Wake up call...

[bofh]

Well, not much has gone on in a while... Since we all need this stuff, I thought I would start a discussion and what was holding us back. I'll go first.

For me it is tools. I have a scantool, and I can make it quite fast, but it still does not read everything I need. Also, it can't write... There was some talk of new hardware, but it stalled. There was some work on dataloging hardware, but it stalled as well. If we are just stuck, I may start a discussion of what software there is now, and how to make it work... Thoughts?

[cboles]

The hardware is not stalled. The boards are at an assembly house right now being put together. I would expect to have them back in a week or so and begin the final test / package assembly.

I can't speak for the datalogging, as I'm not working on that. Right now I'm working on building a good dissasembly module for IDA so I can better understand the ECU code, and use that to build our own downloadable kernel. Once we have that, we can dump ROMs at will and reflash ECUs using software that was solely developed by OpenECU.

I'm also putting together a new rally car this year, so I'm spread a little thin!

Colby

[bofh]

It seemed stalled from here. Good to hear it. I think once you have it in more hands, things will start happening. Keep us posted!

[cboles]

my thoughts exactly. that's why i'm making the hardware - so that everyone can be on the same page.

[cboles]

it's here! see the announcement

[bofh]

Woot Woot! :banana: What? No Banana?

[Spiider]

Ok, so a bunch of us have our received our plugs. What's next?

Do we have a working app that reads all memory from the eeprom and puts it into a text file? This should be number one priority. After we have this we can make a database of rom files for each type and rev of ecu.

Next would be a working app that reads all memory from a file and writes it to the eeprom.

This way we will be able to safely backup our original rom files, and restore them when we screw up during testing/debugging of a map editing program.

[bofh]

It is a little more complex. We have to write a program to dump the memory, then write it to a spot we HOPE isn't being used by something important... However, you are correct in that it is the next step.

[crazymikie]

It's all simple until a bit gets written incorrectly. I thinkt he tricky part is making sure that communications between the ECU and the computer are extremely robust while writing data to the PROM. It's possible to render the ECU inoperable if you make a mistake.

[cboles]

I hope to contribute a lot in this area - at the moment I'm still putting a rally car together for a rally this weekend, so it has been consuming virtually all of my time over the last few months. After this rally, I'll have a lot more time to devote to the OpenECU project.

Colby

[Spiider]

Awesome, I'd really like to help with the backup and restore app.

I've done some VC++ programming for communicating with cnc machine tools via rs232 so I may be able to help out with some of this.