RomRaider

So I have a unique set up where I normally use the logger...my PC is a motherboard stuffed behind the glovebox, and my monitor and mouse is a 7" 800x480 flip-out touchscreen monitor. This creates a challenge when using a program like the ECU logger as it has too many options and is easy to fat finger with the touchscreen, not to mention scrolling and dragging is a pain.

Lets say, just for instance, when I am driving around normally, the only items I would ever want to log or view in the digital dashboard are LC-1 wideband, RPM, manifold pressure, ignition timing, and my headlight switch. Having 100 some-odd items to pick through when normally I am interested in viewing 2 or 3, and at most 5, for day to day monitoring, can be cumbersome in a situation like mine. So this is what I do...first, get yourself a good XML highlighting plain text editor. http://www.pspad.com/ is my favorite for Windows, Mac I use x-code, and Linux has it built into default text editors for most desktop environments. What ever you do, don't use notepad for windows as it doesn't really do newlines properly (use wordpad if you're in a pinch).

Next, save two copies of your logger.xml file - we'll call one loglite.xml, and the other logfull.xml. logfull we'll leave as it is, but loglite.xml we will open in a text editor.

Now is where the magic happens. Before you start disabling everything you don't want, you have to read over the dependencies for all derived parameters. They start at line 648 for the newest definition. For instance, if you want to use 'Injector Duty Cycle', you will see that it depends on P8 and P21 (RPM and Inj. pulse width), so you cannot disable them. Take note of any dependencies, or you will end up with a blank screen with no parameters as not meeting dependencies will cause the program to fail at parsing the XML document.

Now that you know what you can't disable, go ahead and disable anything else. This is how you do it - lets just say that I don't give a damn about engine load or air/fuel correction. I'll never log them. But I do want coolant temperature. To make sure they never show up in my logger again, I simply comment out the lines of code. Here is what lines 12-53 of the latest logger.xml file look like out of the box:




Now simply wrap any parameters you don't want with XML comment tags. It is very important that you wrap an entire parameter block, starting with
and ending with . Those are start and end tags, and you need your start and end comment tags completely before the start tag, and completely after the end tag, respectfully. Everything contained within will be ignored. In XML/HTML/most markup languages, comment tags start with and end with .

So, now the example above, with everything but coolant temp commented out:



Things become tricky when you run into comment tags already in the file, such as line 650. You can go ahead and remove the existing comments if you don't plan on reading them, or you can close and reopen comment tags around them, like so:

original:



Commented:



I would just delete them, personally...its less confusion.

Alright, now remember we have 3 copies of the file - 1 named logger.xml (the one that RomRaider will read), 1 named loglite.xml (with our commented XML tags that we use for less clutter), and 1 named logfull.xml (an exact copy of the logger.xml file you downloaded).

Now we make two scripts that copy the two different XML files to logger.xml. This assumes that the three xml files, as well as the file you are about to create, all reside in the same directory. These directions are for windows...I assume linux users would know to substitute suitable commands, and mac users can't launch bash scripts from their GUI unless they do so from a shell. Open your text editor, and create a file in the same directory called loglite.bat. Now here is the line for the batch file:


now create a second file called 'logfull.bat' in the same directory, containing the following line:


If you like, drag and drop those as shortcuts to your desktop. Now when you launch the RomRaider logger, you will can launch either of those batch files before hand and have a simplified, dumbed down version of the logger with most commonly used parameters, or the full blown kitchen sink version as it comes out of the box.

Now if you are using a new test version of RomRaider that has plugins for the logger, and you don't want plugins to appear that you don't use (i.e. I don't have AEM UEGO or UTEC), just delete them from the plugins directory and they won't show up - all I have in my plugins directory is the LC-1 plugin.

Now with my edited XML file and removal of unneeded plugins, RomRaider logger fits my most commonly requested parameters neatly (and barely) into an 800x480 window, as seen below:

BTW, a future feature that would be nice in the logger is field masking, perhaps having a few presets that can be edited, and would be saved to settings.xml?

Nice writeup hotspoons!

I'll be using this even though I run a 17" laptop, I don't like having to scroll either.

Jeff

Why not just save profiles for each set of parameters you want at any given time and then simply open that profile when you want it (which should be easy to do from a touch screen (File -> Load Profile).

I do that in conjunction with editing the XML file...but IMHO, it is a lot easier to find what you want, if you want to change any parameters, if you don't have to scroll through fuel tank pressure, window wiper, a/c, and other parameters that don't have much to do with tuning in the process.