Okay, I know nothing about this topic, but why is it we need the tuner, is there no way to use a laptop to flash the memory on your car's computer? What kind of port or connection does a tuner plug into? Seems crazy that you have to pay 350+ for a machine that can't store more than one tune at a time.

Shrug, just curious.
-pete

 

Seems to me to be totally possible. I think it might be a marketing scam. Damn entrepreneurs!

 

the tuner is just a simple way to get a tune into the cars computer..to use a laptop im pretty sure you need software to make tunes and thats the expensive part..just like you computer needs windows to run or w/e u have...and you need a program like word to type a paper...i bet the people you send your tuners to make a program on their computers and then just load it into your tuner...if u had their computer you can just load it right to your car...another example is an mp3 player...you have all your music on your comuter at home...but you can also put it on an mp3 player and carry it around..and then if you want you can load it onto another computer...all 1's and 0's

 

Been looking at what you can do with a laptop. Most programs you can only monitor what is going on under the hood, but they look COOL, like an on-board dyno, monitoring all your trouble codes, and you can reset your troublecodes without having to go to the dealer. (Maybe there is a better way to do that? proscan seems to be popular.

then there's this site: http://www.diyautotune.com/

looks like if you really went after it, they could show you how to tune with a laptop... oh well, no easy looking way that I can find.

 

when i go to Nintendo Software Technologies, pretty much all the guys are into cars and tuning (because all the computer engineers there have a crap load of money and nothing to do with it). a lot of them have developed little softwares that they put on "computers" that are mounted in their cars that allow them to edit their tunes on the fly.

i say "computers" because they are not laptops, they are just screens connected to small boards that they have completely programmed

they are really cool, and the materials (other than the molding for it to be fitted into their cars) are extremely cheap (they dont cost more than $80 to make) but it takes a butt-load of knowlege in making the softwares



so yes, it is possible to pretty much do anything.
will it happen and be sold to the public? probably not, because they guys who make them dont need more money!

 

the solution i see is this.... someone needs to make an emulator .... an emulator for example lets you play nintendo games, sega games, super nintendo... basically any game ever made on a computer... the program (emulator) emulates the system.... someone has 2 try and upload the main program from the tuner and if their good at making programs and stuff could emulate it and then u can use eveyrthing the tuner has on ur computer doing the same exact thing as if having hte tuner. you could probably even make the tuners interface on the computer and have everything correspond to the set buttons so that everything done on the handheld is possible w/ the click of a mouse and everything....

if that were to be done... there is your tuner. lol

 

ive seen import tuners use game boys to tune their cars..thats all i know about it...

 

what somebody need to do it get a serial port reader, and "upload" the tune to their computer, and let the reader grab all the information comming through. then figure out what all the garbage on the screen means in car terms, and make some nice little file writer with a GUI that sends information back out