Your experiences with Megasquirt, Haltech, ECUmaster?

[MetalMonkey]

I was in with Dave Walker at the time he set Emerald up and his early attempts were challenging to say the least. I understand it was eventually sorted but I never saw a successful setup using his cams and Emerald engine management

As I recall, Karl is the chap behind the electronics/software of the Emerald ECU design, Dave was more into the tuning side of things.

 

[8ob]

As I recall, Karl is the chap behind the electronics/software of the Emerald ECU design, Dave was more into the tuning side of things.

That's right, he is/was the brains behind it. Many major improvements made over the years and still competitively priced.

Bob

 

[sako243]

@rcx132 what's the current injection setup in terms of coil packs etc?

The ECU above I built is being wired up on a 4.6 Rover V8. It's not going fully sequential at the moment (partly my OCD but for other reasons*) but will just be doing wasted spark as there are 4 outputs for injectors and coils.

The reason I've gone down this route rather than Megasquirt etc., is that a it's cheaper and I prefer STM32 processors (for when I spin my own from the ground up) but also I've tailored it to suit an original manual 4.6 flywheel with the factory crank sensor. Something that would have been more painful doing Megasquirt. I've switched out the GEMs coil packs for VAG ones as they are logic level driven and £50 for a pair of coil packs was worth it rather than faffing testing circuitry to drive the coils directly (not particularly difficult but not necessarily a walk in the park).

* the ecu housing I found on Aliexpress and comes with two Delphi Sicma 24 way connectors. By keeping it wasted spark I can keep the vehicle and V8 engine looms on separate harnesses. If I did fully sequential for minimal benefit then I'd have lost 16 of the pins for just coil packs and injectors.

Still got a wee bit of wiring to do (work and family stuff keeps getting in the way) so can let you know but so far wiring it up has been pretty straightforward but I'm building a new harness from scratch.

 

[Misterg]

Any love for the Motorsports Electronics ECUs (ME221 / ME442, etc.)?

 

[julianf]

Im not sure anyone has mentioned speeduino yet?

 

[badabec]

Im not sure anyone has mentioned speeduino yet?

Hello, mentioned in post 14 by @sako243

 

[Ruffian]

So with the rally cars and modified cars we have used so far,

Maxx ecu
Omex 600,610,700,
Mega jolt and mega squirt,
Simtek.

Omex is easy for a stand alone unit, currently wiring one up on a red top powered mk2 escort.

maxx ecu Is similar but more modern with app and built in map sensors etc, seems like a newer omex which I really like.
Friend has one in a throttle bodied abd mk1 gold.

Mega squirt at times is limited in it's functionality.
Simtek was brilliant but a bit aged now.

Making for motorsport on YouTube does a full speedquino build for his Vauxhall powered mini and would certainly be tempted about more research as seems to be very capable (megasquirt or better) for an attractive price.

 

[Muzzer]

Not with those specific ones but I have built my own. Currently just a prototype with an off the shelf core but once the vehicles up and running it'll be replaced with a fully integrated one
Running Speeduino at the core of it but in a nice waterproof housing with proper automotive connectors. One for the vehicle side of the harness and one for the engine side.

I lost the story of how MS sort of evolved into Speeduino. It seems to have lost some of the open source element if I understand correctly (I'm not clear on that), yet the DIY-EFI board seems to be an Arduino-sized board with the coil and spark drivers integrated (and using surface mount compts), based on the Speeduino design?

I've seen Josh Stuart holding forth on the circuit design of his V0.4 product and I have to say that as an automotive electronics engineer with some decades of developing ECUs I wouldn't feel comfortable using it on a road vehicle, without wishing to sound snooty. The DIY-EFI product has presumably been developed by a different team in the UK but there again I see tantalum and electrolytic caps which wouldn't be seen on a modern automotive product.

I have an Emerald K3 on my 1967 Honda S800 although I have minimal experience of tuning it yet. I like the apparent ease of use of the Speeduino and Tunerstudio, so perhaps I should keep an eye on how they evolve before considering a change of ECU. The Honda is in storage until I upgrade my workshop again, this time presumably to an old farm.

Interesting reference to the GPZ1100B2 - the last bike I did any meaningful work on was a GPZ1100A1 before the sprogs started to arrive, before we found out what caused it. IIRC that was the last of the air cooled engines, the first of the fuel injected engines and the first with unitrack rear suspension (I might be wrong on some of that). That was a head / barrels off job, primarily to replace some worn valve guides.

 

[Tinbasherdan]

We used a fueltech ecu for the drag car. It’s not cheap but it just…… works. Everything is infinitely tweakable, and sensible to operate

 

[sako243]

@Muzzer there is no link between Speeduino and Ms other than the fact they are both supposed to be open source, to my knowledge anyway. At least with Speeduino everything is actually open source, Megasquirt seems to publish very little these days of the recent designs. MS is quite an old design and when I most recently looked into it has some quite archaic choices.
Playing devil's advocate a fair number of the aftermarket ECU's I've seen have been stated as off-road use only nor has there been any mention of what standards they've been tested against. I've just had a hunt through Haltech's website and the quick start guide for their ECU specifically lists it as offroad use only unless an exemption (i.e. Up to you) is sought. No where could I find a statement of conformity showing the standards tested to. There's even less available on Emerelds website.
At least with Speeduino someone stands a chance of doing that themselves if they needed to. Having seen some frankly quite horrific closed source code that "works" I personally would prefer something like Speeduino that as an electronics engineer I can evaluate, improve and test myself.

I see tantalum and electrolytic caps which wouldn't be seen on a modern automotive product.

Can you provide some evidence for this (as in the latter half of that statement)? I have seen no where in any automotive standard I have read through or tested against any reference to banning tants or electrolytics. Needing them rated to be able to pass tests is all that is required. Why on earth would Vishay, Kyocera and KEMET (for example) have entire sections of their websites and inventories dedicated to automotive tantalum and electrolytic capacitors if they weren't used?

Case in point a BOSCH ECU teardown, I spy electrolytics

A DENSO ECU teardown, again more electrolytics

And finally a Tesla ECU, yup you guessed it

I'd also refer you to (as one example) section 6.2.1 - Input Pin of Infineon's TLE42744 datasheet (an automotive LDO)

An aluminum electrolytic capacitor in the range of 10 µF to 470 µF is recommended as an input buffer to smooth out high energy pulses, such as ISO pulse 2a.

For those members that aren't au fait with automotive standards ISO Pulse 2a is a pulse designed to mimic something under load in a vehicles electrical system being disconnected and the resultant voltage spikes. Why would a company renowned for manufacturing automotive components specifically state that you should use an electrolytic cap if they wouldn't be seen on a modern automotive system?

I'm happy to be proven wrong but based on my experience and the evidence above your statement is just plain wrong and misleading.

 

[steveo3002]

got a microsquirt on my polo , figured it all out with no knowledge

what id say is be mindfull what the finished cost will be , i could have gotten a newer /better /faster engine with factory ecu for less than my cobbled together stuff cost me , while its cool to be able to map your own engine chances are you will never get it as good as a factory tune for idling /emissions etc

 

[sg66]

What engine is it you have used, I see vitara options for both a physical removal of egr and egr delete done with a map but leaving everything in place