Car Serial Logger & Plotter

Read semicolon-separated telemetry from an Arduino over USB serial, live-plot key signals, and save everything to CSV.

✨ Features

• Auto or manual serial port selection
• Robust parsing of 17 integer fields (see format below)
• Live plots: RPM, speed+gear, temperatures, pressures & voltages
• Continuous CSV logging to ./logs/...
• Demo mode (no hardware needed) to try the UI and plots

⚡ Quick Start

1) Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• USB access to your Arduino (e.g., /dev/ttyUSB0 / /dev/ttyACM0 or COM3)

# (Recommended) create a virtualenv
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install deps
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install pyserial matplotlib

2) Run with your device

# If you know the port and baud (typical 115200):
python3 audi_logger_plot.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 115200

# If there is exactly ONE serial device attached, you can omit --port:
python3 audi_logger_plot.py --baud 115200

3) Try without hardware (demo)

python3 audi_logger_plot.py --demo

When running, a plotting window opens and a CSV is written to ./logs/audi_YYYYmmdd_HHMMSS.csv.

🔌 Arduino → PC Data Format

Each frame is semicolon-separated integers followed by newline+carriage return (\n\r). The Arduino code writes ASCII 59 (i.e., ;) between values, then ends the line.

Field order (17 ints):

1. log_index
2. engine_rpm
3. vehicle_speed
4. gear
5. torque
6. oil_coolant_temperature
7. EGT_bank1
8. EGT_bank2
9. intake_air_temperature
10. oil_press
11. fuel_press
12. MAP_value
13. exhaust_press_bank1
14. exhaust_press_bank2
15. U12V
16. U5V
17. faultword1

Example line (values illustrative):

1023;2450;78;5;220;92;640;628;31;320;2900;1480;160;155;13820;5015;0

Note: A trailing ; before \n\r is tolerated by the parser.

📈 What you’ll see

• Engine RPM (solo subplot)
• Vehicle Speed (left Y) and Gear (right Y)
• Temperatures: coolant, IAT, EGT bank 1/2
• Pressures & Voltages: oil, fuel, MAP, exhaust bank 1/2, 12V and 5V rails
• Fault overlay: decodes faultword1 bits into labels (edit in code to match your mapping)

🔧 Common Options

--port /dev/ttyUSB0   # or COMx on Windows; omit if only one device is present
--baud 115200         # match your Arduino sketch
--csv ./logs/run1.csv # custom CSV output path
--max-points 2000     # history depth shown in live plots
--demo                # synthetic data, no hardware required

🛟 Troubleshooting

Permission denied on Linux

# Add your user to the dialout (or tty/uucp) group, then re-login
sudo usermod -aG dialout "$USER"

Garbled / wrong numbers

• Verify baud rate matches the Arduino sketch.
• Ensure the Arduino sends integers separated by ; and ends with \n\r.

Multiple USB devices

• Specify --port explicitly (e.g., /dev/ttyACM0, /dev/ttyUSB0, COM5).

Matplotlib backend/Tk errors

• On some Linux distros you may need system packages (e.g., python3-tk).

🧩 Customization

• Signals shown / grouping: move lines between subplots or add new axes.
• Units & scaling: if your U12V/U5V are in millivolts or oil pressure is in centi‑units, scale them in the update function before plotting.
• Fault decoding: edit faultword_to_flags() to match your bit layout.

📂 Project Layout

.
├─ audi_logger_plot.py   # main script
└─ logs/                 # CSV outputs (auto-created)

🤝 Contributing

PRs welcome! Ideas: CSV replay mode, export to Parquet, plot themes, configurable field names/units.

📜 License

Choose your license (e.g., MIT or Apache‑2.0). Add a LICENSE file in the repo root.