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I splurged on my car last year when putting it together and bought the Blitz SBC-iColor boost controller, which also has a couple of analog inputs which I have a fuel pressure sensor and my wideband tied into. Very nice setup and the boost controller with the color display is pretty neato, but now I'm kicking myself for dumping $1000 or so into that whole setup (controller + pressure transducer + aux harness for wideband input) when I'm looking at this Palm PDA with a comparably HUGE touchscreen and uncomparable expandability with all the I/O and ability to code the application for whatever. The Blitz BC is a great unit and for the consumer its ready to drop in and go, dont get me wrong on the quality of it, but when you put the blitz in one hand and the PDA/DAQ in the other, I question myself a little on my decision to get the Gucci, er, I mean, the blitz. I wish I had this idea about this time last year. :) Its always funner to build tho. To get back to your question tho, with respect to this PDA setup/DAQ/EBC, my mind hasn't really been thinking about this at the PC level, at all. I used to have a DAQ card in my carputer which I wrote software to use it as a boost controller, a 1/4 mile "dial-in" regulator, engine sensor monitoring (that was before conzult or any of these serial OBD cables were around) and a few other odds and ends like a power meter (tying into the speed sensor, calc HP from accel & weight, calc torque)... and some other little proggies in there I can't quite recall anymore (been a few years since that was in there).. That came out when the ZEMulator went in. At the moment I dont have plans for doing any PC-based DAQ/boost control. The ZEM can handle the DAQ needs the user may have but I have intentionally kept from developoing and deploying any sort of control systems in the ZEM mostly for the fact that carputers aren't the ideal platform for most types of control applications one would desire in the car. The PC also takes some time to get crunk up and god forbid BSOD or something else in the PC goes to pot, you're now crippling other systems in the car. The ZEM has analog outputs and digital outputs that could be used with appropriate coding in the software to handle various types of event driven systems, closed loop control systems, etc etc, but that starts to get away from what the ZEM was designed for - KISS and voila, its a solid Z ECU tuning tool; nothing more, nothing less. This PDA approach is really more ideal - no electromechanical hard drives to fail or boot from - virtually instant power-on with the PDA and it would be dedicated to one specific task. Winblows unfortunately lacks the necessary level of stability in resource management at times and hard drives experiencing excessive vibration will and does cause them to CRC enough to cause the OS to experience short durations where the system completely stops in its tracks while the IDE bus lights up its interrupt like a christmas tree waiting for the drive to finally spit back the data request. Little quirks in how a PC is constructed combined with an in-car environment unfortunately predispose it as an unreliable method. You could potentially open the possibility for Bill Gates and Maxtor to blow your motor or funk something up in a traction control system and put you in a ditch or around a tree. >:-/ In the short time I've had the Palm PDA, written some code for it and put it through the paces, not once have I experienced any sort of oddities in its performance or stability - they're like.... little bricks.
[ ashspecz.com ]
[ agpowers@bellsouth.net ] Enthusiasts soon understand each other. --W. Irving.
Are you an enthusiast? If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
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