Hi all,
First of all, great forum. Have been searching and having a read, there is a lot of good information on here.
Reason I am posting is I am looking to log data to a PC from my aftermarket automotive ECU that runs the fuel injection and ignition timing on my car. The firmware does not do this by design, and the manufacturer (Microtech automotive Systems in Australia) have dropped support for my ecu (an MTX8).
The ecu talks to a handset which displays in real time all the paramaters I am interested in. The handset is invaluable, what I would like to be able to do is record the data for later viewing/reference.
The handset is just a characrer lcd with a few buttons. The lcd is a hitachi compatable unit and has 4 data lines (nibble mode) RS and E communication to the ECU. So essentially all I want to do is get a PC to understand what the ECU is telling the display.
Ideally it would be great to be able to use this program:
**broken link removed**
This however talks to the more recent Microtech ECUs via a serial port.
So I am wanting to do one of two things.
1) Redirect the parallel data/RS/E to serial coms (a UART/microcontroller) so I can use the nice factory program. An unlikely solution as the exact protocol the program wants is unknown.
2) Send the data intended for the handset to a PC parallel port which gets read and interpreted by software. I have the pin data of the ECU/handset link. The PC software is the piece of the puzzel I don't have.
Has anybody got any ideas to get me off the ground with this that might save me reinventing the wheel so to speak? A program that emulates (and logs) a (16x4) character LCD from parallel port data?
Arran
coote (at) netcall.com.au
First of all, great forum. Have been searching and having a read, there is a lot of good information on here.
Reason I am posting is I am looking to log data to a PC from my aftermarket automotive ECU that runs the fuel injection and ignition timing on my car. The firmware does not do this by design, and the manufacturer (Microtech automotive Systems in Australia) have dropped support for my ecu (an MTX8).
The ecu talks to a handset which displays in real time all the paramaters I am interested in. The handset is invaluable, what I would like to be able to do is record the data for later viewing/reference.
The handset is just a characrer lcd with a few buttons. The lcd is a hitachi compatable unit and has 4 data lines (nibble mode) RS and E communication to the ECU. So essentially all I want to do is get a PC to understand what the ECU is telling the display.
Ideally it would be great to be able to use this program:
**broken link removed**
This however talks to the more recent Microtech ECUs via a serial port.
So I am wanting to do one of two things.
1) Redirect the parallel data/RS/E to serial coms (a UART/microcontroller) so I can use the nice factory program. An unlikely solution as the exact protocol the program wants is unknown.
2) Send the data intended for the handset to a PC parallel port which gets read and interpreted by software. I have the pin data of the ECU/handset link. The PC software is the piece of the puzzel I don't have.
Has anybody got any ideas to get me off the ground with this that might save me reinventing the wheel so to speak? A program that emulates (and logs) a (16x4) character LCD from parallel port data?
Arran
coote (at) netcall.com.au