Thread: wstar's Journal
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Old 04-27-2009, 10:35 AM   #48 (permalink)
wstar
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Quote:
Originally Posted by miguez View Post
You know, with a little code writing one could create their own interface to display GPS data. I was working on something similar a while back, using GPS and accelerometer data. It would be up to Magden to allow us to interface their data into our own graphics. Wouldn't that be cool? Totally something I am willing to explore if you're interested. If we do go that route, by the way, there are some amazing GPS receivers we could use, some that work off of reflective signals so they work even indoors. One I recall was tested inside a mall, and worked all the way through. Precision goes down, but still very acceptable. This same GPS worked very well when it's antenna was located underneath the driver's seat!

Anyways, sounds like an awesome project.
Well, I happen to be a coder, too, but honestly it sounds like a lot of work, and I don't think Magden's box is very open to modding anyways.

If you want to go that route, it would probably be easier to install a generic Car-PC and use open GPS and OBD-II software with, as you said, a really good GPS receiver. However, I'm not sure if you'll find any generic open hardware interfaces to write software against for high-speed data acquisition that talks our Nissans' CAN protocol. The low-speed generic OBD-II updates are too slow for some gauges (like RPM warnings).

I'm really looking for something more turnkey this time around (well at least, more turnkey than writing my own software).

The more I think about it though, I rarely use GPS. I have a small Garmin Nuvi unit I occasionally stick on the window, I may just stay with whipping that out when necessary and just hook up the Magden unit to the LCD alone and avoid a lot of complexity.
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