CAT 3208 monitoring

[nedb]

(02-27-2013 10:31)davidmbrady Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 03:46)nedb Wrote:  Is anyone else hacking the 3208/Arduino frontier? Care to share?
Ned Bedinger
'91 SP36

...,

Of course my bus is J1587 equipped and I have Silverleaf's VMSpc up front. So the natural thing for me to do is take my fan speed data and push it onto my J1587 bus as a diagnostic PID, but I haven't found a gateway (or shield) to help me do that. Because the J1587 bus is mission critical for the engine, transmission, and ABS brakes I want to be careful about interfacing to it, and I may abandon it all together in favor of a separate network. So maybe we can find a solution that'll work for both of us, maybe an 802.11 Wi-Fi shield: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11287

David--

I should bone up on J1587 spec to talk to you DD guys. I'm curious about it as a data transmission protocol, and a hardware standard. Is the DDECx computer running a familiar OS?

Since your DDEC data stream between computer and engine sensors is mission critical, I understand why you wouldn't want to intrude on it by slipping in extra data packets that an arduino at the dash could decode. No no no, do not disturb the DDEC! Unless the J1587 has some extra bandwidth in the form of unused conductors in the harness, and even if it does, you probably want to use another network.

I picked up a 10/100 ethernet shield tonight at Radioshack. I think it was around $20. I'll use it while I dink around with getting the arduino to stream data to my laptop.

An Arduino tidbit: Arduino Uno uses an internal reference voltage that limits the voltage range it can read on the pins--zero to five volts DC. You can switch it in software to an external reference voltage, raising the voltage you can read on the pins. You lose some resolution in the readings, but can still resolve millivolts, iirc. This is a fundamental step for my monitor plans, because I have several wiring points at house bank or chassis bank voltage that I want to monitor. You know, the ZF transmission is very touchy about having at least 12V delivered to a terminal ON TOP of the transmission. Hard to get to for maintenance, so why not simply monitor it for resistance/voltage drop. There's no sign of a ZF voltage monitor (yet) in my dashboard. The Primus is likewise voltage sensitive, and somewhat prone to ocassional unexplained issues. I believe I could learn a lot by monitoring/logging voltage at it's key points, for troubleshooting.

I've done my share of Windows database programming, interface design, tool making, and general run academic and work tool making, back in the day. Today you can have your choice from a double-handful of compiled or interpreted programming languages, many of them more or less the same as found on other platforms. Visual Basic was my main tool for a long time, and I expect I could get into it again if you want a code buddy for Windows programming. Gnu C/C++ compiler runs on Windows, if that is your speed. Do you have a virtual Windows environment on Slackware? Slackware! I thought they threw in the towel when RedHat went all big time.

We'll get something off the ground with Arduino before too long.

--Ned