Autosport Labs

After playing around a lot in the arduino community I have come across this little piece of kit.

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/MiniUSB

I am pretty sure this would ease a lot of those suffering with issues with there usb to serial adaptors. The only issue is that it would not be easy to incorporate this into a neat package.

It is all open source and there is quite a bit of documentation and support for it and is pretty successful with most PC's/laptops.

The only package I can think of is removing the pins, soldering 3 wires into where the pins (gnd, tx and rx) were located and then covering it all in some large heatshrink. Then this could be permanently located in the vehicle if the megajolt is hidden (bit like an obd port) or make up part of the communications lead.

An extra usb lead will need to be obtained. This looks like an old printer usb lead like this

http://www.cabling4less.co.uk/category. ... fAodmR4rlw

Oh and it works well with windows 7

Anyone have any thoughts on this??

If you're going to play those sorts of games then why not go the whole hog and go for something like blueSMiRF - http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10269

One of those hooked up to an RS232-TTL level adaptor would give you wireless comms to your bluetooth enabled laptop.

Our plan is to make the RN-41 / RN-42 bluetooth module available as a plug-in option for Megajolt/C, future "Megajolt/E" hardware versions and other projects.

In the meantime, there's also the uber-convenient (but more expensive) module also from Roving Networks- it works with a standard serial cable without any hardware mods: http://www.g2microsystems.com/products/RN_270

There are a few other companies that sell similar BT-serial adapters.

I got this USB to serial adapter to work with the Innovate LC-1 and haven't had any problems with it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PI ... 00_s00_i01
The only thing you have to watch out for is to make sure it is assigned a COM port that is acceptable to the program which needs to use the serial port adapter.