Open source engine management

[kevm14]

http://www.autoweek.com/article/2014042 ... dailydrive

Options are good but no one should be rooting for the current proprietary solutions to disappear. Hacked GM ECMs and PCMs have served their enthusiast base very well since the late 90s. And EBL, which takes a C3-generation ECM several steps beyond stock is another example of something that is proprietary but a fabulous solution.

This open source stuff is light years from being competitive, just to be clear about that. Like I said, nothing wrong with options. But make no mistake: it's not currently an option (not enough sensor inputs, perhaps more for DIY racing stuff rather than street stuff - tuning aggressive setups for the street will continue to be a special case requiring very mature systems).

[Adam]

This does seem like a pretty new project, so it will need some time (and some talented developers) to be any good. There seems to be some effort behind this project as their forum has 144 members. They even have 37 backers on kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/31 ... t-ecu-firm. Overall, I approve of this project. Most embedded systems are wrapped up in some level of closed-sourceness (hardware and software) which makes it harder for someone to learn about it without a university or company buying a very expensive developer platform and signing some sort of NDA to look at the provided software libraries.

Now if I only had something to plug my MegaSquirt into...

[Adam]

Their board uses the STM32F4 processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM32#STM32_F4 which is a member of the 32-bit ARM Cortex M4 family with such amazing features such as:

• -Up to 180MHz clock!

• -DSP!

• -Floating Point!

• -Up to 192 KB general purpose memory (several different types are included as well)

• -Two different internal oscillators: 16MHz and 32 KHz with provisions for a number of other external oscillators!

All in all, much fancier than the 16-bit Motorola processor in my MegaSquirt.

[kevm14]

It's nice to have fast hardware but the elegance of what can be accomplished with an ancient Motorola 6811 (all 80s C3-generation ECMs run this, including EBL) is nothing but incredible.

On a related note, here's a thread about wanting to shrink down the C3 or P4 ECMs to a much smaller package.

http://www.gearhead-efi.com/Fuel-Inject ... re-project