Importance

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Abstract

A vehicle data storage system is provided which includes a plurality of sensors for sensing vehicle operating conditions, such as engine temperature. A control module receives the vehicle operating conditions and translates the vehicle operating conditions into vehicle information. A portable hand held computing device, such as a Handspring.RTM. or Palmpilot.RTM., has a data storage device or memory that receives the vehicle information. The data storage device is limited by a particular memory capacity. A secondary storage device receives the vehicle information from the data storage device from the portable hand held computing device when the memory capacity reaches a desired memory capacity level, such as when there is only 10% of the memory left in the data storage device. Additionally, one of the vehicle operating conditions in one of the subsystem control modules may comprise a triggering event. The triggering event may be detecting a high engine temperature in an engine temperature sensor. The subsystem control module then produces a request signal for event data in response to the triggering event. A memory buffer stores the vehicle information from all of the subsystem control modules. The event data is defined by a first predetermined time before the triggering event to a second predetermined time after the triggering event so that the data surrounding the triggering event resides in the memory buffer. The data in the memory buffer is written over by new data unless a request signal is received. A secondary storage device receives the event data in response to the request signal.

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First Claim