MX-3.com

Oh.. and here's a quick phone pic of my gauges.
Sorry so crappy, I was driving, hard to hold steady..

Wow, it can show Timing Advance?! Is that a function of OBDPro or DashCommand?

That is really cool Custommx3.
It looks like Marc's setup is what I would be able to actually accomplish. Marc, how would a Noob make this happen? How much would it cost? I could take apart my laptop, and have a remote screen, I suppose. I haven't looked to see, but maybe I could keep the laptop without the screen in the glovebox area.

You can tuck the laptop under the passenger seat and use an external monitor, a little 7" or the 15" i have that you were interested. Remember too that what he's using is an OBDII interface, which won't work on your Mx-3, but I'm sure you want to do that with megasquirt.

Ya, my setup is OBDII+CAN. The gauges will display any information you want and long as it can either be pulled directly from your supported PID's or through a script using a combination of PIDs and formulas.

Unfortunatley, this cant be done with an MX-3. It may be possible with a MSnS or a Haltek.

i couldn't believe that about timing either. so freakin sweet. Custommx, I think I read somewhere that if you leave your obd interface plugged in, it's always on even if your car is off and it could drain your battery. any truth to that?

I thought so too.. but I asked OBDpros regarding it because my battery died one day after upgrading to the v1.3 ELM chip.

Here was their response

"The power drawn is around 20 ma so yes leaving it plugged in will not cause a battery drain"

Turns out my battery had just kicked the bucket. With a carPC though, if you do not drive it, it can draw power and drain your battery. I didnt drive mine for 3-4 days, and my battery was really weak. If Im going to not drive for several days, I put my trickle charger on it.

BTW, if anyone is looking to purchase or build a carPC on the cheap, I still have my previous setup I may sell soon. The only reason I upgraded is that the software I was using was CPU intensive and was not sufficient for realtime gauges. I contacted the company of the software, and they stated the software was designed to use as much as your CPU could provide so you can get realtime data with your gauges.

What do you mean about PID and formulas??

PIDs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs

Forumlas.. Im referring to scripts that take information from PIDs and run them through a forumla and display the result.. Aka miles per gallon, miles per tank, ect.