wstar's Journal

travisjb

I had a pioneer avic that had touchscreen gps and it had a remote a/v (composite) input... but there's no way i know of to get the touchscreen signals sent remote to another unit.... i just don't see that as a likely consumer electronics solution - you're prob going to have to do something custom... or go with something like the avic and figure out another way to manage your inputs... e.g., remote mouse

miguez

Yep, that's what i was talking about. I am considering having a small laptop permanently hooked to the car, maybe tucked in somewhere, with a remote screen mounted so that I could have the desired parameters a fingertip touch away.

You know, with a little code writing one could create their own interface to display GPS data. I was working on something similar a while back, using GPS and accelerometer data. It would be up to Magden to allow us to interface their data into our own graphics. Wouldn't that be cool? Totally something I am willing to explore if you're interested. If we do go that route, by the way, there are some amazing GPS receivers we could use, some that work off of reflective signals so they work even indoors. One I recall was tested inside a mall, and worked all the way through. Precision goes down, but still very acceptable. This same GPS worked very well when it's antenna was located underneath the driver's seat!

Anyways, sounds like an awesome project.

wstar

Well, I happen to be a coder, too, but honestly it sounds like a lot of work, and I don't think Magden's box is very open to modding anyways.

If you want to go that route, it would probably be easier to install a generic Car-PC and use open GPS and OBD-II software with, as you said, a really good GPS receiver. However, I'm not sure if you'll find any generic open hardware interfaces to write software against for high-speed data acquisition that talks our Nissans' CAN protocol. The low-speed generic OBD-II updates are too slow for some gauges (like RPM warnings).

I'm really looking for something more turnkey this time around (well at least, more turnkey than writing my own software).

The more I think about it though, I rarely use GPS. I have a small Garmin Nuvi unit I occasionally stick on the window, I may just stay with whipping that out when necessary and just hook up the Magden unit to the LCD alone and avoid a lot of complexity.

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miguez

Yep, that last paragraph is definitely true, and the easiest solution. I know nothing of the Nissan CAN protocol or OBD-II, although I am sure the latter could be learned online. The former might be tricky.

That would be an awesome piece of hardware (with software) to have in the car, though, huh? A screen to tell you all kinds of parameters being read from the car, and to provide GPS data. Throw in a 3-axis accelerometer and you can do your own acceleration, braking, skid pad, speed traps, etc. testing, all in one. I imagine there might be a decent market for that.

Hmmm, off to look for Nissan's CAN protocol. The guys at UpRev figured it out, I wonder how. Do you have more info on it?

wstar

Well CAN is an industry standard of some kind (Car Area Network), but apparently mfgs have their own proprietary extensions or something of that sort. I don't know all the details, I never looked at all of this in depth. But apparently, being able to use CAN and/or mfg-specific protocols or extensions is what allows units like the Magden one to read data at high update rates. Baseline OBD-II communications only send updates at 3Hz intervals (3 updates per second), and that's assuming you're only monitoring a single value. With 5+ values being read to feed your digital gauges, basic OBD-II would be too slow to be useful for some gauges.

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wstar

As noted in the oil change thread, mileage is ramping up quickly. Crossed the 3600 mark this morning trying to get back to my place through all the flooding around here.

And if anyone was still worried about driving in rainy weather with the Stillen Gen 3 intakes... check out these pics. I snapped these with my cellphone as I was driving last night. I didn't even get shots of the worst of it. At times the rain was blowing straight sideways. This was at about 5:30pm, should have been bright and sunny outside at the time. The section of highway I took these on is now closed due to flooding as of this morning:





I can definitively confirm now that there are no rain issues with the Stillen Gen 3 intakes

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theDreamer

OMG, wstar it is horrible the past two days. If the wind was not so bad the rain would have been ok, but the wind just poured buckets onto my car as I drove home, glad I do not have my Z just yet.

What part of town are those pictures?

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wstar

Those pics were taken on Beltway 8, southbound on the west side between richmond and 59, on the way over to pick up my dinner date. Took two hours to get home from Clear Lake this morning just from re-routing around all the flooded streets. All of 8 was closed between about westheimer and 59.

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theDreamer

Yeah I saw that, I just have to get to I-10 and I am in the clear, still took me an hour (normally 20 minutes). So many roads are flooded or they are just shutting them down anyways. Glad to hear the Z was fine through this weather, calms my nerves. How was driving though in the Z, any spinning of the tires or anything?

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wstar

I've found my Z to be a fantastic machine in wet conditions, actually (not just today, but also during earlier, lighter rains). I generally leave VDC on in wet conditions, I think it's a real plus (especially if you have to hit a deep puddle with one side of the car somewhat unexpectedly at a little more speed than you planned ), so keep that in mind.

As far as low-speed driving and cornering go, I'm really quite impressed with the RE050's from the sport package. I expected I'd be ice-skating on them in wet conditions, but they hold up admirably. I drop my speed a little bit to match conditions, but overall I'm still tearing it up on the wet pavement pretty well.

What's really impressive is the highway performance though. I suspect that may be more due to our aerodynamics, downforce, and those little mini-spoilers in front of the front tires (in the sport setup) than the tires themselves. In conditions yesterday where other people were running their wipers full blast and driving 60 in a 70 with white knuckles from gripping the wheel in fear, I was running 90-110-ish in the open stretches with no stability problems (and no wipers thanks to Rain-X. The faster you go, the better it works ).

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wstar

Just an update on Magden's stuff. I'm not planning to order one for another month or so (I've gotta keep my car toy spending *somewhat* within reason here), but I emailed their tech guys about it today just to ask about some basic compatibility stuff. My main question was about ECU compatibility and data update rates, premised on the assumption that our ECU is substantially similar to the 2008 G37 ECU, and this was the response from Magden I wanted to share:

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travisjb

g37 forum link... + there are other threads
ECU/Chip mods & managment systems - MyG37

wstar

Had a near-miss last night. I downshifted to 2 to push the rear a bit before braking into a hard right 90 into a parking lot entrance (it's a fun technique, what do you call that? Power-assisted braking slide?). Conditions were wet, which I was calculating well for. What I failed to notice was that while the street and the parking lot were both made of wonderfully grippy flat pavement, there was about a 10 foot stretch of the parking lot entranceway that was paved with some stupid cobblestones (nice and slippery).

The car made the 90 attitude-wise of course thanks to the slide, but then kept on drifting sideways once the tires hit those evil cobblestones, and I missed slamming the side of the car into a curb and big stone centerpiece with the name of the shopping center on it by about 3-6 inches before it caught traction and started moving forward again. It probably would've been a light tap instead of a near miss if it weren't for VDC saving my *** on the slippery, uneven cobblestone surface.

So remember, VDC+Rain = good. Being an idiot and pushing the car like that heading into a parking lot = kinda silly and not worth it

And to whatever moron thought it was a very fashionable idea to put a section of slippery, uneven road surface right at parking lot entrance people will be cornering into, I hate you

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RCZ

haha careful man, bumps like that can bend suspension pieces slightly which you cant notice, but they start throwing off everything when u want to align the car etc.

eXo5

Be careful with that beast!!!!

I cant wait until I get my Z and I can make a journal. These things rock.

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