Anyone tried to do this yet? Seems like it would be ideal to have a similar style to Kegetys app that runs on N-Gage. Also, as PSP can either use WIFI or USB, would be good.

Anyone got any thoughts on this or fancy having a bash at it?

Running homebrew software (read: unsigned code) on a PSP is a royal pain in the arse. Last I checked up on the situation was shortly before reselling my PSP on, and unless things have changed you can only run unsigned code without any exploits on firmware 1.0, and thereafter only on 1.5 with exploits.

Since most games will require firmware 2.0 in the future it makes running homebrew software somewhat tricky. There is a little app which can spoof the version number, but I've not looked into it.

However, if I remember correctly the latest firmware versions provide a web browser. Now I've not looked into it (as I sold my PSP on before they released it), but provided it supports the Content-Type multipart/mixed then you could push updates via that (via HTTP over WiFi). Alternatively a meta-refresh would do, but its not "instant" then..

If anyone is interested in pursuing this, in particular the multipart approach, and aren't familiar with the "unofficial" HTTP specs checkout RFC2183.

Gotta be honest, that made bobbins all sense to me, but i'll believe you. If someone is willing to give it a bash, i'll up/downgrade firmware as and when i need to. Mostly just use it as a glorified ipod anyway.

Hmmmm, would this be possible with a PDA and a bluetooth/wifi/cable connection?

VGA screen could prove useful!

If Kegetys made his N-Gage app available to download I'd get one off ebay.

Quote from Jakg :

Hmmmm, would this be possible with a PDA and a bluetooth/wifi/cable connection?

Of course; either get code running on the PDA (for Windows Mobile thats pretty simple), or if its got a web browser, the above Content-Type multipart "hack" might work.

I guess this could be done with Ajax too but that wouldn't be instant.

So are we talking like 'whats the fastest refresh rate on the system' sort of thing? Anyone can feel free to give it a go using whatever methods they think necessary, just would quite like something 'on top' of the on screen display.

If it helps, other gadgets i have are:

Ipod
PSP
Samsung D600
Digicam

Think thats about it to be honest, and looking at that gonna be bobbins all use! TAXI!!

Quote from Leifde :

I guess this could be done with Ajax too but that wouldn't be instant.

That requires Javascript being implemented which is a bit of a leap in some situations If I remember correctly though, the PSP one does have some form of implementation. No idea if it supports the XMLHttpRequest object though...

Quote from matt_green84 :

So are we talking like 'whats the fastest refresh rate on the system' sort of thing?

Not really. Basically the long and short of it is:

Running custom programs on a PSP is a pain in the neck. Your program needs to be signed (i.e. approved) by Sony. To get this done costs a lot. You can run your own code on a PSP, but only on certain firmware revisions, and only on the 4th Tuesday of every 2nd month... you get the idea?

Running your own code on most PDA's is pretty simple. Its usually a case of using the SDKs.

However, the thing that both these devices have in common is a web browser. An interesting way around the issue would be to make something that acts as a rudimentary web server (simple) and delivers back the Outgauge details to the web browser. Now getting it to automatically refresh is the point of contention. There are a few methods to do it, but until someone tests them, we don't know which will work. Unfortunately this method requires a general network connection. In these cases - WiFi.

What I'll do is try to throw together something tomorrow and pop up some terse instructions. I'll be interested to see what'll come out of it...

If a PSP, or N-gage or whatever could be used as a fake dash or to display data like fuel load, tyre temps etc I'd be mighty tempted to buy one. Or maybe it could be done with a cheap small LCD screen mounted ontop of the wheel..sorta like how Citroen do the rev meter in their current cars.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

...Lots of techincal stuff...

I'll be happy to test for you mate, could be very interesting!

The problem for this is that for every possible device capable of this you have to find someone that has LFS, the device itself and is able/wants to program it.
While in my case I tried with my GP2X console and it worked, I didn't go any further with it because I imagine that the amount of people that can check all three:

a) own a GP2X
b) play LFS
c) want an outgauge display,

might be quite small, even 0 (even I'm not really using it, haven't found a way to mount it anywhere because my McGiver-fu is quite weak)

Yeah, but all due respect to the GP2X, coz they do look pretty good:

More people are gonna have a PSP
Everyone here plays LFS
I think if an outguage was implemented, people would use it, hence making the developers time spent worthwhile.

Quote from matt_green84 :

Yeah, but all due respect to the GP2X, coz they do look pretty good:

More people are gonna have a PSP
Everyone here plays LFS
I think if an outguage was implemented, people would use it, hence making the developers time spent worthwhile.

That's the point... who's for sending a PSP this way?

I have got a psp when they first came out and have never used it since but would live it if someone converted it for lfs

Hi,

I think the best way is to hook up a cheap 7"-9" TFT as 2nd screen, and run an OutGauge-app on it. Costs about 100-150€ (those neat monitors crazy people build into their cars...). I've seen some with 800x600 or more, even 16:9 versions are available. If you spend some more, you get one with touchscreen...

I recently played around with my mobile, wrote a small java-app which connects to a small script running on my pc, sending outgauge data to the mobile via bluetooth. It generally works, but as my java skills are quite lame, I decided to give it up. Anyone interested in the sourcecode?

Currently I work on a configurable outgauge dashboard app. There is a set of gauges (ie. analog round gauge, 7-segment display, ...), which can be positioned on the screen, with configurable colors, background-images, etc. and then hooked up to some values provided by outgauge.
The configuration is stored in an xml-file:

.. You get the idea?

Quote from nilo :

[...]

Please could I have the source code for the bluetooth thing, I think it'll be useful if I can get bluetooth working on my phone

PSP would be the nicest display. But as has been pointed out, it's a pain to program. Now Windows Mobile is dead easy, imho. I got an OutGauge app running on my HTC Apache over office wifi as a proof of concept and that worked well. There are other WM5.0 devices that aren't phones with larger displays that should work well. Of course this option is rather expensive if all you need to do is display some stuff. But if you need to do computation as well, it's cheaper and cleaner than dedicating a PC to it.

Quote from Leifde :

Please could I have the source code for the bluetooth thing, I think it'll be useful if I can get bluetooth working on my phone

Here we go:

LFSMon_Python.zip contains the python script listening to the outgauge packets. It searches any bluetooth device in range for the LFSMonitor java app and connects to it. For running this, you need to have python 2.5 installed (http://www.python.org/download/) and additionally the pybluez bluetooth library for python (http://org.csail.mit.edu/pybluez/download.html).

LFSMonitor_Java contains both the sources and compiled .jar file of the mobile phone outgauge app. Start this first, then the python script. Currently displays speed and gear as plain text.


Bye
nilo

First off, I apologise this maybe a little technical. The reason for this is incase anyone has any bright ideas, or can spot anything I've missed.

Second, sorry I didn't get a chance to sort out any testing or real code this morning or afternoon. I ended up running errands and spending some time with the girlfriend. However, I've had a quick 45 minutes play this evening.

So far;
* The Content-Type (multipart/mixed or multipart/x-mixed-replace) is a failure on anything running Internet Explorer 6, (or IE Mobile [including the one bundled with Windows Mobile 5]). Which sucks, as I was hoping that would work.
* IE Mobile does support XMLHttpRequest calls. (woo-hoo).
* IE Mobile does support meta-refreshes.
* According to a very, very quick google, the PSP does not support XMLHttpRequest (boo). The DS Lite browser (opera) also does not support XMLHttpRequest (boo).

So where does that leave things? Unfortunately at the meta-refresh option. Now the issue with that is that its got additional overheads of creating a request each time (like XMLHttpRequest), which is why I wanted to avoid using it. Although the bonus is that keep-alive is handy to avoid sockets having to be created and destroyed. Not exactly what I was hoping for though..

The other big issue with meta-refreshes, is that they aren't "pushing" data to the device, and instead will constantly barrage the OutGauge application. In itself this isn't a big problem (given todays average processing power), but the real killer is that the fastest this can happen is every 1 second (a limitation of the meta refresh "design").

Now this 1 second limit is potentially avoided by using a generic javascript option instead - which I'll have a poke around at tomorrow.

Sadly things aren't looking as rosy as I'd hoped for the web-browser idea, and bang goes the idea of using a one stop solution for all the various handheld devices

As I've read lately, the PSP got a Flash Player on board. Maybe this is an option?

Quote from nilo :

As I've read lately, the PSP got a Flash Player on board. Maybe this is an option?

I was hoping for something supported natively across all the mentioned devices

So is it a dead in the water project then?

I'll ask my friend who's good with flash if he can make something for the PSP, it won't work on devices without a flash player though.

So is anything going on about the phone java app?