Thaws and effects

As the weather improves, and Michigan has repealed its mandatory helmet law, it is time to continue development.

Two new projects, both will be opensource hardware and software.  I'll be brief now but update more later, when I get the first boards back (I'm doing DIPs first, but will switch to surface mount).

I've redone my J1850 interface to add a sparkfun Venus 638 20Hz GPS module with a very low power sleep mode that shuts off the GPS (but maintains the vbatt) and bluetooth so I can leave it on and use battery instead of accessory.  Thanks to Stelian Pop who is working on a parallel effort - he wrote HarleyDroid for the Android (source also at github), but has adapted my embedded code and added J1850 send to his.  Mine is receive only but merges the GPS and J1850 data and adds PPS and timestamps.

https://github.com/tz1/HarleyJ1850GPS

Also going back to the Valentine V1 radar detector (remember my earlier project for a visible beep?).  The newer models have ESP - Extended Serial Protocol, which itself is simple, but there is some subtle timing that must be done.  Since I had the J1850 code doing almost-a-uart on the ICP1 pin, I rewrote it to be a UART and implemented the spec so from my computer I can send requests and monitor what is being returned.

https://github.com/tz1/bluev

In both cases the target is ultimately Android.  I need to polish my Java skills and probably consume copious amounts of java to get the full apps going, but it will be better than my Chumby version for the GPS, and there are a lot of possibilities with the V1.