MDL? what the heck is that?

gslender · Post by **gslender** » Wed May 08, 2013 3:23 am

So, what format is the MDL in and do you plan to publish this so that other people can read them etc?

Is it in some Java byte/object raw format?

G

Trev16v · Post by **Trev16v** » Wed May 08, 2013 4:59 am

It's a compact raw format. The reason I did this was to optimise the performance of MSDroid's internal log viewer. It quite literally is MSL but in compact format. But it's fully processed data, not raw output channel data.

We could publish the specification, but to be honest the idea is that you use the export to MSL function if you want to export it anyway, so really the internal representation used shouldn't be a concern. One thing we've realised though is that having to export rather than being able to quickly grab them off the SD is a pain. Therefore Dave and Seb have worked on some changes ready for a next release which will make life a heck of a lot easier, which will be revealed when tidied up and fully tested.

gslender · Post by **gslender** » Wed May 08, 2013 2:34 pm

Trev16v wrote:It's a compact raw format. The reason I did this was to optimise the performance of MSDroid's internal log viewer. It quite literally is MSL but in compact format. But it's fully processed data, not raw output channel data.

That doesn't make sense - the raw output channel is already in a compact raw format. Sounds like you've processed it, and then stored it again in a different format without the MSL CSV style "," delineated formatting - by the look of the size and what's being stored in the file, it looks like raw byte code without the delineations. I'm finding that annoying as I can easily get to the SD via DropBox, but considering you log in this non-std format, I now have to use the "email to DropBox" and have that extra conversion/export step to get it back into MSL.

Will be interested to see what Dave/Seb come up with....

G

Trev16v · Post by **Trev16v** » Wed May 08, 2013 2:50 pm

My first response (hastily written on phone) wasn't clear, perhaps because by 'raw' I'm referring to the fact that the data is written in binary format, rather than writing 'raw' output channel data.

So to be clear, the format is as you correctly describe. The MDL format writes the data in processed form, not in raw output channel form as it's read from the ECU. Therefore it's exactly as you'd find in an MSL. But the difference is it's written in binary format, as opposed to being printed to file as formatted human-readable strings.

It'll be far easier to grab MSL logs from it very shortly.

gslender · Post by **gslender** » Wed May 08, 2013 3:59 pm

Trev16v wrote:It'll be far easier to grab MSL logs from it very shortly.

Yay!

piledriver · Post by **piledriver** » Fri May 24, 2013 9:35 pm

How do you convert them at the moment?

I could swear I previously converted the logs, but I guess I have slept since then.

Still working great om Android 4.22 on my thinkpad, plugged in via usb to the ms3 (std ftdi serial port)

Somewhat OT: Does turning on "CAN_COMMANDS" ~double the data rate on msdroid like it does on TS?
(only a subset of used fields are in the payload, rather than the full set of data, only useful when not logging, but VEAL really likes data at a 2X rate)

gslender · Post by **gslender** » Fri May 24, 2013 10:04 pm

piledriver wrote: Does turning on "CAN_COMMANDS" ~double the data rate on msdroid like it does on TS?

This is similar (in a really poor unexpected way) to something that MoTeC have in their ECUs - you can specify which items to log, so that if you only need RPM, MAP and AFR then you get really, really fast logging data rates as you are only send a handful of bytes.

G

Post by **jsmcortina** » Sat May 25, 2013 3:56 am

gslender wrote:
piledriver wrote: Does turning on "CAN_COMMANDS" ~double the data rate on msdroid like it does on TS?
This is similar (in a really poor unexpected way)
G

Explain why it makes you upset? Or ask Phil why he did it?

James

gslender · Post by **gslender** » Sat May 25, 2013 4:03 am

Nah, I'm saying this is good. But the MoTeC solution is better.

Post by **jsmcortina** » Sat May 25, 2013 4:43 am

I didn't know that Motec did that. It has been on my TODO list for a while, but it isn't trivial.

I mentioned to Phil that 'he could do it already' using the full serial commands instead of 'A' and that's what recent TS betas do.

James

LT401Vette · Post by **LT401Vette** » Sat May 25, 2013 7:08 am

gslender wrote:Nah, I'm saying this is good. But the MoTeC solution is better.

Selecting the logged fields and getting faster data rate was actually the point... It just doesn't have the field selection dialog yet.

piledriver · Post by **piledriver** » Sat May 25, 2013 8:04 am

I consider it a great feature already, and it's easy enough to turn on/off to access the sdcard menus.
The SDcard actually still works normally, you just cant get at it with CAN_COMMANDS on..
(not sure why that is, but that's life at the moment.)

LT401Vette · Post by **LT401Vette** » Sat May 25, 2013 8:09 am

I consider it a great feature already, and it's easy enough to turn on/off to access the sdcard menus.

The next alpha release of MS3 and TS handles this differently so you can always use SD download if attached by serial, then CAN_COMMANDS can be left on, or defaulted to on.

piledriver · Post by **piledriver** » Sat May 25, 2013 8:29 am

LT401Vette wrote:
I consider it a great feature already, and it's easy enough to turn on/off to access the sdcard menus.
The next alpha release of MS3 and TS handles this differently so you can always use SD download if attached by serial, then CAN_COMMANDS can be left on, or defaulted to on.

Cool.

Any chance Shadowdash will get serial support as well?
The only "Android" device I actually use is my Thinkpad tablet.
BT not working on Android-x86 at the moment.

LT401Vette · Post by **LT401Vette** » Sat May 25, 2013 9:55 am

Any chance Shadowdash will get serial support as well?

Yes, I just did that a couple days ago, it was quite easy to implement. I have just been tied up with TS and MLV for the past few months.
A new SD should be released soon so it support the latest MS3 alpha properly.

piledriver · Post by **piledriver** » Sat May 25, 2013 4:37 pm

LT401Vette wrote:
Any chance Shadowdash will get serial support as well?
Yes, I just did that a couple days ago, it was quite easy to implement. I have just been tied up with TS and MLV for the past few months.
A new SD should be released soon so it support the latest MS3 alpha properly.

Cool, looking forward to being able to see how it looks on a 12.1" tablet

.

Trev, how DO you convert the .mdl file for MLV?
I know I did it trivially awhile back but I cannot recall how, must be oldtimers.
Is the export function built into msdroid?

Trev16v · Post by **Trev16v** » Sat May 25, 2013 5:02 pm

MSDroid has an export to MSL function, which has been in there for a few months now I think.

Things will be a heck of a lot easier in a next release though.

LT401Vette · Post by **LT401Vette** » Sun May 26, 2013 6:56 am

I haven't looked at an the mdl format, but I'm sure I could make MLV load it direct. It already supports 100's of file formats, ASCII and Binary.

Trev16v · Post by **Trev16v** » Sun May 26, 2013 8:28 am

That would be good, Phil - it's essentially just the standard .msl but with quite a lot of extra header fields and the values are all written directly as floats, etc. rather than printed as readable formatted strings.

However, I would actually feel a bit bad about introducing yet another format for users to deal with. The way we're trying to go with things now is to retain .mdl as an internal fast format but make it easier for users to have .msl on their PC ready to load into MLV without having to deal with exporting and so forth. So essentially .mdl would remain an internal implementation detail more than anything. It's good to be able to support MegaLogViewer using an existing established format I think.

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