure but I would bet on it.

 

splice a couple wires, get a role of electrical tape and you're in business-sounds a lot less involved than writing the code.

 

Nah...I don't know for sure but I bet it's more than that. You have to get the FC to connect to the PC and get something meaningful out of it. Then you worry about commuications (this is where the EXCEL software comes in.) Just software is not going to do that. Embedded code, yes.

 

Be patient. It is coming. It is a pain, and it does take hardware to interface the PFC to a laptop. I have most the functionality I want implemented and functioning. It will be a couple months before it is fully debugged.

 

Hey almost99, have you considered making a kit out of this, and then selling it to the speed shops that sell the PFC? Don't forget that Apexi also has the PFC for the civics. I'm sure the interface would be very similiar.

Take these guys for example: http://www.piengineering.com/


I meet the owners at a training they were giving for the mail order company I use to work for. It was a husband and wife operation. The husband started making the circuit boards from scratch in his basement while she took care of the business end. He would write the code and create the boards himself, and then slap them in the casing he had a plastics company make for him. They have been pretty successful.

Sad to say, but if you DO make it for the civic, you know you would be able to start a company which can bring you some cash which would certainly payoff your time and efforts into it, and besides, this way you can give us FD owners a discount price

 

Not a bad idea about the civics. There would defenitely be some differences. Enough that would cause me to buy a beater civic and a PFC for it. I'll see how the RX7 version goes first.

 

Top

 

Just saw this on the big list.

http://www.rx7.net.nz/data-log.html

-Mark

 

hmm..

Lets beta test some boxes

 

Has anyone email or talked to them to get more info on those boxes????????

That sounds sweet if it really works and it fairly user friendly

Later,

 

Be wary. Hearsay says its a rip-off of Kashi's box, and it ain't built yet. Asking some questions around interfacing and sync vs. async yields some really good wrong answers.

I'll believe it when I see it.

When you get testmonials from a couple of forum members and a couple people on the big list, then I'd believe it.

 

I emailed the guy, yesterday, hopefully he will get back to me. It seems all he has is logging of current info availabel on commander. I think we need to get hands on excel software to see what parameters are there that are not in commander.

But, I woudl be weary of using that thing for anythign else but data logging.

I met a guy on a plane last time coming back from home. He has Miata with a stand alone. He pulled up his program on his laptop and showed me logs from differnet races he ran, tunning sessions, etc. geat thing was is that we coudl make changes there on the plane, and he can upload them to the car in 2 secs. He said the sofware he had was hacked too by some guy on the net, he gave me the website but I lost it. I will check out the miate forums to try and locate this bozo.

 

I emailed him asking if he'd be making the communications protocol public, and if I could just buy his hardware and write my own software (I want realtime display and some other gee-whiz graphical features), suggested that he open source the application (After all, he'll still sell the hardware, and, this is the kind of thing that screams to be open source... Come on, hacking other people's protocols and then NOT publishing the information? Where's the hacker ethic?), and suggested that he NOT call it the X-Box (for obvious reasons).

He's since changed the name to the FC-Box, but hasn't responded to me.

It would be a shame if someone had to reverse engineer his reverse engineering...


(I want whiz-bang realtime 3D graphics, damnit not just some Windows GUI off line app...)

 

His site shows a 1st pass prototype...not a working app. Come on guys....you got sucker written on your faces. Okay, maybe everybody is real excited about it is all.