iOS I'm new to this, bear with me

[Duff8402]

I had an idea recently, and I can't find anyone to help me with it... so I decided to take it in to my own hands.

I'm a motorcycle enthusiast (sportbikes to be specific)... on my personal motorcycle I have a device called a Power Commander 5...it's a fuel injection programmer that changes percentages of fuel to obtain a desired air to fuel ratio. An add-on module connects to a wideband oxygen sensor that is installed in to the exhaust header which reads the current air to fuel ratio...sends this data back to the add-on module which tells the PC5 what changes to make to automatically obtain the desired air to fuel ratio entered by the user.

The only way to make changes to this right now, is to plug a Windows machine in to the PC5 via a mini-usb cable...

I don't even know if this is possible, but something that would be EXTREMELY convenient...if I could plug my iPhone in to the Power Commander, cradle the iPhone in the mount on my steering stem, and be able to monitor the air to fuel ratio and log the data coming from the tuning module so I can make changes based on the performance of the motorcycle in a test run...

DynoJet (the company that makes the Power Commander) has never released a MAC compatible version of the control center software for the Power Commander. So first things first, I would assume, the Windows software would have to be decompiled to make a MAC compatible version...which could then be translated in to a iPhone application. This is where I get stupid... I don't even know if that's how this all works, I haven't read that much in to it yet. And I've looked around, but as far as I can tell there are no iPhone cables that have a mini-usb on the other end rather than the standard size cable.

Can anyone tell me before I start getting in to this, whether or not I'll be wasting my time in doing so?

Thanks in advance for any and all help

-Duff-

 

[robbieduncan]

So first things first, I would assume, the Windows software would have to be decompiled to make a MAC compatible version...which could then be translated in to a iPhone application. This is where I get stupid... I don't even know if that's how this all works, I haven't read that much in to it yet.

For an experienced programmer this would be somewhere between amazingly hard and impossible. For an novice...

Also the iPhone cannot talk to arbitrary external devices. It can only talk to "blessed" devices.

 

[Darkroom]

write to the manufacturer of the Power Commander 5. maybe they are currently working on a version for Mac or iPhone.

 

[Duff8402]

For an experienced programmer this would be somewhere between amazingly hard and impossible. For an novice...

Also the iPhone cannot talk to arbitrary external devices. It can only talk to "blessed" devices.

That's pretty much the answer I was expecting to get... But I had a little hope when I heard that medical agencies can prescribe blood pressure machines, and other medical devices that plug in to the iPhone so the user can keep track of vital data.

write to the manufacturer of the Power Commander 5. maybe they are currently working on a version for Mac or iPhone.

Well, they've been working on an external LCD unit of their own that will do just that... but they've put the production of it on hold for quite some time now. They've been working on a CBR600RR trying to make world land speed records with it at the Bonneville Salt Flats...which is apparently more important than their business right now

I did get bored the other night on my night off... Hooked my laptop in to the PC5, started up a VNC server on the laptop, put the laptop in my backpack, docked the iPhone on the front of the bike and fired up MochaVNC to remote in to the laptop via an Ad-hoc network...managed to keep track of some of the data that way just by glancing down at the screen once in a while But yea...that was kinda ghetto hahaha