Logging

[delta9]

Hello cail,

I'm willing to buy hobDrive, but i need to know about the logging features.

I need to know how to use, i would like to choose what i want to log.

Thanks!

[cail]

Hi!

Here is a quote from user's manual:

Logging the sensor data to the file.


Set up via «user.track» file.
The contents of the file can be exported from the default configuration -
«default.track» file.
The file lists the sensors used to record data. By default, only cumulative
sensors data is recorded.
Data is written to the "track" folder in binary format and can be converted to
Excel spreadsheets with «track2csv.exe» utility found here:
https://github.com/cail/hobd/raw/master ... ck2CSV.exe

For sure thats a "beta" feature, and you should be an experienced user to enable it.

track2csv tool is a command line tool
You should run this program with a full path to your "hobdrive/track" folder as an argument.

1) Open explorer and drag your "track" folder from "hobdrive" installation into the track2csv.exe icon
2) When it finishes the work, you'll find CSV files in the same "track" folder, which could be opened with Excel and analysed further.

To setup sensors you want to log, you should edit "default.track" (or user.track) file and enable lines with sensor names to log.

Hope that helps!

[delta9]

Hello cail,

Thanks for your reply!

My formation is IT and i had worked as programmer and now as analyst, so yes i'm an experienced user, i still didn't tried to build my own application for lack of time and luckily i found your application which is working very fine.

I could log what i wanted, convert it and build graphs on excel, but as you already said this is a beta feature and it is not very useful with all the work you have to do, to actually see the information.

I can build a .bat and create excel macros to facilitate the work, but the main problem is that it logs the different information on separate files and the datetime not synchronized.

But besides that, it works! And i'm satisfied with that already.

But here goes my suggestion about how the logging feature should work:

- It should log one file per trip (according to the user configuration about the trip interval), with the file name: Trip#_yyyy_mm_dd.log, e.g. Trip1_2012_03_12, Trip2_2012_03_12.

- The file must be on cvs already, with a .trip extension, e.g. Trip1_2012_03_12.trip.

- Since the date will be on the file's name, the date and time column will be only time value, with no miliseconds, e.g. 15:05:01.

- The logging should be made at every 1 second (exactly) and all sensor information is synchronized, e.g. the reading must be made at the same milisecond for all sensors.

- Each file will always have only one time column and other columns are the sensors selected by the user according to .track file

- The first line are the headers, with 'Time' as the first column always.

- The sensor information must be rounded with precision according to default configuration, today a lot of decimals are logged, increasing the file size.

- The second column logged today is not necessary, in an end-user perspective.

- The default tracking should be: Speed, RPM, Acceleration, EngineLoad, ThrottlePosition, CoolantTemp, IntakeAirTemp, DistanceRun.

This logging/tracking feature is a very valuable feature in my opinion, which may be a good idea to enable this only for full version, to encourage user to pay for your application, so i think is a good idea to put some effort on this, i don't know what are your priorities for the application.

What would be even better is to log the GPS information with the OBD information, which will have three more columns: latitude, longitude and altitude. In the future enable the logging on KML files, to view on Google Maps/Earth.

If you need any help i would be glad to help you!

Regards.

[cail]

Hi delta9,

Thanks for your thoughts. They are basically in line with what future development will be.

Some notes:

the datetime not synchronized.

It is not possible to sync time stamps for different sensors, just because they are read at different times. More over, some sensors are not required to be read too often (temperature f.e.).
There exist an extra column in csv file (relative time stamp). It can be used in excel to build x-y chart (not only y-chart). This way excel can use timing offset to correctly build charts.

But for sure in general the intent is to bring charting functionality into the application itself, to not to bother with excel etc...

GPS data is another priority, hope it'll be beaten soon.

[delta9]

Hello cail,

Ok, good to know about the development plans. But even that the application plots the charts into the application, it is good to have a way to export the data.

But about what you said:

It is not possible to sync time stamps for different sensors, just because they are read at different times.

I don't know how the protocol works, but even using threads you can't do that? Like a thread for each sensor and all threads synchronized?

Best regards!

delta9

[cail]

I don't know how the protocol works, but even using threads you can't do that? Like a thread for each sensor and all threads synchronized?

Vehicle normally gives one sensor value at a time. you can't ask vehicle about two sensors simultaneously.

Strictly speaking, there is no much need in equality. Just building the charts with time stamps in mind will help and give a correct picture (even in excel).