Notices

Originally Posted by rotoflex

I think I'll order one of the blue OBD-2 adapters, as the ELM one has not been successful for me.

Originally Posted by woody14619

I like carman, but have also found a few other open-source programs (mainly in python) that work quite well for most of what I'm doing.

Originally Posted by rotoflex

SUMMARY
The best I could reconstruct from the thread is:

1. At this time, OBD2 connection is not assured. It is more likely for the DealExtreme adapters, and less likely for some adapters sold as "Elm327" on ebay.
2. A portion of Carman (the carmand daemon) continues running at high CPU use even when Carman is closed.
3. Carman's .conf file must be changed to use the N900's GPS, & in that configuration will not turn off the GPS after Carman is closed.


Installation of Carman:
1. Open Application Manager, enable extras-devel in Application Catalogs, close Application Manager
2. Open XTerminal, and enter the following commands (waiting for each to finish):
3. sudo gainroot
4. apt-get update
5. apt-get install libeet1=1.2.2+svn41533-maemo1
6. apt-get install carman

If Carman presents the message "No Plugins found" on first run, close Carman & reboot the phone.

Carman debug log is written to:
/home/user/carmand_logYYMMDD_HHMMSS.txt
(YYMMDD and HHMMSS are date and time when the log file was created)

Bluetooth pairing:
Make a note of the bluetooth passkey code with the OBD2 dongle's documentation. Attach the OBD2 dongle to the car & start the car. On the N900, open the Bluetooth manager, set Bluetooth to "On", go to "Devices", then "New", then in "Select a device" choose the device (typically will be listed as "OBDII" or similar in the N900) and enter its passkey code.

OBD2 connection:
After Bluetooth pairing, start Carman & confirm that the OBD2 connection between Carman and the OBD2 bluetooth dongle has been established. There seems to have been more success establishing OBD2 connection with the generic OBD2 bluetooth dongle from Dealextreme.com, & less success with many OBD2 bluetooth dongles labeled "Elm327" from ebay.

A possible culprit is that even though labeled Elm327, the chips in these dongles are counterfeit, as some report in the Carman log as being v1.4, a version Elm has never made. Elm has made versions 1.3a & 1.4b
http://www.elmelectronics.com/obdic.html

Another issue may be a fault in libobd. A discussion of this issue begins at post #225 at
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37259&page=23
A modified and recompiled libobd available from Just4pleisure seemed to yield improved likelihood of OBD2 connection.


Presently, Carman does not turn off GPS after the program closes, & the GPS is difficult to shut down short of re-starting the phone. For this reason, setting Carman's GPS to "internal" is impractical for daily use. However for reference:
To have Carman use the internal GPS:
1. Install Leafpad (if you don't already have it)
2. Open XTerminal and run these commands:
→a. sudo gainroot
→b. leafpad /home/user/.carman/carmand.conf
3. When Leafpad opens the carmand.conf file, edit the gps_device=whatever line to gps_device=internal
4. Save the file carmand.conf, and close Leafpad then XTerminal
5. If it is later desired to disable Carman's GPS from "internal", follow the above steps to modify the line in carmand.conf to "gps=none"

Serious issues even when Carman loads and reads OBD2 data from the car:
1. After closing Carman, GPS and bluetooth remain on and connected. GPS remains difficult to disconnect short of restarting the phone. Note: ssjtoma reports that if you go back to Carman and disconnect from the GPS it will actually stop the GPS so no restart is required.
2. A component of Carman, the carmand daemon, continues running even after closing Carman. CPU use remains high, and the daemon continues to write to the log file with no limit on its size except available storage.
To disable log files (although carmand will continue running):
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=261

3. After closing Carman, still-running carmand will sometimes restart Carman.

Additional gui themes for Carman:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=221

The Carman garage page is located at
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/carman/

Tarballs for the source files of its parts are at
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...urce/c/carman/
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...ation-wrapper/
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...-theme-tuning/
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...an-themes-dev/
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...e/c/carman-ui/
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...rce/c/carmand/

Originally Posted by siafu

Hello, and thank you for your information.

When I get to step 6 (6. apt-get install carman) i get the following error, and can't figure out how to continue.

Carman: Depends: carman-ui (>+ 0.7~pre-alpha-1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken pakage.

Please help!!

Originally Posted by miikka

5. apt-get upgrade

Originally Posted by woody14619

This is generally a *bad* idea, especially if you have devel repos enabled, which you will have for carman. This can seriously screw up your apps if up upgrades something to a devel version that's broken or has something wrong with it.

There are far better ways to get the one library version you need than using upgrade.