Graphics interface for the 14CUX

[blitzracing]

One of our clever American colleagues has been hard at it producing a graphical interface for the 14CUX that will run on various software platforms, and has now released it free for downloading. It does need a bit of hardware to be knocked together to allow you to interface a USB device to the rather odd OBD1 serial port on the 14CUX however. All covered here:


http://code.google.com/p/rovergauge/

http://alum.wpi.edu/~colinb/14cux_interface.html

[MPoxon]

That looks very clever indeed.

[Alexdaredevilz]

Looks to good and easy to be true?

Is it just a case of

http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/displayProduct.jsp?sku=1...

Plus plug adapter
400 ohm Resistor

And lap top?

[peaktorque]

[blitzracing]

Alexdaredevilz said:

Looks to good and easy to be true?

Is it just a case of

http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/displayProduct.jsp?sku=1...

Plus plug adapter
400 ohm Resistor

And lap top?

That seems to be about it, plus you need the software to set the baud rate and handshaking orientation. That comes from the USB chip supplier.... not that Ive tried it yet.

[blueg33]

Hi Mark

Saw your car at Neil Garner's yesterday, but didn't see you around. Your car still looks great

Nick

[MuffDaddy]

Written in QT... Imagine if there was a tablet with USB and the ability to run QT applications. Oh yeah, there is. BlackBerry PlayBook. I have a plan.

[Alexdaredevilz]

Question is who's going first?

Or a few of us could chip in and have floating around piston heads to trusted members to borrow/use

[Harrytsg]

Ok, so I've read (well, sort of) it all, and I have to say the pictures look great. i have no idea what the words mean though (except USB).

When can someone replace my dash with an lcd screen with this fancy stuff on it?

[900T-R]

Great news. Being a non-electronic bod I'm not quite through with translating the interface build instructions into plain English, though.

[blitzracing]

Harrytsg said:

Ok, so I've read (well, sort of) it all, and I have to say the pictures look great. i have no idea what the words mean though (except USB).

When can someone replace my dash with an lcd screen with this fancy stuff on it?

Not unless you build a laptop into your dash.

[blitzracing]

I think the hardware would be around £25 to knock together, but to be honest the Steve Heath ECUmate does most of this without needing a laptop, it just plugs in and works if you want an idiot proof diagnostic that's easy to use and possibly loan out.

[blitzracing]

blueg33 said:

Hi Mark

Saw your car at Neil Garner's yesterday, but didn't see you around. Your car still looks great

Nick

Nipped of for a while to look at all those aero / turbine engines in that "Bristol" museum. Still improving the car 20 years after buying it.....

[blitzracing]

Alexdaredevilz said:

Looks to good and easy to be true?

Is it just a case of

http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/displayProduct.jsp?sku=1...

Plus plug adapter
400 ohm Resistor

And lap top?

That cable has a 3.3 volt output to drive the port, which is likely to be to low. It does mention in the blurb that the 1CUX will work with the 5 volt one OK.

I think this is the one from a UK supplier:

http://www.easysync-ltd.com/product/579/ttl-232r-5...

Edited by blitzracing on Sunday 8th April 19:59

[shpub]

blitzracing said:

I think the hardware would be around £25 to knock together, but to be honest the Steve Heath ECUmate does most of this without needing a laptop, it just plugs in and works if you want an idiot proof diagnostic that's easy to use and possibly loan out.

It also does a lot more:

It reports and clears all 40+ fault codes not just the 14 or so basic ones.
It displays information on the lambda sensors so you can see how they are responding.
It displays the actual voltages so you can set up the throttle pot and see how this affects idle mode.
It does a ECU power up check to check that the fuel pump is priming and for stepper motor reset.
It allows you to turn the fuel pump on and off.
It allows you to move the stepper motor at will.
It displays when the ECU goes into idle mode and the conditions that cause it to do so.
It can detect noisy throttle pot movement.
It also describes the map type: region, cats or no cats

You don't have to fight windows to get it to work.


I have played with the setup as originally I thought of doing a laptop based "ECUmate" but I did run into some problems:

1. Installing the USB device is a bit tricky. It would often be recognised by Windows as a mouse.
2. The serial baud rates are an approximation which means that sometimes the serial data transmission is incorrect. The result is the data can sometimes be corrupted. The unfortunate problem is that you don't know when this happens. In some extreme cases, it wouldn't communicate with a specific ECU despite several attempts to low level program the adapter to correct this.
3. The unit is very susceptible to voltage surges that damage the device. I have a several bricked adapters as a result.

[TVR Thunder]

+1 for Steve's ECUmate, saved me no end of aggro when setting up my rebuilt 5.2. Easy to use too.

[davep]

shpub said:

It also does a lot more:

It reports and clears all 40+ fault codes not just the 14 or so basic ones.
It displays information on the lambda sensors so you can see how they are responding.
It displays the actual voltages so you can set up the throttle pot and see how this affects idle mode.
It does a ECU power up check to check that the fuel pump is priming and for stepper motor reset.
It allows you to turn the fuel pump on and off.
It allows you to move the stepper motor at will.
It displays when the ECU goes into idle mode and the conditions that cause it to do so.
It can detect noisy throttle pot movement.
It also describes the map type: region, cats or no cats

ECUMate is a really good diagnostic aid, worth every penny; gets a bit addictive though.

Is there a user manual update in the pipeline that expands on the above features (especially the one in bold)?

[Alexdaredevilz]

No offence Steve but the last fault code reader I bought from you was useless

I still got cold start issues and nothing comes up,

Used it on another's members car with differnt problems it came with nothing again, 2 weeks later he replaced the afm and it was fixed

Then a month later a new one came out

[blitzracing]

Alexdaredevilz said:

No offence Steve but the last fault code reader I bought from you was useless

I still got cold start issues and nothing comes up,

Used it on another's members car with differnt problems it came with nothing again, 2 weeks later he replaced the afm and it was fixed

Then a month later a new one came out

To be fair to Steve, its the ECU fault detection at fault not the reader. It wont pick up AFM faults where voltages are still present and varying albeit somewhat wrong. It also wont pick up lambda probes that are permanately dead, or lean / rich periods that might cause a poor idle, as the error condition gets reset the moment the probe starts switching again at some other point in the RPM band, so never gets flagged. To pick up fueling faults the probe first has to start switching, (this turns the lambda feedback system on) then either stick at 0 volts or 1 volt or more for some period before a fault is triggered. If it triggered each time the probes stopped switching for a few seconds it would be in fault mode all the time! You don't get any lambda readings on a stone cold engine, so no fault will show whatever the fueling is doing in the first 30 seconds. This is why the ECU mate has all the sensor readings, so we can use the grey stuff instead.

Edited by blitzracing on Monday 9th April 19:03

[shpub]

No offence but I don't think you actually understand how a fault code reader works. I also seem to remember that I posted that I would look at a special deal but heard nothing....

If there are no fault codes, then whichever method you use, there will be no fault codes. The reader cannot generate fault codes where there are none. This software only detects a subset of the fault codes so the chances of it displaying a fault code is greatly reduced.

The problem with any fault codes is that ECU only will report a fault code if it detects that something is completely wrong. It does not know if a sensor is outputting the wrong but potentially valid data and that this is causing a problem. e.g. the temp sensor is saying it is 40 degrees when it isn't. The ECU will not treat 40 degrees as a problem as it is a perfectly normal and valid value. The fact that the actual temperature might be 0 means that the ECU will cause a problem but will not display a fault code. If the temp sensor says it is 160 then it will.

Many air flow meters faults are not detected by the ECU because they are sending an incorrect but valid value back to the ECU. As the airflow value also takes into account the air temperature, it could well cause cold start problems. i.e. the air is warmer than it really is. The ECU will not know that this is correct and will not show a fault code.

This is why I did the ECUmate so that you could see what the ECU is doing for those situations when there are no fault codes. You can see what the sensor values are and if they make sense.