RFC - Diagnostic Software

The amount of work involved in developing these software and hardware tools is not trivial. I will release the source code in whatever format I deem to be useful for the development community. I admittedly like to retain some ownership in the tools that I spend hundreds of hours and possibly thousands of dollars creating. There is no hubris in my actions just common sense.

The end result is still a software and hardware product that is extremely inexpensive to the Rover community. The end result will also be a tool set that the Rover community can add to and experiment with.

He He Storey, well done

I was wondering how long it would take you to get round to this! Colin is going to be well p*ssed off when you release it! Have you taken any flak from that direction? I remember things getting a little hot under the collar when you lot developed the EAS software. It'll be interesting to see the response, at $100 you're still a good bit cheaper than a single software module for faultmate. Put me down for one!

Malafax_Dand said:

The end result is still a software and hardware product that is extremely inexpensive to the Rover community. The end result will also be a tool set that the Rover community can add to and experiment with.

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Nice work chap, scare off others and give vague open source dates. Call me dubious but this seems like a classic drum up business with vague carrot to wet the appetite. Personally looks like no solid guarantees and looking for ego massage.

To the original poster who was planning to develop tools- go for it more the better

fanatic said:

Nice work chap, scare off others and give vague open source dates. Call me dubious but this seems like a classic drum up business with vague carrot to wet the appetite. Personally looks like no solid guarantees and looking for ego massage.

To the original poster who was planning to develop tools- go for it more the better

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Now, now Fanatic you are being a bit dubious

Normally I'd agree with you but in the case of Malafax he's already proven his credentials in the EAS reset tool, so we've no need to doubt him. This time round he's more than entitled to try and make a few bob out of it.

It's taken the best part of 14 years for someone else to crack any part of the P38 protocol, many have tried and given up, Storey et al though saw it through. Cut them a bit of slack and if the date slips a bit, well, its only been 14 years, you can live with a few more days

Surely someone would of considered reverse engineering a test book or similar.
Oh and that was the polite version I posted,I stand by what I said previously.

It is really not possible to reverse engineer a T4 Testbook.
Problem number one, where are you going to get the hardware?

The vast majority of the work that the Testbook performs is through hardware. We can all gain access to a copy of the software but it is not helpful in the slightest. The software simply tells the external hardware to do something and then the external hardware has all of the communications protocol knowledge and information. The T4 Testbook hardware handles all of the actual proprietary communications protocols and messaging formats while the software just passes calls to the hardware. :doh: There is no memory address information in the T4 Testbook software. I looked a long time ago.

SpudH,
Thank you for the positive support. I do not mean to discourage, I only meant to let you all know of the work that I started at the end of November. I am excited about this project. I expect a tentative time line of about 45 days. Certainly by the end of the first quarter 2010. There are certain upfront time limitations on hardware manufacturing. It slows things down a bit.

Malafax_Dand said:

It is really not possible to reverse engineer a T4 Testbook.
Problem number one, where are you going to get the hardware?

The vast majority of the work that the Testbook performs is through hardware. We can all gain access to a copy of the software but it is not helpful in the slightest. The software simply tells the external hardware to do something and then the external hardware has all of the communications protocol knowledge and information. The T4 Testbook hardware handles all of the actual proprietary communications protocols and messaging formats while the software just passes calls to the hardware. :doh: There is no memory address information in the T4 Testbook software. I looked a long time ago.

SpudH,
Thank you for the positive support. I do not mean to discourage, I only meant to let you all know of the work that I started at the end of November. I am excited about this project. I expect a tentative time line of about 45 days. Certainly by the end of the first quarter 2010. There are certain upfront time limitations on hardware manufacturing. It slows things down a bit.

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All I can say is well done Storey, a job, a new baby and you can still find time to disentangle the P38 systems. Happy New Year to you

Storey, I (possibly) more than others, know exactly what you mean and I understand you wanting to protect your IP however, surely this statement :

Malafax_Dand said:

I admittedly like to retain some ownership in the tools that I spend hundreds of hours and possibly thousands of dollars creating.

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is grounds alone to have the complete source code released to the public, to allow them to contribute not only to the future development of the project but to spread any incurred costs amongst the community and not be a burden on one individual. As if you have spent hundreds of dollars on the development, you may of course never recover these.

It could be argued that your propriety hardware is a way of 'forcing' users into paying for 'free software' thus allowing you to re-coup your expenditure. Where with (all due respect) a bit of thought, an abstract factory and some polymorphism the need for this hardware could have been eliminated and all the costs that come with it. Granted it would have meant changing connectors etc., where your solution albeit proprietary does seem quite elegant.

There are many, many advantages to sharing the development of such a project not just financial, but those of peer review, shared ideas etc. As I have found there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. Just because it works it doesn't mean its the best or even correct. We have all been victims where something works but only by accident!

fanatic said:

Nice work chap, scare off others and give vague open source dates. Call me dubious but this seems like a classic drum up business with vague carrot to wet the appetite.

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You have to admit this is a (maybe not) fair but at least a valid criticism in that in your later reply to SpudH you potentially double the time until the expected date of release, along with no real commitment of your intention to release the source code and not libraries which only serves to fuel the negativity.

I certainly do not want to sound as if my comments are coming from someone who has had their ego put out of joint, but more of a Devil's Advocate, because you are able to deliver your project first, as I for one am looking forward to it and I applaud your efforts. Having read what I have about you then you are certainly worthy of the credit due having done this given life's circumstances.

sounds like bollox to me, if i spent hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds developing summat that possibly thousands of people are gonna benefit from especially financially i think id want to recoup my money and maybe make a few quid, imo stop whinging, if you wanna do it all for free then do it and stop picking as it does sound like sour grapes

nathan5346 said:

sounds like bollox to me, if i spent hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds developing summat that possibly thousands of people are gonna benefit from especially financially i think id want to recoup my money and maybe make a few quid, imo stop whinging, if you wanna do it all for free then do it and stop picking as it does sound like sour grapes

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woogoo said:

I certainly do not want to sound as if my comments are coming from someone who has had their ego put out of joint, but more of a Devil's Advocate, because you are able to deliver your project first, as I for one am looking forward to it and I applaud your efforts.

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It might be an idea to read the entire thread before jumping on your soap box!

It's a pity that these types of threads always degenerate into a slagging match as both sides are always well intentioned and things get resolved quicker with everyone pulling together.

On the open source argument, you can't force that on someone. The fact that EAS reset went that way was astounding. If someone spends many hundreds of their own hours (which are informed by many thousands of hours gaining the knowledge and experience to do it!) developing something like this then I think they are fully entitled to try and make some money from it.

And this is coming from someone who has spent the best part of €2,000 at BBS so I know that the mooted $100 is for nothing really, and Storey and the guys have already paid their dues with EAS reset.

Woogoo, I bet any help you can give Storey will be greatly appreciated, I'd love to help but all the electrickery stuff is beyond me, if I can't get a 13mm spanner on it I'm no good to you

Storey for your own sake try and get it done before the young one crawls, once they get mobile you'll never again have a free moment

it doesnt really matter who develops it, if they charge and you don't want to pay fair enough, find another solution. as yet there is no solution.

i am willing to help out wherever possible. if storeys gadget does what it does on the tin then at $100 its alot cheaper than the others out there. i doubt it will have all the functionality of rovacom but with development theres no reason why it shouldn't.

i would prefer not to pay but we all have to make a living. after all 100 is about 1 trip to the stealers.

on the cables, i'm pretty sure testbook uses several. don't know about rovacom as ive only had about half hour on one.

faultmate does everything through a single cable.

I believe it uses the same pins for different uses and the module does all the switching.

i reckon then it can be switched in the software to achieve the same thing then,

never had chance to use a faultmate so dunno much about em. i understand its like a web page interface, is that correct?

SpudH I agree with you 100% and I certainly hope that my comments aren't taken out of context.

Being pedantic (aka an arse), when someone says that they are going to do something that they say is "Open Source" that by the very nature of the title implies that the Source Code will be open to peer review and change.

Of course Storey wants to protect his investment, who wouldn't, and the cost implied is minimal and not out of the reach of any RR owner, and will no doubt save them more than the initial cost many many times over.

But with that said I hope you can all see what I mean as well, I am only commenting on what I can see and read, and I can assure you it certainly is not 'sour grapes' as I will be in the queue to buy one.

i havent jumped on any soapbox, I have folowed the thread from your 1st post

woogoo said:

and I can assure you it certainly is not 'sour grapes' as I will be in the queue to buy one.

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Me too!

gavbriggs said:

i reckon then it can be switched in the software to achieve the same thing then,

never had chance to use a faultmate so dunno much about em. i understand its like a web page interface, is that correct?

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Yeah, its a decent enough set up, impressive even. You have a little box of hardware with a 15pin v.old joystick connector on one end and a 9 pin serial connector on the other. The fifteen pin socket goes to the OBD Diagnostic Socket through a cable. Now interestingly the EAS Kicker will work through the Faultmate cable but the Faultmate will not work through the Kicker cable so there's obviously more connections required to access everything but even in the EAS cable you have multiple wires soldered onto individual pins.

I've attached a crappy photo of a dead EAS cable to illustrate.

The serial port at the other end goes to the computer via a 9 pin serial lead so as said before, the little black box must do a lot of switching.

The faultmate software is a very good window based interface that allows you to read and reset faults but even more importantly gets live readings and allows you to operate anything that moves on the car from moving the fuel guage to filling/exhausting a single airbag.

The only problem with the thing, aside from cost, is that it seems to lose connectivity with the car a lot. I don't know if thats down to the quality of the componentry or maybe corrosion in the OBD socket but it does drop the connection a lot. I finf screwing in the serial port to my (old) laptop helps but doesn't eliminate the problem. Overall I'm very happy with it and its working its way towards paying for itself but its single vehicle only so

I'd definitely buy Storeys kit as I'm trying to pull together an owners club in my area and most of the others except P38_Ireland here are still going to the stealers for diagnostics.

I have one of the later Faultmates from Blackbox, the MSV2. This has a stand alone feature for clearing and reading fault codes so can be handy when out and about and your EAS has gone hard fault. I havent had any problems as such and my only critique of the system is the lack of a GUI (Graphical User Interface). Being presented with a whole page of constantly changing numbers is confusing at best, unlike the cheap software you can get for the USB OBD interfaces which use nice big fat dials and graphs which are much easier to read and understand. So back to the original post by WOOGOO, I would welcome any further advances into a system that not only covers all systems but user friendly. Having diagnostics is just half the battle, using them effectivly is a whole new world.

EG. a flow diagram with flashing paths to show the EAS workings as they are activated.

To interact with the P38a, and the other vehicles, you must have three very specific physical protocols. The physical protocol dictates the actual circuitry of the adapter. In fact to just interact with all of the P38a subsystems, you need two entirely different physical protocols. You will discover this if you try to communicate with your own Rover.

The USB bridge that I am building has a few external IO ports. These IO ports will be switched through software to select the physical circuit pathway that the user needs. It will be a electronic version of a clunky switch.

So the interface is not proprietary just for the sake of being proprietary. This is the only way to talk to all the systems. Again, I could split the physical protocols out into many different adapters but that is anoying, confusing and wasteful to most users.

My time line can vary. Life and both jobs, do tend to get in the way sometimes. But I do intend to finish this very quickly. I will continue on with this project just as I had already been for the past couple of months.

I will keep plugging away at it. By all means, please continue on your own endeavors. I agree that in the end we may both be able to construct something greater than if we were working alone. I look forward to working with you all in the near future.

Thanks
Storey Wilson