Innovate MTS to Megasquirt CAN Bus converter part 1

After quiting my job last month I've finally had some time to put my collection of STM32 boards to work.

With the addition of the STM32 cpus to the MBED platform its made it super simple to write code for them.

The first thing that I've decided to develop is an Innovate MTS to Megasquirt CANBUS converter.

You can see the MBED project here

https://developer.mbed.org/users/sordfish/code/MTS_TO_MSCAN/wiki/Homepage


Its still alpha code but I've had it connected to a Microsquirt and it was doing something!

I've added CAN filtering since I last tested so it may or may not work at this moment in time but I'll be adding a part 2 with the actual hardware in the next few days.

Burg on Linux Mint 17.3

Santa dropped off an SSD for my dev laptop which duel boots windows xp and Linux mint.

I've always wanted something a bit more polished for a boot manager and found Burg (Brand-new Universal loadeR from GRUB)
Here's how I installed it.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/burg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install burg burg-themes
sudo burg-install /dev/sda (please check the name of your drive)
sudo update-burg

Then to test

sudo burg-emu

ta da! 

F2 allows you to choose what theme and F3 will change the resolution.

please bear in mind adding a repo can be a security risk, I don't own that repo nor have the ability to check how genuine it is, us at your own risk.

Using sudo with boot managers can brick your machine, have a live distro handy in case you make a mistake!

Open source TI Hercules LAUNCHXL2-TMS57012 based ECU

Well I've finally found some free time to open my LauchXL2 - TMS570 dev kit from TI.

Its always been a dream to have made my own ECU from scratch and after having my ear to the ground on what's hot and what's not hardware wise I've opted to go for a TI TMS570 cpu.

There are plenty of "open" ECUs at the moment but none have really excited me as their hardware isn't really automotive grade or the dev kit is a high price tag or they are just buried in conflicting hardware designs.

anyway I'm miles away from starting a jimstim let alone an engine so on with the basics.

There it is, very pretty and I love that every pin is broken out on the edges, in a single row which should make breadboarding simple.

After following the online guides for setting up I've managed to play with the pre programmed firmware and get a blinky project to work.

There doesn't seem to be many online examples and its far more complex than the Arduino ide but I love how the debugging works, gone of the days of adding serial messages or leds for debugging!

More reading and playing around is needed I think, I may even look at RTOS options as its the same direction as OEM ECUs.

Pushbullet Notification Mirroring on Xbmc

Pushbullet is an epic messaging service that allows Android notifications to be mirrored via their chrome plugin or pc app.

Their api has just has an overhaul which included the ability to have 3rd party clients.

I wanted to get my notifications mirrored to my tv so I set out to make a script for xbmc to do just that!

its up on git hub here https://github.com/sordfish/xbmc-pushbullet

just clone the repo rename the dir to script.pushbullet and copy to addons dir of xbmc.

you just need to add your api key to the configuration page and that's it reboot and feel the awesomeness of pushbullet on your TV.

I plan to add a gui to send pushes and maybe some other IoT based features.

i have a mini router with a jeenode waiting for some pushbullet love, so watch this space!

Converting Cheap HDMI switch to usb. with added php magic

Finally got round to adding some usb goodness to a cheapy hdmi switch  I got off ebay.

it has 3 inputs and is controlled by a button in the center to choose which channel  is active, it has auto detect but i tend not to switch anything off so thats useless, plus having to get out of bed once I've got comfy to change inputs was slighty 2001 so...

out the goody box comes a minimus avr dev board i acquired of ebay fairly cheap, it has an at90usb162 mcu that can be persuaded to work with the arduino ide.

few blobs of solder and some wire, and an npn transistor (to emulate the button press) later we have a usb controlled hdmi switch.

Now i couldn't just stop there...

My hp micro server is also stashed in my "wardrobe"  with the switch so I have plugged the switch into that, and with a bit of php magic the I now have a web controlled hdmi switch

Now i couldn't just stop there...

There's this awesome app called tasker for android that pretty much lets you automate everything, so with a task setup to http get my php code I now have a button on my phone to change inputs.

It lives!!!

So after assembling the first 1 1/2 boards with a mixture of hot air and soldering iron (I love how the surface tension of the solder paste auto aligns everything up with hot air) and it turned out quite well. 

I've spotted a few "mistakes" on my part but nothing a revised board wouldn't fix.. all part of the learning curve I guess.

 

 

 So the main purpose of these boards is to have a simple and low cost way to use canbus, for me this will be used with automotive projects..

This one will be an addon for Megasquirt so it can relay analogue and digital values back to the ecu for logging, so thing like additional temperature sensors or extra switches.

once I managed to get the arduino boot loader onto the atmega I uploaded my transmit test code that I had used on my arduino and diy canbus shield. 

It lives!!!

So now I'm in the process of making the code into 2 librarys for arduino. the first is a modified canduino library to work with 29bit headers.

the second is a fully automatic megasquirt canbus protocol decoder, once loaded this will automatically respond to any relevant message.

My purple ser kit boreds have arrived!!!

Yee ha my boards came today, after battling with upverter to design the schematic and pcb  (which actually is a pretty good design tool once you work around the quirks) I put an order in with oshpark.com.

Im glad I did as i cant get over how sexy the purple and gold looks in the flesh.

Ive spotted one mistake so far but nothing major and there might be a few fine lines with the ground fill not being thick enough.

I can't really complain for my first ever production boards, one thing I know ill do for next version is make it smaller, and try plan ground and power distribution better. These cost £35 for 3 boards and there is alot of wasted space.

Next board to order is the thermocouple amp which sits on top kinda like an arduino shield.

 Then its back to the drawing board to make v2.

Next cheque im really temped to buy the bits to diy etch some boards.  the cost and turn around of pro boards isnt worth it while I'm still learning the ways of pcb design.

But if you're after high quality boards with a quick turnaround oshpark.com is the place to be...