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Game Boy Advance Becomes Car Tuning Tool
Thanks to 1UP for its story discussing a new Game Boy Advance peripheral which "turns the GBA into a data logging computer and tuning interface for sports cars". The story explains of TurboXS' DTEC peripheral: "The basic version of the DTEC turns the GBA into a customizable digital gauge for displaying boost pressure, RPM, and different temperature settings. Future upgrades will evidently allow it to show more indicators, like G-forces, knock warnings, and other data."
Now all those 2am drivers will be able to know EXACTLY how much they can rev their engine before it blows their car into a thousand peices on my lawn!
Cause, y'know, when that happens they probably wouldn't clean it up themselves. Lazy bums.
Now I won't be able to tell if he's sitting at the stoplight playing Metroid, or preparing to drop the clutch at 5,000 RPM.
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Before you all go out to buy this, you need to first purchase a custom ECU for about $1000, and this company only makes them for a handfull of cars (Subaru, Mitsu Evo, Toyota MR2, Nissan 300zx, Neon SRT4...). Follow the 2nd link in the original post for more info.
It needs a huge wing.
Plus have GPS, Cellular internet and WIFI connectivity.
And all the games you can cram on.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
It's just like Gran Turismo for my GBA...just what I've always wanted. :-)
Currently this useless waste of moolah displays only boost temperatures, engine speeds and exhaust gas temperatures, of which only one of those 'gauges' are not normally found in your average car. However, if I understand correctly, you also have to install the sensor for the EGT anyway, which while being logical in itself, proves that this device is completely useless. Apparently you will be able to use it later on to modify the maps in their custom ECUs, but when they advertise stuff like "Automatically retards timing when the knock is detected safeguarding against engine damage" (something my 5.0L 1988 Grand Marquis station wagon did), I would suggest looking elsewhere. For the cost of their dubious ECU and certainly useless Gameboy peripheral, you could at least purchase some quality performance gauges which would tell you this information, all the time.
We just need a few more of these senor/diagnostic cartridges to turn a GBA-SP into a Next Generation Tricorder.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
looks like it's just a cable to multiboot the gba. I have a coder's cable for my gba that allows me to run small homebrew programs. One homebrew program, for instance, lets me use my GBA as a virtual keyboard (or really, a virtual joystick!). I never thought of actually displaying info on it, it's pretty ingenious of them (and pretty cheap to manufacture, just a GBA link cable). Imagine if someone displayed the weather, displayed RSS feeds, or alerted you when you got email? all on it's own little screen sitting next to your PC... that would be a pretty cool alternative to the LCD mods people have on their cases (full colour! high res!).