POSTS

Software for Mac OS X

Your Macintosh needs certain software in order to use the ED-BMS box.

Software driver

Note: MacOS Catalina (10.15.x) and Mojave (10.14.x) already ship with this software driver pre-installed from Apple, so you can skip this first software driver section if you are running a modern version of MacOS.

Older MacOS: Your Macintosh needs a software driver to be able to communicate with the ED-BMS Diagnostic unit. This is a small piece of software that makes the box show up as a serial port that other programs can access.

You only need to do this one time for the computer.

  1. Download the driver here.

  2. Unzip that file.

  3. Install the CH34x_Install_V1.4.pkg file inside.

Serial Port Program

You also need a program to communicate with the serial port.

Your Mac comes with one built in, called “screen”. I’ve created a helper application that will launch screen with the right port selected. This is the program that you will run each time you want to grab the diagnostics from your car.

  1. Download that application.

  2. Unzip it.

  3. Run the ED-BMS application. (Programmers can look at the script file if they choose. Patches and improvements are welcomed.)

  4. If you like, move or copy that ED-BMS application someplace handy on your Mac for future use. This is the program you will use each time.

Saving your data

When you’re done, unplug the ED-BMS box from the laptop and close the black/green terminal window.

The transcript of your session will be saved in a file called “EDBMS-CCYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS.txt” in your user directory (~) (where the actual filename will have the timestamp in year, month, date, time format.

This is a plain textfile that can be read by any program, emailed, posted to the forum for others to help extract information, etc.