A few more hundred lines of code have been written. I still have not absolutely verified the lower level communications protocols to my satisfaction, but I hope to get that done before the end of September. I am satisfied with the hardware design though, and have submitted the gerber files to my manufacturer for cost estimates. I should know more in a few weeks.

Real progress today...The second round of boards was received in the mail. I quickly ran down to the basement and mounted all of the tiny SMD components. The first impressions are excellent. The USB device appears in Windows correctly. All of the initial testing is going well. The next level of testing, will be to make sure that the physical protocol layers on the devices different channels are all working properly with the Rovers. This is a major milestone in the project!!!

 I am on a 2 week vacation coming up, so you will not hear back from me for awhile.

Update: I have completed the testing of all of the lower level physical layer protocols. Everything is perfect and working properly. The EAS line protocol is working great and I can get responses from the EAS ECU. The ISO9141-2 line protocol is functions perfectly and I can also get a response back into the software. The last minute addition of the seperate slow initialization K and L line hardware also works as designed. All of the LED signaling works as designed as well. Although I am a bit concerned about the power consumption of the LEDs. I need to investigate that further. The USB bridge chip gets a bit warm, I think I chose the wrong LEDs. They may be a bit inefficient. Overall, this is wonderful news. I only have a few minor changes to the board and then the hardware is done.

The first round of boards have bee received. Good News, the boards fit the enclosures. When the second round of boards is received next week, I will actually complete the first prototype board.

The corrected boards have now been ordered. I was able to add the L Line using the RTS line of the Serial Data Bus Interface. I also was able to add a duplicate K Line using the DTR Line. I added the duplicate K Line because it will be impossible to get the normal Tx Serial UART to go down to the 5 baud wake up necessary for initialization of the ISO protocol. So the second K line will be used to pragmatically perform the 5 baud wake up sequence and then go quiet when the normal 10400 communications commence with the standard Tx UART.

Although..., if memory serves me, it is possible to emulate the slow 5 baud wake up using a higher more obtainable UART speed, like 9600 or 10400, using a manual bit-bang method. But I am not sure if I have access to this type of control with the UART chip that I am using. I will have to go digging through my notes. But now at least I have a secondary K Line in case I can not get the slow init to operate as designed through the normal Tx line. More flexibility through redundancy is usually never a bad thing.

I am diving deeply into the programming of the insane ammounts of fault codes that this project requires sifting through. The different model years across the models does not help either. As always, this will take longer than usual. 

I also realized that in my rush to get the circuit boards out to the manufacturer, I completely forgot to add the L Line in the ISO 9141-2. The L Line is a throw back to the very early ISO 9141-2 protocol implementations. This usually would not be a problem with newer cars. But the P38a Range Rover needs the L line on several vehicle computers. This embarasing omission will of course have to be fixed. It will not slow down the development, it will simply cost me more money for the second board revision.

Gives me time to get the programming well underway.

It is official, the circuit boards have been ordered. This step will allow me to construct the first handfull of working tools. Assuming that the boards work and everything was constructed correctly, then I can submit these designs to the manufacturer for full production and assembly. The boards take 10 business days to manufacturer and about 3 days for shipping. So I will not be getting the boards for awhile.

Ok folks, it is back on.

I dug back up the schematics, prototype boards, and the completed board designs. I have some changes to make, as one of the components that I utilized has been announced as End of Life. So I must replace this component. This will take a bit more development and I am forced to change my board designs. Fingers crossed, I will get the boards completed and submitted this week for manufacturing.

Several people have been asking what the status of the Rover All Comms Project is currently at. I honestly have not been spending as much time as I would like on the project and thus have significantly slowed the progress. I am hoping that I will be able to submit the PCB boards in the very near future and get the first handfull of hardware prototypes constructed. Rest assured, that in the unlikely event I do not have the ability to finish this project or bring it to completion, the progress and contents of my development will be released to the public. I would not let the progress simply become lost.

The real cause for the delay can be summed up in a picture or two;

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Continued progress on all fronts. The enclosure that I have choosen is of excellent quality and function. The hardware design and schematics have been completed. I am currently waiting on boards to be manufactured for the first 100 units. Once these boards are complete and the prototypes are tested, I can submit my design to my manufacturer for higher production numbers.

The software development continues. I as always underestimated the scope of the project and am slogging it out with the software. I am trying my best to keep the design modular enough so that people can write theis own modules to interface with the lower level protocol layers.

I know that there are probably several people out there watching these progress reports for good news. I had originally estimated that the hardware and software would be completed after a period of 45 days, ending sometime in the middle of February. Good news is that I am still working on the project, bad news is that I will certainly not be complete by the middle of February.

I am in discussions with an Enclosure manufacturer. I am placing a special order for the enclosures. This will take a substantial up front cost for me, but should result in a much better product enclosure. The enclosures are partially translucent and will encorporate a USB cable with strain relief.

The hardware board design is almost complete but has been held up on the final enclosure decision. I am making progress every day, but it is a slow road. Please be patient and we will all get throguh this to the end and have an awesome tool for working with the Rovers.

Tremendous progress to report today. I decided to pursue the route of using dedicated IC chips to handle all of the analog multiplexing, signal inversions and voltage shifting. The result was a much more straight forward signal pathway and very very stable circuit design. This is definately the way to proceed. The previous method of designing my own transistor circuits to accomplish this was a waste of time. Now that the primary circuits have been proven, I am ready to proceed to the actual board design in full using smaller form factor chips.

Slow progress and several dead ends over the past few days. I have attempted to accomplish several hardware circuit designs but they are not working as I expected. I am backing up and pursuing a different hardware design. I am going to find off the shelf ICs that will hopefully accomplish the same goal. Voltage shifting, voltage inverters and digital multiplexing will be accomplished through fabricated ICs rather than seperate transistor circuits. This will unfortunately raise the price by a few USD. The upside is that the end product will be of better and more durable quality.

Progress over the past week has been slow but steady. It does not help that everyone in the house has the Flu. Aside from all of that, I have made developments in the hardware design. I am not an electronics engineer, so when a design requirement arises that would call on me to design something from scratch, it takes considerable time. Hand built through hole hardware prototypes should be constructed by this weekend. I am simultaneously developing the SMD circuit board designs for manufacturing. More soon hopefully...

I have made considerable progress with the Rover All Comms project. First and foremost, I have decided upon the hardware platform. The hardware platform has been constructed and is working properly. The hardware platform will enable any windows PC to simply connect the USB device and then connect with the Rover of their choice. The hardware has a USB bridge chip and the ability to, through software, select one of three different physical communications protocol circuits.

I have also made considerable progress on the software development. The software tool is almost complete in establishing communications to all three different vehicles. Once I have established communications, I will then begin the tedious process of programming all of the different vehicle subsystems.

It is still the goal of this project to establish the software platform and make the software platform an open source project. If all goes well, the project will have a momentum oif its own in a few months.

Announcing the development of a new product called the Rover All Comms. The intent of this product is to provide a multi vehicle communications protocol transciever. The device will enable any Windows PC with a USB port, to communicate with the different vehicle subsystems across three different Rover vehicles. This will be accomplished through a piece of software, in which the vehicle owner can send commands to different systems like the HEVAC or the EAS. Aditionally, this will also be possible across three different vehicles.

It is my hope that this will be the last and final piece of hardware that I develop for the Rover community. The hardware will enable very simple Windows software to trigger the time sensitive and complex message framing that must be accomplished for most of the vehicle computer subsystem communications. Initially, the software developed for the system may be a bit rough and could be missing some vehicle subsystem modules. The long term goal, is that this hardware will encourage persons independent of myself to carry the diagnostic software development.

Announcing the release of the EAS Activate MKIII. After a month of juggling a new born baby, a full time day job and my daily email, manufacturing and shipping responsibilities with this job, I have finished development on the EAS Activate MKIII. It was easy really Once you are resigned to not having any sleep because of a new born in the house. :)

The EAS Activate MKIII is similar to my previous diagnostic tools. The device will read and clear the EAS Fault codes on the MKIII Range Rover. Once the EAS Faults are cleared, the device can be plugged into the USB port on any windows based PC. When plugged into a USB port, the EAS Activate MKIII turns into a USB flash drive. Contained within this USB flash drive is a text file which contains all the fault codes that were stored on the MKIII EAS computer. Sales of the EAS Activate MKIII will begin in approximately one weeks time. If you would like to pre-order, I can be contacted through email.

After a very full weekend of sitting at my computer and occasionally cursing loudly, I have finished the entire EAS communications protocol.  There was however, one casuality in the process. It turns out, that a fully charged battery can not power a laptop for more than a few hours. I completely discharged my battery. So it is now on the charger.

Awesome, I am thrilled. Looks like I may have to fork up the cash for a new battery.

I have completed the process of integrating the MKIII EAS communications protocol into a hand held microprocessor device. The functionality of the new MKIII EAS Activate Tool will be almost identical to the EAS Buddy and the ABS Amigo. The new tool, EAS Activate (Name Pending), will read and clear the stored MKIII EAS Faults.

The incorporation of the MKIII EAS protocol into the portable microprocessor is going slower than expected. As with everything, the process is slow in the beginning and then speeds up significantly towards the end. The primary problem is lack of avaliable used EAS ECUs on Ebay or through other part supplier sources. This means that I must literally set up all of my testing environment and several Laptops all plugged into my MKIII Rover OBDII port. This is much more difficult than just sitting down at a desk and testing. Working at the vehicle is cramped uncomfortable and each night is getting colder working in the garage. I will get there soon enough. I still expect a working prototype by this weekend.

Difficulties encoutered revolved around the differences with the input and output buffers between a PC development environment and the specific microprocessor environment.

Happy to announce that the Communications protocol discovery process for the MKII Range Rover EAS disgnostic subsystem is complete. I have a 99% complete understanding of the fault code reporting structure and am now ready to begin incorporation of the communications protocol into a microprocessor driven device.

The timeline for release of this new EAS device for the Range Rover MKIII has been moved up. I expect a device to be ready within the month. Any interested parties who wish to perform actual beta testing, please contact me through email. Please, only interested parties who know what the hell they are doing with the EAS. If you have never had an EAS fault DO not bother requesting a beta product.

I have been hard at work for the past few weeks at development on a series of Tools for the MKIII Range Rover. Progress has been surprisingly quick. I have been able to establish communications with every possible ECU contained in the MKIII. I have even been talking to some modules that are completely unknown to me. I hope to have a product for the MKIII EAS subsystem by the end of 2009.

Currently I am in the process of systematically triggering as many of the EAS faults as possible. When a fault condition is know, then I can compare the responses from the EAS computer. Over time, I will be able to piece together all of the EAS faults and the respective response from the EAS computer. It is a tedious process but the pace of discovery speeds up as I move along. Once the protocol is understood, I will build the system into a microprocessor.

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