For tuning an engine you have to know what is going on in it. This will allow me to see on every drive what is happening in the ECM. Most long drives I took up the laptop and log the data. I then post it on the web. But for short drives to the grocery store to get milk, the laptop is to much to take and hook up, then take in the store, then hook back up when I leave. The palm fits in my pocket and I can easily take it and set it up and disconnect it.
It is really cool to drive and see the data from the ECM on the palm.
I contacted Oliver Scholtz (webpage) and offered to trade one of his cables (normally $75) for the source code to a palm application to read and display the data. He accepted and sent the cable. I downloaded the needed development tools, learned Palm programming and wrote the application.
A Palm binary is available for download. The source code is not availble. The binary is free, but if you like it feel free to send me money. A couple dollars would be a nice way to say thanks for both this website or the palm app. I take paypal to martinwhite@mindspring.com.
To use the Palm app connect the palm serial port to a nullmodem. Connect the other side of the nullmodem to the cable from Oliver. Connect Olivers cable to the fiero ECM as normal. Start the FieroALDL palm application. As soon as data comes from the ECM it is displayed on the palm. The Application will autodetect V6 or 4cly. If Olivers cable is in error code mode the error codes will be displayed. The record button will start recording the data to the palm's memory. To get the recorded data do a full backup of the palm and look for a file named ALDLDATA.pdb. Open the file with notepad and remove the first couple lines which will be a bunch of unreadable characters. The rest of the data will be the recorded data. in comma delimited format. Be sure to use the "disable auto off" button to prevent the palm from turning off when recording data.
Really neat and cool. Now that the data can be logged an transfered to a computer there is no need to hook the laptop up the fiero.