Now this could be useful for tuners.

Interesting, but what about this one?

Seems to do much the same for $130...

I was thinking about building a 'street dyno' as a project, as if I didn't have enough on the go already... sadly it recently(?) turned commercial, but the idea is simple enogh for anyone whoc can program...

Connect a timing light pickup to a plug lead and into the mic input on a laptop, record the signal - you're only after pulses for plug firings, so audio quality is not important.

Then you do things like 10mph-60mph in 2nd gear on a flat road, tell it how much your car weighs, final gear ratios etc. and from all that you can work out bhp and torque curves. The equations are all on the web.

Google for 'street dyno' or 'home dyno' to find them.

Balls. Forgot the link.

I haven't tried it, but I have looked around a bit at the options.

iPod Touch + Dynolicious pretty much does all that shit for you.

If you already have a Touch or an iPhone, you get a pretty crude dyno setup for £5.99.

So crude its absolutely pointless other than making wiggly lines. Much like all "street" dynos.

Or nothing if you jailbreak it (not that I would or would encourage that). Apparently I pull 0.64 lateral G on my commute.

There is also an OBD2 program for the touch and iphone.

Yes like that could it give virtual guages of all the functions the OBD2 can read, oil pressure, temperature, things like exhaust gas temps if the car is so equiped. All the sensors that the ecu uses. But that box I mentioned can use a composite output to go to the cars screen if it has one with video in, or to a small VGA, and it can data log to csv files for later analysis. And you can leave it mounted behind the dash and all connected if you use the on board screen. You can make your car dash look like a skyline if you use the touchscreen option.