Serial protocol pre-design discussion - give us your input!

[Fred]

Yep, sure, I agree. '\0' is the standard string terminator in C so lets use that.

Admin.

[Fred]

I'm making progress with implementing serial from absolute scratch here :



Human readable for now and until I have a tool to interpret the data and display/record it for me (even a very basic one).

This will be useful in debugging of code for sure.

We need to start to nail down this spec such that it can be implemented on both sides properly.

Anyone one made any progress on anything? Had any thoughts on the latest serial spec release?

Fred.

[Fred]

I really need to put Stu's and my own comments into a revised serial spec doc and release it again. In the mean time I found this which is quite interesting :

http://www.fascinationsoftware.com/FS/h ... pec-1.html

Fred.

[FlappySocks]

Fred, would a command line tool that reads the serial data be handy? I wouldn't mind putting one of those together, comple with source code based on the latest protocol spec. It would display what it read from the serial port, and also send preset commands.

[Fred]

It would be handy, but I would like us to nail down the spec a little more before you spend any time on code :-) The more we do that, the more chores and motronic boxs and mods you get done in the mean time and the less time you waste on redoing things and therefore the more time you spend productively on this project ;-)

Plus, I won't be able to get a matching serial implementation out in the time you can write the PC side stuff.

Curiosity : Which language would you use? Linux/GCC specific C? mono/C#? Java? Something else?

Fred.

[FlappySocks]

mono/C# would be my preferred choice.

[nitrousnrg]

Hi guys, i've discovered the whole project 20min ago.
Everything looks nice. Perhaps i see too much data being transfered, but it shouldn't be a problem -easier debugging-. I'm developing an EMS, and the PC frontend is under GPL, you may be interested in it. It uses Qt4 & QExtSerialPort nicely. You can see it here http://vimeo.com/720156
I'm kind of busy right now (for this month, maybe), but please let me know if you need any help, or the source code (mail me).

I'm from argentina (sorry for my english), my Microchip-based ECU is powered by a PIC16f877, fully sequential.. blah blah blah. Don't matters, really.

Give me some time to read about this project.

The serial protocol i've used is pretty simple. Just a sort of pointer (type of data that will be transmitted), followed by the data. It's beautiful.

Well, regards.

Marcos Chaparro -or nitrousnrg

[Fred]

Hi guys, i've discovered the whole project 20min ago.

Hello, and welcome along! :-)

Everything looks nice. Perhaps i see too much data being transfered, but it shouldn't be a problem -easier debugging-.

In terms of actual data it should be fairly sparse and logging should be "which ever vars you want only" style so hugely verbose and slow or compact and fast.

I'm developing an EMS, and the PC frontend is under GPL, you may be interested in it. It uses Qt4 & QExtSerialPort nicely. You can see it here http://vimeo.com/720156

Shameem may be interested in seeing what you have :-) If you are not aware of it, both MTX and MT are GPL licensed, so feel free to use their code in your project if you wish.

I'm kind of busy right now (for this month, maybe), but please let me know if you need any help, or the source code (mail me).

my Microchip-based ECU is powered by a PIC16f877, fully sequential.. blah blah blah. Don't matters, really.

Cool :-) Feel free to post it up here : http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

I'm from argentina (sorry for my english),

Looks good to me! :-)

The serial protocol i've used is pretty simple. Just a sort of pointer (type of data that will be transmitted), followed by the data. It's beautiful.

That's fine for an installation where you KNOW everything is perfect (mine or Jean's or Stu's etc) but not so fine if you are expecting random people to use it with half pie setups.

Again, welcome along :-)

Fred.

[shameem]

I'm developing an EMS, and the PC frontend is under GPL, you may be interested in it. It uses Qt4 & QExtSerialPort nicely. You can see it here http://vimeo.com/720156

Welcome to the forum.
Do you have a link to the source code? I am looking to develop a visualization tool for the serial interface - i am kinda bogged down by something right now - but i should be able to get on it soon. Your gauges and graphs look interesting - if all that code is GPL then i may borrow some - just for gauges...

[Fred]

Ahhh, its a flash movie! Yeah, that looks neat :-) Well done!

Fred.