Hi Everyone

[Dial0]

Hi,

My name is Ethan. I just purchased a Disco board that should arrive soon, so I can have a play with rusefi.

I have a brief electronics engineering background (EE degree), so I know embedded software and digital electronics.
I spend most of my weekends tinkering on older cars (80s and earlier). I have a some experience with EFI systems, but I have always wanted to convert a carb/dizzy engine to EFI and Electronic spark.

I have looked a lot at the Megasquirt range of stuff, but its either far too complex/expensive for what I have in mind, like the MS3pro modules. Or its been abandoned technically, like the MS2 range.

Ideally what I am after is something that has a feature set similar to the MS2 hardware, but without the downsides.
The issues I have with MS2 is that there are two options the Microsquirt range, which end up being expensive for very limited functionality (2 inj and 2 spark channels, only a few i/o). Or the V3 mainboard/daughter board kits which requires extensive hardware modifications to be useful and means you don't end up using the majority of what you pay for.

My Ideal DIY ecu would have the functionality of the MS2Extra firmware, with hardware that is actually designed to match it.

This would be my ECU wishlist:

1. 4 Inj Channel outputs (1 channel can drive a low impedance injector or 2 high impedance)
2. 4 Spark Channel outputs (logic level, so would require an igniter module for standard coils)
3. 2 Engine Angle sensor inputs (VR/Hall/etc configurable)
4. The 6 standard ADC inputs (IAT, CLT, MAF/MAP, TPS, WBO2, BAT)
5. 4 Digital/PWM Outputs (used to control relays / boost solenoids / idle solenoids etc)
   Nice But not critical:
6. 2-4 Digital inputs (simple inputs, no knock sensing or speed sensing)
7. 2-4 Configurable ADC Channels

I feel like if something with this feature set, that worked smoothly with the tuning software, firmware and hardware was able to be made for under $500 it would be useful to a lot of DIY people.

[AndreyB]

Sounds like http://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Manual:Hardware_Frankenso_board or http://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Manual:Hardware_Frankenstein_board!

http://rusefi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=373&start=210#p17865

This ECU project is somewhat stalled in beta version: the hardware design is pretty settled and looks good, software is still lacking a bit but kind-of-good-enough, but no one with advanced car & tuning experienced has played with this yet to really test it. Until someone who would really be able to evaluate it tries it, I am in the dark in terms of what is missing to make the last steps towards having something useful.

I have a prototyping shop assembling these boards for us, a bunch of people got these but troubleshooting this is really requiring some advanced skills.

[Dial0]

I really dig the hardware choices for the Frank~ boards
What are the differences between them? has the stein board been superseded by the (d?)enso board?

Is there a plan to use a universal style enclosure / connector?
Looking on aliexpress I found a retailer that sells enclosures and matching pcb mount connectors for fairly cheap ( $9 case, $5 connector pair), but with minimum order Qtys of ~5.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/ECU-Connectors-and-Aluminum-Enclosure/1773034_500976095.html

[AndreyB]

I really dig the hardware choices for the Frank~ boards
What are the differences between them? has the stein board been superseded by the (d?)enso board?

Top of http://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware:For_Sale page has a bit of comparison. Yes, Frankenso is being developed while Frankenstein is pretty much suspended since it has served it's purposes and it's too limited while too cheap.

[Dial0]

I got the disco board and have been playing with it.
I have a twin carb 6 cylinder that I am looking to convert to EFI, its very space constrained so I am looking to replace each carb with a single injector.

So 1 injector for cylinders 1,2,3 and 1 injector for cylinders 4,5,6. Is it possible to setup the injector settings to allow each injector to inject 3 times per engine cycle? Corresponding to each cylinders induction. Imagine sequential injection, but cylinders 1,2,3 are OR'd together to output on 1 pin, and cylinders 4,5,6 are OR'd to output on another pin.

Also is there any guide/documentation about all the setting in turner studio and what they do?

[AndreyB]

Please try enabling self-stimulation to see how the signals would look like, set it to 6 cylinders and batch injection. Would it be what you are looking for?

Documentation is weak. In TunerStudio, some fields have a bubble with more info next the label. Please ask questions and I will add more bubbles like that.

[Dial0]

This is what the batch setting looks like, I am guessing it is assuming 6 injectors (1 for each cylinder), where 2 are always firing at the same time, like wasted spark?



What I want to do is replace a carb with a single injector, 1 carb feeds 3 cylinders, so one injector would be fueling 3 cylinders.
I think something like this would work well.


but since the injector is so far from the combustion camber it would probably be ok to fire each injector once per full engine cycle (720 degrees), with injector firing offset by 360 degrees.

The other option is just to run simultaneous, but only wire it to two injectors, meaning each injector will fire 6 times per engine cycle. Instead of 3.

[AndreyB]

is that a V-shaped engine by any chance? Yes, current batched mode is same idea as wasted spark exactly.

It believe it would be an easy code change to add one more injection mode called "2 injectors" - that would probably help v6 and v8 conversions, no idea if there are v8 engines where each bank is fed by it's own carb. How does it work with dual or quad carb v8 by the way?

There is an opinion that the difference between different injection schedules is pretty minor, that's just a cherry on the cake - once there is a cake.

[Dial0]

its an inline 6 with a manifold similar to this


Most down downdraught carbs, like whats seen on american v engines feed a central camber connected to all the intake runners. So all the manifold runners are connected where they meet the carb. There are dual plane manifolds, where with a 4 barrel carb, 2 barrels feed one half of the cyclinders and the other 2 barrels feed the other half.

Standard type manifold, same for 2-3 carb setups normally.


Dual Plane manifold

[AndreyB]

Thank you!

[AndreyB]

I have a brief electronics engineering background (EE degree), so I know embedded software and digital electronics.

Any chance you would be able to help with changing https://svn.code.sf.net/p/rusefi/code/trunk/firmware/chibios/boards/ST_STM32F4_DISCOVERY/board.h so that we have a better default state for https://sourceforge.net/p/rusefi/tickets/293/ ?

[Dial0]

Yeah I can have a look, not familiar with the STM32 that much though.

Any chance you can post the config that caused all 6 to to blink at the same time?

[AndreyB]

Just added the mofidied .h file, the patch and some info on how to recreate the configuration into https://sourceforge.net/p/rusefi/tickets/293/