James Wynhoff-
Sometimes its best to cleanse with fire....
04/23/2018 at 17:08 • 0 commentsOver the weekend a few things happened, we bought a new car, and I was doing the PCB layout for the communications hub / power controller.
The car we got was a Ford C-Max Energi, and it turns out pretty much all the cool data I would want is on the OBDII connector, but it was on the MEDIUM SPEED BUS!!!
What the hell is that?
I'm glad you asked! The pins it uses are on the "manufacturers choice" set of pins, but its just another can bus, its exactly the same except the speed of the other can bus. There are endless people selling "modified" elm327 hardware to work on this bus, almost 100% consisting of people wiring in a DPDT switch to mechanically switch the wiring feeding the can bus level shifter.
I set out to instead of this mechanical hack, use the CAN hardware in the STM32f103, but here is the first problem, using USB and CAN are mutually exclusive, they both share an interrupt......
I asked myself why I was using this particular solution, why what I using an arduino based solution?
I had the hardware, and it was easy.
we are programmed to make things easy for us to do, and I had done it, I had thrown an arduino in because I had it, and it was an easy solution, hell, everything I wanted to do I'm sure had libraries even, a little glue code and I'm in to other things. I don't care if its overkill, or if a 555 can do it, if it works I'm all for it.
But then it didn't work...
Once I was done trying to fit the hardware design choices to fit the limitations of the processor I chose, life got a lot easier.
I fell back to my good friend the P8X32A, more specifically the P8X32A-Q44, made by parallax, its a fun chip that doesnt get much love. Hopefully this changes that. the great thing about this is besides objects being written for specific pin alignment, all pins are made equal. 4 serial ports at 115k each? 1/8 cores used, NEXT. SPI for radio and SD card? 2/8 cores used, NEXT. high speed i2c? 3/8 cores used, NEXT. 1 5Mbit serial port? 4/8 cores used, NEXT. glue/logic 5/8 cores used, and 3 for communications with the car, however that happens to be.
I redid my entire diptrace project for this. I'm putting the last few connectors on the board base on whats available on ali express, then ill post them :)
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Feature set fixed, lets not creep.....
04/18/2018 at 19:56 • 0 commentsFeature creep, it happens to the best of us (or maybe just me)
I have been trying to get some time to work on this project but havent really had the time, YET.
I wanted to comment and lock in some details for what the END GOAL of this project is, and a rating on how realistic it will be to implement.
Feature Required Difficulty OBDII data, this is a MUST, in addition to the standard high speed can bus
I will also be modifying the OBDII adapter to switch to the medium speed can bus.Yes Low GPS, this is another must have, and its easy, its actually a combo GPS/GLONASS
we will see how the performance is between the 2, and what mode it ends up staying in.Yes Low RF remote cloning
though it may end up being "learned" on the SBC via SDR, then sent to the arduino.
This feature is key to being able to have the "automatic" feel of setting a geofence, such as for our gated community gate,
drive up, the geofence is triggered, and send the correct rf code to open the gate.Yes Medium Driving statistics, this will be logged to the SBC but gathered by the arduino via a 9DOF sensor Yes Low Steering wheel keys, this is really part of the OBDII, but I want to mention it again, its very important (for my wife especially) Yes Medium FM Tuner, this will be handled with an SDR via the SBC Yes Low Navigation, I'm still exploring options with this, but we will be getting GPS data via the arduino link Yes Medium Internet connectivity, this will be provided to the SBC via a 4g hotspot
the SBC will have a direct USB connection, so wifi stays OFF during normal operationYes Low Phone connectivity, high on the list, this requires a lot of working parts for bluetooth, or USB Yes Medium Backup Camera, this should ideally have telemetry data overlayed on it Yes Medium Proximity alarms / garage park assist, I will probably use NRF series radios to link the car to the sensors
inside the garage once they get in range of each otherNo Medium Auto update (system)
when parked and in range the SBC will connect to the home wifi and if an update is available,
it will signal the arduino to stay on until the update is finishedYes Low What do you think?
What are the features you want to see ?
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Hands on!
04/16/2018 at 19:47 • 0 commentsI just got the OBDII and the GPS modules in, the next steps will be getting data from the gps and the obdII and repacking them for the link to the SBC!
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Arduino required....
04/04/2018 at 21:23 • 0 commentsfor any cool project right??
Well, in this case I really think it will be needed, and here is why:
The data we want to get into the SBC will be coming from GPS, 9DOF sensor, OBDII, and will be in a battery operated environment.
For this I have chosen to use the Bluepill STM32 (STM32F103C8) it has 3 hardware uarts, one of the OBDII, one for the GPS, and one to connect to the SBC!
The arduino will get its power from the OBDII port which will always be on, and it will control the power to the main SBC, and up to 4 more SBCs (headrest monitors)
It will also be connected the the cc1101 module to copy and transmit 433mhz gate codes and garage codes. (gps based)
So, arduino points achieved?
Automated Living Car Integration
This is the aspect of the automated living project for car use