Finally got word that the two MSII daughter cards I ordered have cleared customs and are finally on their way to me. Thanks to those that have donated so far for numbing the financial pain of buying them a bit !
Having two daughter cards pre-loaded with v2 and v3 MS2-Extra should speed up my testing substantially.
As a bit of distraction therapy from wading through MegaSquirt .ini files I decided to put together an initial icon for the app. It will do the job for the moment, if anyone wants to submit something better please do so, don’t worry about the 3d gloss finish as that is added by iTunes.
It’s been a while since the last update but things are still progressing slowly but surely.
I’ve been working on backward compatibility as many of those signed up for the test version are using MS versions that aren’t the latest versions. Thank you to all those that have signed up and those that have donated, the donations have speeded up the process of testing the different versions no end.
I’ve finally completed the MS2-Extra implementation and the app is now happily logging and displaying data more or less as it should do. There’s a problem with the throttle position input that I’m trying to pin down but at least the grind of coding all the data mapping and logging is done which is a relief !
I’ve had a few people sign up for testing and some donations are starting to arrive. The donations are being put towards a spare MS2 daughter card for my test setup at the moment as that will allow me to test both version 2 and version 3 firmware by swapping the daughter card rather than having to keep reloading different firmware. I’m still a little way off sending out a test version of the app so if you’ve signed up as a tester don’t worry too much if you don’t hear anything for a while. I will try and acknowledge all test requests within a week or so, it all takes time so please be patient 🙂
It’s a pretty frustrating time at the moment with so much work going into the app and nothing to really show for it. Just like the proverbial duck though it’s all happening underneath. Three more days at work and then I’m off work until the new year so should get the last of the communications/logging configurations nailed and then I can move onto the more interesting prospect of adding a user interface over the top of it all.
I’m really pleased with the way the auto switching is working now as the code automagically guesses the version and type of hardware it’s connected to and reconfigures itself accordingly. At some point I need to get the rest of the .ini files together that have shipped with all the different software revisions and check them all… not really looking forward to that !
It’s heavy going at the moment as I’m slowly but surely implementing the MS2-Extra support in the spare time I have. At least the competition season is more or less at an end until March so I don’t have to spend as many weekends working on my motor or weekends away competing.
A few more evenings work and I should have the MS2 support finished, that’ll leave the log file playback to complete and I can send it out to the testers for some initial feedback.
I’m well on the way now to implementing MS2-Extra support. Still a lot of coding to do but it’s starting to take shape and, hopefully, will be running sometime in the next week or so.
I’ve had a couple of queries regarding MS3 support. I’ve not got the necessary hardware to test it but it SHOULD work OK. The iPhone, however, cannot be hooked directly to the Megasquirt 3’s built in USB port, it will still need to use a Serial to WiFi adaptor as described on the hardware page.
Having now received the documentation for the MegaJolt serial protocols I can’t see any reason why MegaJolt support can’t be included in the app. To all intents and purposes the MegaJolt follows a similar protocol to that that the various MegaSquirt flavours follow so with the new data layer structure it shouldn’t be more than an evenings work to implement the logging and view functionality.
I may be biting off more than I can chew by adding yet another product to support in the app but it scares me a lot less than the pain I’m about to go through adding MS2 and the two different flavours of MS2-Extra to the app !
The app is back together again following the major changes I ended up making to the data layer.
Had some real problems downgrading to standard MS1 code on my test ECU but eventually got it working after a fashion. The CPU appears to be “locked up” as it’s not responding to inputs or firing any outputs but it is responding to serial commands and returning data as if it were running, very odd but good enough to test the basic functionality against.
The app now runs with MS1 and MS1-Extra and switches between the two automatically so, providing the standard conversion tables (thermfactor, kpafactor, throttlefactor etc…) are being used then you don’t need to load any configuration files.
In response to requests I’ve had a quick look at MegaJolt support but I’ve been unable to find any information regarding the serial protocol it uses so haven’t made any decision either way at the moment.
I’ll add MS2-Extra support next as I can use the ECU out of my competition vehicle to test that with, MS2 B&G support/testing will probably have to wait until later in the week when I’m hoping the MS2 daughter cards I’ve ordered will arrive.
The first versions of the app worked well with MS1-Extra because that happened to be the ECU configuration I had on the bench when I started development. Over time though the design of the data engine has caused some issues when trying to support other firmware versions.
I’ve made a start now on breaking the comms and interpretation part of the app apart to make coping with different transport layers and different firmware versions much simpler in the long term. In the short term the app is in a pretty sorry state but I think a few more evenings work and I’ll have it back together again and running.
As part of this process I’ve looked at leveraging the transport layer into a class of it’s own too. That should go a long way towards resolving the problems of running with a log file as a data source, making the gauges and various data views work with a saved log file. That also allows a “demonstration” mode which can use a log file embedded in the app bundle.
Finally got word that the two MSII daughter cards I ordered have cleared customs and are finally on their way to me. Thanks to those that have donated so far for numbing the financial pain of buying them a bit !