How to Log External Sensors (plural) Simultaneously with Openport 2?

Long story short, I’ve found out that Tactrix has RS232 input which can be used very easily to add any amount of external sensor, eg: oil pressure, fuel pressure, O2 sensor, Knock sensor, WMI flow sensor, etc.

This won’t be a very detailed how to but you should be able to get the idea.

You’ll need:
– Tactrix Open Port 2.0
– Sensors with a 5v output
– A 2.5mm Stereo Jack
– A device to output RS232. I use an Arduino+MAX3232 but you could technically use anything that is able to produce an RS232 signal/stream that respect the OpenPort protocol. Technically something like this could work but I haven’t properly read the documentation nor do I own the product.

How it works – High level
You’ll connect your sensors to an a device than can receive their 5v analog input and transform it an RS232 data stream which will be sent to through a 2.5mm Stereo Jack connected to the OpenPort jack input and add a bit of configuration and that’s it.

Sensors > 5v analog > RS232 conversion > 2.5mm Stereo Jack > Tactrix > Happiness

How it works – Low level
– Make cable with a 2.5mm Stereo Jack. OpenPort pin out for reference
Sleeve = Ground
Ring = RS232 input

– Connect your sensors to an analog/RS232 converter. I used an Arduino so here’s my recipe.
— Connect your sensors to Arduino analog inputs.
— Connect a MAX3232 to your Arduino.
—- MAX3232 TX > Arduino TX (pin 6 in my case, more on that later)
—- MAX3232 GND > Arduino GND
—- MAX3232 VCC > Arduino 5V

– Connect your 2.5mm Stereo Jack to MAX3232
— Jack ground > MAX3232 GND
— Jack ring > MAX3232 TXDRS

An image will be better illustrate this (note they’re using PIN 7 for tx):

– Connect your 2.5mm Stereo Jack to Tactrix OpenPort stereo jack input.

– Give your Arduino some juice, I’ve used my laptop so far but you can source probably source voltage somewhere in the cabin.

Use this Arduino sketch to get started.

Code:

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial tactrix(5, 6); // Arduino RX, Arduino TX

int sensorValueA0 = 0;
int sensorValueA1 = 0;
float sensorVoltageA0 = 0;
float sensorVoltageA1 = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  tactrix.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {  
  sensorValueA0   = analogRead(A0);
  sensorVoltageA0 = (sensorValueA0*5.0)/1024.0;
  float afr = (sensorVoltageA0*3)+7.35.7;

  tactrix.print( sensorVoltageA0 );
  tactrix.print(';');
  tactrix.print( afr );
  tactrix.println();
  
  Serial.print( sensorVoltageA0 );
  Serial.print(',');
  Serial.print( afr );
  Serial.println();
}

The only thing you really need to understand is that we define a secondary TX pin which is set to pin 6 and whenever we use tactrix.print() it sends data over pin 6 to the MAX3232 and then to the Tactrix OpenPort.

The only piece of the puzzle missing is logcfg.txt config.

Code:

;----------------aem----------------
; the "ascii" channel type can listen on any protocol for incoming numeric text
; the default protocolid is 9, which corresponds to the 3/32" jack receive-only serial port
; the default baud rate and setting are 9600,N,8,1. all of these can be changed for other scenarios

; the ascii channel considers anything other than the characters {'0'-'9','+','-','.','E','e'} to be a 
; delimiter between different numbers. furthermore, the carriage return and line feed characters are 
; considered to mark the beginning of a new row of data. you can sample data from a particular column of
; numbers by choosing a paramid starting at 1 which indicates the column number

; in the case of the AEM UEGO, there is simply one column of data, and it is already scaled appropriately

type=ascii

paramname = AFR
paramid = 1

Long story short, send sensor data separated by ; and end each row with a line break.

eg:
sensor1_V;sensor2_V; (end a line break, that’s what the tactrix.println(); does).

paramid1 = first column
paramid2 = second column

eg:
AFR;FuelPressure;

Code:

type=ascii

paramname = AFR
paramid = 1

paramname = FuelPressure
paramid = 2

This kind of stuff can be hard to explain in word but hopefully this make sense.

Chuck

Edit: Forgot to mention but since I use an Arduino I can all sort of funky stuff like output to custom gauge or with a CAN Shield broadcast to a PID which I intend to do with a WMI flow sensor to control map blending in RomDrop.

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