MyCANScan, graphcan on the EEE PC

bonsoir
my eeePc will use very soon this dev.
I am just waiting for the can-adapter (next week).
with some friends (efficients in C programming) , we are trying to have a tool to log data from the car & gps_device at the same time in .csv file .
we hope to get results witin a month.
why the eeePC? : it is cheap and small (so we can leave it in the car when using our professional laptop) , it starts quickly and the power is sufficient for our needs.
thx to Attila , to Norm for the canview to astrand for porting Attila's work to eeepc.

 

Great Job! Looking forward to see what develops...

Side Note... How do you like the EEE? My wife wants one. She only checks email and needs to work an occasional spreadsheet or word doc...

 

duplicate post...

 

nice
EEE is running windows?

 

EEE runs Linux. No hard drive, flash ram instead. There are quite a few models, so check them all out before you choose. There will be a larger screen version coming soon, and the 8GB flash version is due any day now (if it isn't already shipping).

Under Linux you run things like Openoffice, giving you the ability to use "Word" documents, (yuck), load MS spreadsheets, display and/or create presentations compatible with MS products, etc. Don't be afraid of Linux, it looks like any other OS, it's just "better".

 

Had an EeePC running Windows XP2 - boot time was around 30 seconds. Linux was about 15 seconds.
The ASUS is great to have with you in the glovebox for the quick need for internet chatting etc. Wi-Fi, camera and stereo speakers. ( Watched my Tivo via ORB while out at the park )
I upgraded the ram soldered in a Blue toothe module. Loaded up Office and Photoshop and ran great.
Had to let it go when I got a good offer on it.

There is a 12 volt power supply at Walgreens that is somewhere around $18?? that works great for power in the car.

 

bonjour,
I made some adaptation to graphcan , now it is logging every second most of the parameters.
I changed mask & filter to get some more data , also the speed is now 230400bps (originally 115200) .
we are today 4 prius owners using this dev in france.
you can get an idea of the log file (everything is metric) here

 

Hi All,

Does the EEE PC have a USB port for use with memory sticks? Or maybe a SD slot or something? Does everything have to load over wireless?

 

The unit has USB. Some of the models have replaceable ram sticks inside, some do not. You can put MS Windows on a flash USB device for example (with some deletion of course).

You can connect wirelessly or via USB.

 

Hi All,

Welp, went out and got a EEE PC, and a 8 MB SD card to put in it. It has a SD slot on the side. The EEE PC was $330 at Tiger Direct, and apparently the same cost at Comp USA. Tiger Direct had stock, do not know if CompUSA did or not. Best Buy only supplies them online, and the ones they sell have a 4 MB internal SS disk for a cost of $400. Versus the others which had the 2 MB internal SS disk. This model has built-in audio, and Ethernet, besides 802.11 ab/g. The phone modem port is blanked out. It has a VGA port, and 3 USB ports. There are external mic and headset jacks too.

Pretty neat little machine. I have been surfing with it through wireless links. Not bad at all. The base load is 1.466 mb, with .359 mb free space after loading MyCANUSB. Now all I need to do is get a CANUSB.

The screen is the only issue, but hey, its bigger than anything else, but a laptop in the price range. And if I am going to be having this around the Prius, I would rather have solid state memory.

Anybody know if there is a GPS puck and software that works off a USB port on Linux ? This machine also came with a XP disk, and instructing on how to install it.

 

Hi All,
Oops, no XP disk. The second CD appears to be Windows readable Linux setup disk.

 

Is there a way to use the cord that comes with the scan gauge with this process?

How hard is it to add other parameters with how it is coded? I'd like to see brake pedal position, IGN, and TPS, along with the RPM and battery amperage.

Has anyone tried routing this output through the rear view camera to the MFD? Then you could hide the eee pc in the glove box or under the seat, and get a mouse like this: Newegg.com - ADESSO GP-415PB Black 8 Buttons PS/2 Wired Smart Cat Pro 4 Button + 4 programmable hotlinks Glidepoint Touchpad - Retail, notice the 4 programmable buttons, program the buttons for EV mode and PHEV commands if the programming were expanded upon to support a conversion.

Many kudos, awesome work!

 

Hi All,

I went out and got one of the Vector VEC009 power supplies (at Walgreens). But found the 9 volt setting was too low for the EEE PC to reliably switch to external power operation. The VEC009 I had put out 9.1 volts at the 9 volt setting. Seems about right. But the EEE PC (mine is a 2G Surf) needs 9.5 volts from the charger at least (as it says on the bottom). The AC Charger runs about about 10.5 volts.

So, I took the VEC009 apart and did a little circuit sketching, and electrical resistor divider math and came up with a compromise that gets me 9.7 volts out with a minimul disturbance of the other voltages.

Change R9 to 47 Ohms, and R8 to 36 Ohms ( I used a 33 Ohm and a 2.9 Ohm actually). This maintains these two resistors near the 86 ohm stock combination of R9 at 39 Ohms, and R8 at 47 Ohms, but ups the 9 volt level.

I just went out and drove around with a Ambicon GPS-USB Rev 2.x plugged into the EEE PC running GPSDrive (CTL-ALT T to get a terminal, then check out GPS on the Eee PC [EeeUser Eee PC Wiki] ), and it was just great. The limits of this GPS software is you need WIFI and download maps as you go, but for the usual neighborhood its just fine. I upped the brightness all the way, and even in bright evening sun it was workable.

 

Hi All,

Welp, kinda got the MyCANScan up on the EEE PC. Its not installed on the computer, I am just running the file off a bin directory in the user space. This is because the ALIEN RPM converter (EEE PC's will not install RPM's for some reason) would not install via the Synaptic Package Manager (after I turned on the START button, and downloaded EEE PC Menu settings, which is what I needed to do to have access to the pacakge manager). So, I just took the downloade mycanscan .tgz file and uncompressed it in the USER directory.

Then I followed the CANUSB - The Low cost CAN to USB converter Linux driver text file instructions to load the driver. Trying to run any of the CAN accessing commands from mycanscan resulted in error messages that indicated that /dev/ttyCAN could not be found. So, I did some googling, and found a french (thank god for Google Translate) website (Prius Touring . com ? ) where PriusFan said he had to do a "symblolic link" between /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyCAN to make things work but did not provide any instructions on how to do that. So, not knowing how to do that, I googled around some more (instead of doing my laundry) and found the command that should work from a web site that was figuring out how to link modems to USB ( On the edge of success? How do I create symbolic link? - MEPISlovers Forums ) and rewrote it a little for this situation: " ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/ttyCAN "
Which I did, and then the CAN accessing applications worked.

Hooked up the whole thing in the car, and Voila. Well, almost. The screen wont maximize to the full EEE PC, not sure why (but this an ongoing issue with the EEE PC for other programs too), and there was a glitch as described below.

Also, had a wierd glitch where the car would not stay in reverse or drive. I had pulled the OBDII plug in the middle of my test run to see if it was causing the car was braking hard. As I pulled the plug up in my hand, I noticed I was in B, which was the real cause. So, then drove into an off-road location, and plugged it back in. And drove along some more. Then decided to pull over to another off-road location and look at things while in park. Was there for a few minutes, then tried to put the car in Reverse and got the wierd behavior. Then Drive (even though I was in a head-in parking slot), same thing, the car momentarily went into D (or R) then beeped and went back to PARK. Finally, I pulled the plug again, and the car was normal. I backed out, and pulled crosswise into some open parking spots (so I could go forward, if the car would only let me in go in drive, not reverse). Put the car in park, plugged the OBDII connector back in. Then I shifted into drive, and the car worked just fine for the rest of the trial run.

So, progress made, but not altogether succesful. Nice having a RPM gauge for the pulses and the multitudonous temp gages (Cat 1, 2, Engine, Batery, probably others). Also very nice having the decimal MPH gauge for fine tuning throttle position.

Next will be to put all the files in the directories on the main system, they are in, in the decompressed locations, and then see if it can be launced from console. Which then maybe I can find out if there are some built-in help messages. Or, I could just download the source for that, too, if I could read C.

 

Hi All,

Welp, copyed the .bin files, but it would not let copy the /lib/mycanscan directory into /lib. Still, I can ctl-alt T and type graphcan and it comes up. Got the help message (using graphcan --h), which includes a -F for Fullscreen startup. Unfortunately, there is no way to turn it off once in that mode, without hitting CTL-ALT-DEL , that I could find. Tried ESC, tried CTL-Q, actually tried CTL-EVERYTHING . It just sits there. Hmm...Anyway.

 

Hi Astrand,

I see all these voice files on the sourceforge source repository. When I was out for my drive with the mycanscan, I had no audio out of the computer. So, apparently voice files are not internal to the code. Where do I download these files to on the computer? Why are they not in the RPM ?

 

Hi All/Anybody,

I found an apparent defect in the Vector VEC009 power supply. After modifying it for 9.7 volts, a few days later it became intermitant. The input power LED was on, but no AC MODE on the EEE PC. Today I pulled it out of the car and had it on the bench, and got lucky. It had always worked when on the bench before. But today, it was working, then not, then working, then not. I traced it down to what I think is the problem. The 1N5819 to L1 pad had an open to L1. When Non-functional the 1N5819 solder joint had 13.5 volts on it (13.7 volt supply) and the L1 solder joint (gromet) had 0 V. While playing there it would all of sudden just start working.

I think this is due to reinfocing gromet in the PCB for L1. It cut through the copper trace, and did not solder plate around its perifery. Thus, no voltage made it thru L1, or to the feed back circuit of the MC34063 Integrated Circuit. Luckily the MC34063 turned itself off, and 0 Volts output was the result.

I removed the solder from L1 gromet and scraped off the PCB between the L1 hole, and the 1N5819 hole. Then I pulled some of the L1 lead slack through the hole and tacked it down to the PCB.

The other end of L1 already had the PCB trace between its hole and the next hole over solder plated, and the solder went from the gromet to the board, to the next component pad. But, if its not in your unit, its best to do that rework there too.

So far the VEC009 has been starting reliably since this repair. Wish me luck.

 

Of course you could deep six the power supply and just wire in three silicone rectifier diodes in series to the Prius power. I'd put a large cap. after the three diodes to ground, just to ensure cleaner DC.