Animated Interactive demo of PSD

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Aug 30 2006, 10:45 AM) [snapback]311570[/snapback]</div>

Very cool stuff. It got me thinking about my project Mac Prius

I'm reading in data from the CAN-view to drive a touch screen interface on my mac. I've been thinking about taking the other data coming from the CAN-view and making some sort of interface displaying that. Not being a graphics programmer I never really did much with it.

But your flash program gives me some really cool ideas. What if we could have your flash driven by real time data coming from the CAN-view instead of the sliders? I've found some perl modules that let perl talk to flash programs. With those I could have my perl program that controls Front Row also talk to your flash program and display things real time. Cool huh?

The cool thing about flash and perl is that it can run on any platform, mac, windows, linux so it may open up this project to be something much more then a mac project.

That said, I've never done flash programming. I guess I would need to purchase macromedia. Can you give me pointers on where to start with flash? Any chance you would be willing to share your code with me so that I could start playing around with that interface?

 

It would be really nice if there was a standalone flash player,
rather than having to load a plugin into a browser and then have
it put you at risk as you surf everything *else*. That way the
SWF could simply be downloaded and played atomically, leaving the
browser entirely out of the picture except maybe to do the download.
.
_H*

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jkusnetz @ Aug 30 2006, 12:47 PM) [snapback]311640[/snapback]</div>

Well thanks to a lot of help from Ichabod with the flash, I've finally cobbled together his flash with my perl reading the CAN-view and came up with this:

Live PSD!

Warning, it's blury and bouncy and you can't see the details but it will give you an idea where we are heading!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Sep 8 2006, 10:40 PM) [snapback]316779[/snapback]</div>

It's really hard to see the gears spinning in place in the movie. Plus the flash is 1/400 true speed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Aug 29 2006, 10:06 AM) [snapback]311106[/snapback]</div>

Wow, that's amazing!! THANKS!!

 

The limits you have for the PSD in the text discussion in the middle seems to be different from what I understand should be for a Gen2 Prius. ICE should be limited for 0 - 5000 rpm, MG1 is between -10000 and 10000 rpm.

Also, you need to put in some wait/sleep statements into the ActiveScript/code because your is Flash animation is taking 70-80% of available cpu (in Firefox) while it's just sitting there. If anything, limit yourself to 60fps or something sane. I don't get the same bogdown with the Java simulator.

Also, at a certain point, the gear teeth for MG1, while in reverse, look like they stop spinning. It might be just the strobe effect.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Sep 8 2006, 10:40 PM) [snapback]316779[/snapback]</div>

No new movies or pictures, but I posted my new perl code, and a ActionScript (Flash programing language) snippet for talking to the perl code on my Prius Page for anyone who is interested.

 

Hi Ichabod, thanks for posting this demo. It's really fantastic for understanding this deceptively simple gear system.

One thing I'd like to see is a slider you can adjust for MG1, the sun gear. The current demo leads to the impression that if the ICE and MG2 are pushing, MG1 must be revolving in the opposite direction.

It took me a long time to realize that in order to start the ICE, MG1 and MG2 must revolve in the same direction, or at least not in opposite directions.

One thing you might consider is adding that 3rd slider, and a little lock on each the user can turn off or on. In the initial state at 0mph MG2 and ICE should be locked and MG1 unlocked.

For example, if I dragged the MG2 slider up in your demo now, MG1 would go down and ICE would do nothing - which is exactly what should happen. It's as if those 2 locks are on right now.

To demonstrate ICE starting at that point, I could unlock ICE, then drag MG1 upwards. What will happen is ICE is forced upwards, which is exactly how ICE is started as you accelerate above 25mph.

I could then lock MG2 and ICE, unlock MG1, and drag ICE upwards. That causes MG1 to shoot up higher. This demonstrates ~30mph where the ICE is being run artificially fast, in its optimal range, and MG1 is generating electricity. Note that electric motors can generate electricity running in either direction: it's a matter of whether it's pushing, resisting (generating), or spinning freely that matters, not the direction itself. The lock helps convey which of those it's doing.

Finally, to show accelleration to highway speeds I could lock ICE and MG1, and unlock MG2, then slowly drag MG1 downwards. This is the "eCVT" action of the transmission - MG1 is now using electricity to rotate more and more in the negative, and this causes the ICE to have to work harder to keep spinning at its constant rate (that's not entirely obvious from this diagram... but that's the infinitely variable gear ratio right there, how fast MG1 spins in the opposite direction of ICE).

It might also be informative to see the forgotten gears get a single bar that should never be user-controllable: the 4 planets on the ICE ring. That 1 bar would have the same positive/negative 6500rpm range as the electric motors, but no lock control.

Alternatively to locks you could just have a 4th bar that varies speed, and vary all the other 3 bars for the user (none of them user controllable), with the above actions taking place as you drag the bar upwards. That would certainly be more code to write though.

 

Hi Ichabod - awesome! A Demo would be perfect - I was just worried about how much coding you'd have to do to put it together.

The inputs from a Demo perspective could be an Accelerator slider and Brake slider you increase or decrease "pressure" on.

You might consider increasing the available RPMs on the motors to reflect the new 2004-2007 Prius by the way - it looks like the gas can do 7000rpm and the electrics 10000rpm. But I bet the brilliant minds here can get you more exact numbers, I've heard a few variations on those.

The only reason I'd be interested to see the planetary gears is out of curiosity in which way they're going - for example, when all 3 motors are spinning in a positive direction at different speeds, what the planetaries are doing isn't trivial. But if you can see them spinning in the diagram that covers it, I'd say.

Thanks for the great demo, Ichabod, it really is excellent.