Incase you were curious. The solara can hit 170+mph

[SolaraTRD_Edition]

wow, this sounds interesting... AND... sooo techincal.

I'm lost. But intrigued.

=)

Jimmy~

[sleepin2000]

I'm still missing the part on what you have done to your Solara for it to be able to reach that kind of speed.

[JoeB]

It's designed to send data to up to four servers at once. It uses GPS to return information in encoded messages to a server via UDP packets. Then the server side rips them apart and parses them for storage. Modem is data only, there is no audio on this one. However the option does exist but I have never used it. As for the laptop. My car is a computer system. It's based on a pc. Also OBD is sloooow. Forget that thing, you cannot read anything off it.

Trust me, I do this for a living and have for about 15 years so I'll understand what you're saying, can you give a little more detail. The fact that it has a GPS transmitter/receiver is of little benefit unless you are trying to add a tracking system, navigational system on your computer in car or a very crude measurement of velocity (the car is better at velocity). The real benefit of this modem is it uses CDMA wireless service provider's networks to connect to a remote point. That could be the Internet through an ISP or your home network if you have a modem set to answer at home. It talks to multiple GPS tracking satellites but modems do not multicast to more than 1 connection, they are point to point.

So back to the original question, what in the car are you reading to get the information. The car's computer is the ECU. The ECU has 3 components inside it a processor, RAM and an EPROM. Think of it as a PC and the EPROM is like a hard drive or better analogy= BIOS. There are tables of information stored on the EPROM. The ECU (or processor) takes real time data from the sensors in the car, compares it to data in the EPROM tables in RAM and decides how and if it needs to take action.

So what are you saying, you replaced the car's ECU? If so, can you tell us more. Or more likely that you have some other interface to the ECU and it's data? The OBD2 is a standards based interface to the car's ECU. Admittedly, it is slow. I believe it is around 200mS per query best case. That is a single parameter of data. Are you saying that you have a different way to communicate with the car's ECU and bypassed the OBD2? If so, please share what that is and it's capabilities. I'm curious. Or even more likely, that you've added a entirely separate processing system that collects some subset of data from the operation of the vehicle, processes it and displays it separately? If so, what are the capabilities and what is the system called. It's highly unlikely that you developed this system, that is the kind of thing a company with teams of people would develop. If you did, you should start your own company.

Then the last question still, like others have asked and I did before. Are you saying you drove your car 172 mph? If so, what mods have you done to your car to support this? -JoeB

[Dutch Master]

Then the last question still, like others have asked and I did before. Are you saying you drove your car 172 mph? If so, what mods have you done to your car to support this?

????

[eyedea]

Anyone else here feeling lost? (runs to cower in his corner)

[Nutty101]

In response to the Modem / GPS portion. The GPS is very accurate on that unit and the system does report to a server once a second. Its part of a system I came up with over three years ago. There are three patents in process to cover it. Not too much detail but that modem is not going to be used to much longer as a new system was designed.

The data logging system reads the VSS and several other sensors via a PIC 16fxxx @ 20mhz. Nothing really major outside coding the chip. The electronics have been designed and developed by me. The ECU has *not* been replaced or chipped. There is a separate pc in the car. That is where the custom electronics comes in.

As for mods it’s the same as most of you, suspension has been replaced from front to back. Charged and a few custom electronics in the car that modify a few lines. One being the VSS into the ecu. Pretty much the same as the piggyback unit someone mentioned here but a bit different. Next on that you just need a long highway and the ability to push the car for a bit. Since we have a huge straight highway near us it wasnt to hard. However it might have cost me my engine as i have a knock in it now. The exact details i am not 100% sure on as for where everything was, just was playing on the highway with someone for a long distance and came home looking at logs of the trip and came across that as the top speed recorded. Also did I drive 172?? Just showing information from a log file. Who knows who was driving and where.

Also, I did start a company. It's hunting for VC and running. Quit my job last November to do this and have not stopped since. I have teamed up with a friend who has been doing auto body, paint, custom designs with carbon fiber/fiber glass and custom plastic molding. I do electronics with a 4 year degree (never used it till I started my own company though), and over 10 years in computers from manufacturing to IT Director. I am hoping to supply the solara community with some items that will change the car somewhat. One being a complete setup to replace the dash with all lcd panels. That is where the logging unit came into play as it was required to build a system like that. OBD is not able to show that much data, let alone fast enough. Then the HVAC system I have rebuilt (The upgraded environmental controls) to a USB device. Software for windows (UNIX you get the commands to talk to it). Pretty much the entire car is controllable from anything that has a connection to the internet. Give me a little more time and it will be released to the pubic. Things get pushed back all the time for me because the patent process is very tricky and we have had to redo one already. That is so much stress when one is rejected.

My biggest quest has been to show people that the solara is not just some two door camry that everyone seems to think it is. I get to drive all sorts of cars and for some reason I love this car the most. I see so many on here doubt the cars abilities all the time and then I see some people who see it has more to offer (And many thanks to them people. Without you guys we would have nothing!!). Take it for what it is I guess. This whole post was just created to say hey look, It can do it. If the GPS is off who knows but it is accurate to speeds higher than cars or most planes can go..


Tag from the GPS info. Trimble Lassen SQ (Im testing with IQ now but the same thing really just its quicker and more accurate)

Table 4: GPS performance
Accuracy Horizontal:...< 6 m (50%), < 9 m (90%)
Altitude:....................< 11 m (50%), < 18 m (90%)
Velocity:.......................0.06 m/sec
Acquisition times
Re-acquisition:...........< 2 sec (90%)
Hot start:...................< 14 sec (50%), < 18 sec (90%)
Warm start:...............< 38 sec (50%), < 45 sec (90%)
Cold start:.................< 90 sec (50%), < 170 sec (90%)
Operational limits
Altitude:....................< 18,000 m (60,000 feet) or velocity < 515 m/sec (around 868 MPH)
(either limit may be exceeded but not both)

[JoeB]

Ok, I think I understand what you're doing now. I was hoping you found some way to read the data out of the ECU. Not that I'm looking into it that seriously but I would love to be able to extract the data out of the ECU into a readable/usable format.

Sounds like what you're doing is computing your own information using the car's sensors before they get to the ECU or posibly in some cases a signal that is computed by the ECU from sensors and given as an output. What you are doing with the GPS is to do calculations for speed and velocity. To do velocity measurements from fixed (no GPS) systems, you need an acceleromer mounted in the vehicle like the Innovative LMA3 has or the G-Tech has. The inaccuracy of the accelerometer based system comes from the requirement for it to be level. I would agree the GPS tracking would be more accurate for velocity measurements, especially if it isn't a very short distance. GPS will need more points of measurement. There is a slight error for even GPS measuring velocity on hills too though. I guess if the system on the back end is smart enough to take the altitude changes into consideration, you can work most of those inaccuaries out though. 90% accuracy within 9 meters is pretty good horizontal.

It'll be interesting to see what you build. Good luck with the project, I hope it works out for you. Hopefully this is a universal system and you'll be able to use it in other vehicles too. Do you invision this replacing the dash display or adding to it? -JoeB

[Nutty101]

The entire dash will be gone. All guages are being replaced. However it should not toss a check engine because I am reading all the pins just as a dash would. This lets me monitor for lights and what not.

Some of the commands it reads. Trying to keep it as simple as I can so people can make their own software for the module. The module also handles up to 32 line inputs (aka lights or what not) so it should work for almost anycar. The hardest part is you have to tell it how many turns of the shaft there are in a mile. Like ours is 1025 Per mile. Thats how it determines the speed and ODO. In the future I am going to work on adding more to it with the ability to set the tire sizes. Have another chip i did that with but i cannot merge them at the moment.



Serial Input:
RST (Item)$13 - Resets the trip (1-4)

Serial Output strings:
RPM,(value),SPEED,(Value),FUEL,(Value 0-100),TEMP,(degrees)$13
TACH,(Value ODO),(Value Trip 1), (Value Trip 2), (Value Trip 3), (Value Trip 4)$13
LIGHT,(ID),(0=off, 1=0n)$13

[Hcomplyr]

hey nutty you wouldn't happen to be a member of mp3car.com would you?

[mmcdonald]

That string of data that is sent to a server hijacked my machine last week. Can you please remove that string? I think it is an IE hack.

[impactX]

Er, what RPM are you running at that speed? Did you change your gear ratio? Even if it's aerodynamically-possible, it will take a Solara forever to reach that speed.

[OKANG]

Could someone work the numbers on this?

http://www.bobnorwood.com/300%20mph%C2% ... 0Power.htm

http://www.webster-inst.com/techinfo/eq ... /eqn07.htm

Unless this guy has some massive mods we've never seen before that put him in the neighborhood of 400hp to the wheels, I'm doubting the accuracy of his numbers. I think it'd be good to use a GPS or some other device to confirm the speed.

[mmcdonald]

I still think this whole thread was just bait to run that server script at the beginning of the post. The first time I opened the thread my computer was hijacked.

[Fletch]

Yeah, I agree, I'm calling bull $hit on this one. I think I would remember exactly when I hit 172 mph and how far I was past redline.

[frohboy33]

I still think this whole thread was just bait to run that server script at the beginning of the post. The first time I opened the thread my computer was hijacked.

I think your the ony one this happened to. You must have some other crap on your PC screwing you up.