LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

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Harry
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LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

Dear friends of LapTimer,

Starting with version 18.3.5, LapTimer features experimental support for parallel OBD requests speeding up update rates by 50 to 150%. For this first version, I have decided to give it an "experimental" status. It is turned off by default. There are a number of pre-requisits to use this mode:
  • You need to run the top level LapTimer edition for your platform (Petrolhead for Android and GrandPrix for iOS)
  • The car needs to feature a modern CAN based bus protocol
  • An ELM327 based OBD dongle is required; I tested both PLX Kiwi and OBDLink LX/MX dongles and all worked
To run the new mode, you need to turn it on in LapTimer's Expert Settings:
  • LapTimer ‣ Settings ‣ Expert Settings ‣ OBD Tweaks / CAN Multi Requests (ELM327) ‣ 3 PIDs / adaptive
Once this is switched and your configuration meets all the above requirements, you should see immediately the effect in update rate. Check e.g. the Sensor List for a display. In case it works for you, please let us know what you had before and what you get with the feature turned on. In case it doesn't work, please report back too. Please always add the smartphone model, OBD dongle model, and car tested.

Once I get enough positive feedback, this feature will be turned on by default and simplified.

For our tests, please check Facebook post #1 and Facebook post #2 As an example, the update rate for a Porsche 997/2 increases from 11 to 17 Hz using an OBDLink MX Wi-Fi dongle.

The Android version 18.3.5 will be available on Playstore in an hour, the iOS version will follow in roughly one week.

Code: Select all

Changes in v18.3.5:

‣ Several tweaks to sensor handling (VBOX, OBDLinkMX, OBD speed)
‣ Added a small range for neutral winning/losing indicator
‣ Remove "Record Auto" and stop recording when Video View is closed
‣ Bandwidth optimization for ELM327 OBD communication
‣ Made Add-ons View snappy again
‣ Fixed longitudinal / lateral acceleration order in VBO export
‣ Improved Technical Information dialog
‣ Added support for parallel CAN requests (check http://goo.gl/R8A5v3 for the details)
Enjoy!

- Harry
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magus4286
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by magus4286 »

Just tested this out for a few minutes with the 3/adaptive mode and saw an improvement.

Before: 3-4 Hz
After: 3-8 Hz (gradually moving up and down within that range, e.g. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5… etc.)

Car: 2008 M3
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S4
OBD: OBDLink MX Bluetooth
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Harry
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

Hi,

This type of movement means there is some issue. In case you want to create a log for analysis, please check the "Debugging OBD Connection" here in the Accessories/OBD forum and send it to me.

Thanks for your feedback!

Harry
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

Harry wrote:Hi,

This type of movement means there is some issue. In case you want to create a log for analysis, please check the "Debugging OBD Connection" here in the Accessories/OBD forum and send it to me.

Thanks for your feedback!

Harry
Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1500
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magus4286
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by magus4286 »

Harry wrote:
Harry wrote:Hi,

This type of movement means there is some issue. In case you want to create a log for analysis, please check the "Debugging OBD Connection" here in the Accessories/OBD forum and send it to me.

Thanks for your feedback!

Harry
Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1500
Log file sent this evening. Looking forward to your feedback!

I can also note that in my data exports (lap data CSV's, not the log) I see that MAF and Oil Temp are always set to 0, so perhaps excluding those PIDs is part of the solution?
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

Thanks for sending the log. It shows no general issues or drops, it is simply the replies to requests vary in time needed... I don't known what the reason could be. I tend to believe it is some limitation from dongle / OBD gateway or protocol communication, but it may be some processing overload on the Android side too.

Code: Select all

38351685780 +   10ms ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0B [MAP] (index: 28)
38351685780          ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0D [VSS] (index: 29)
38351685780          Tx: "30 31 30 42 30 44 20 31 0D '010B0D 1\r'"
38351685820 +   40ms Rx: "34 31 30 42 32 34 30 44 30 30 0D 0D 3E '410B240D00\r\r>'" (13)
38351685840 +   20ms ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0C [RPM] (index: 26)
38351685840          ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x11 [TPS] (index: 27)
38351685840          Tx: "30 31 30 43 31 31 20 31 0D '010C11 1\r'"
38351685880 +   40ms Rx: "34 31 30 43 30 41 34 34 31 31 32 36 0D 0D 3E '410C0A441126\r\r>'" (15)
38351685890 +   10ms ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0B [MAP] (index: 28)
38351685890          ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0D [VSS] (index: 29)
38351685890          Tx: "30 31 30 42 30 44 20 31 0D '010B0D 1\r'"
38351686060 +  170ms Rx: "34 31 30 42 32 34 30 44 30 30 0D 0D 3E '410B240D00\r\r>'" (13)
38351686070 +   10ms ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x0C [RPM] (index: 26)
38351686070          ---------  mode: 1 pid: 0x11 [TPS] (index: 27)
38351686070          Tx: "30 31 30 43 31 31 20 31 0D '010C11 1\r'"
From the sample above you can see LapTimer requests 2 PIDs in parallel. For the MAP/VSS combination, it usually comes back after 40 milli seconds, but sometimes it requires 170 milliseconds. This pattern varies and occurs randomly for any PID combination. The reason update rate iterates up and down is due to some smoothing I apply on this rate. With a slow reply like 170 ms, the effective rate is around 3 Hz, while at 40 ms, it is 8 Hz - the rest is from smoothing / interpolation.

I will check with some OBD manufacturers if this is simply as it is for car busses, or if this can be worked around (in this case, I probably need to improve the smoothing routine :-) ).

- Harry
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

It seems the delayed replies (and drops in update rate) are due to the wireless connection. The higher update rates are, the more visible these latencies get... As always, please take care you have not too many wireless gadgets around in your car. In the past I have seen that especially Wifi connections are often disturbed when driving through town, the same thing may apply to BT connections.

LapTimer uses a high priority thread to grab incoming data as fast as possible. I do not see a lot more can be done here... The S4 has enough cores to serve this thread well (opposed to dual core devices), so it should not be due to your device either.

- Harry
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by pfl-r35 »

Testing this shortly here as well. Will leave Logging on and send.
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by tmtraylor »

Harry,

Some feedback on the new feature. I turned on the High Speed CAN setting and it disabled my OBD readings while in my J1850 vehicle. When I turned the High Speed CAN setting off, the OBD data collection resumed.

2003 Corvette Z06
Samsung Galaxy S4
ELM327 (Chinese clone)

It would be nice to be able to leave it on for use in CAN bus cars and have the application recognize that is does not apply while connected to a non-CAN bus.

Thanks again for a wonderful application!!!

Tim Traylor
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Re: LapTimer v18.3.5 High Speed CAN announcement

Post by Harry »

tmtraylor wrote:Harry,

Some feedback on the new feature. I turned on the High Speed CAN setting and it disabled my OBD readings while in my J1850 vehicle. When I turned the High Speed CAN setting off, the OBD data collection resumed.

2003 Corvette Z06
Samsung Galaxy S4
ELM327 (Chinese clone)

It would be nice to be able to leave it on for use in CAN bus cars and have the application recognize that is does not apply while connected to a non-CAN bus.

Thanks again for a wonderful application!!!

Tim Traylor
That's the main reason it is in the expert settings currently. LapTimer does not detect the bus protocol so far, so it cannot detect CAN / no CAN automatically. I should probably add that feature in the future ;-) One needs to "trial and error" through all protocols to accomplish this - the ELM327 dialect doesn't tell you which protocol it finally selected...

- Harry
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