rusefi.com

Hello everyone,

I have been poking around for a little while on this site trying to get the feel for what there is, what's in the works, and how the code is working. I figured while I do that I could introduce myself.

I have always been into things that move, worked on and built snowmobiles, dirt bikes, and lawn tractors when I was younger and moved on to cars and motorcycles later. I will post my 2 current projects later.

I have recently received my M.S. in EE (don't worry I won't design more hardware.) I work closely in the automotive industry making IC's. Although most of what I do is write MATLAB and C++ code to simulate/test things.

My main interest in this project, as of now, is learning more about the software and what considerations go into an ECU. And hopefully eventually I will be able to contribute.

Onto the fun stuff my projects.

#1 is my Mercedes 190e with a 4.8l LS and 4l80e. Behind it I have a Ford 8.8 solid lsd/rear axle hooked up with a 4 link suspension set for drag racing. If that wasn't enough it will be turbo charged.

The issue with this build is that I need transmission control and while rusEFI could likely drive the solenoids in the 4l80e I am not 100% on how the intricacies of it work. So we will see how that one ends up, I still have about 6 months to a year left on the build if I had to guess.

Will upload photos later.

#2 is my Nissan 300zx. I bought this car to learn how stuff works. From EFI to TIG welding. I also turbo charged this one. This one runs and drives on megasquirt 2. I am not 100% satisfied with it though due to the lack of IO and I would not be able to hook up a wheel speed sensor to get a speedometer working through the ECU. This car I would be willing to switch to rusEFI once I had time.

Will upload photos later.

New England you say. How close to Southern Maine are you?

MatLab you say. We have been considering trying to make a SciLab model based version of the code. Perhaps you might be interested in something like that.

I live/work in NH, about an hour from the ME boarder. My vehicles are in central ME so I am often up there.

My quick 5 minute analysis on SciLab is that it looks similar to Simulink. I dont have as much experience in Simulink but I know enough were I can make models. As for making a model in SciLab that sounds like something I could help out with, I would just have to learn and understand the current code. Out of curiosity what are the benefits you are looking to get out of SciLab?

There is a dream to write some most high level code not in C. Unfortunately its unclear if we have nice self-contained code generation options.

I understand most OEM's program with a model based approach. We are using a table based approach. If you have a model based approach, you can model the entire system, using the the ECU as one piece of the simulation. With our current approach, you basically have to simulate with real world hardware. It would be cool if we could validate a range of temperatures by running a simulation. As well a model based setup would allow you to adjust the equation to fit your needs. Right now the table is used to prevent the need for many complicated math's. Model based stuff would allow us to change the math's to simulate things like carbon build up, or a plugged air filter.

I could see a generic model useful to simulate many parameters. However I believe the real place that things get interesting is if we can take the simulation and directly compile it to an ECU. Right now if we could use SciLab to blink an LED on a STM32 discovery board, that would be a huge and cool thing. We do not currently have a clear path to make that happen. We believe it can be done, we just don't know how it is done.

I see the first post has been updated. I once had a 1984 300ZX. Didn't have it long, just tried to flip it for some quick cash to by books for school.

You might find our FSIO interesting. If you can control the solenoids, this feature of the software will likely allow you to control the solenoids with what ever you need. FSIO is very flexible. You can do stuff like, if above RPM blah, then activate output blah. With FSIO you can basically write a program to react to input and generate outputs.

I would love to extend https://rusefi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Manual:Flexible_Logic one day so that transmission control would be done mostly or completely in FSIO - that's if we believe that just a few curves are needed to switch solenoids.

The FSIO stuff looks promising, I have used a simple version of that previously to control radiator fans. I will have to look into it more to understand more of what it can do.

As far as using SciLab to blink an LED I have done/seen similar stuff before where we take a Simulink model and compile it into C++. From here it is easy to put onto a micro-controller. You still need the hardware interface layer so blinking an LED would likely be harder using this method though But maybe there is a way to include the hardware interface layer. This likely isnt the thread for that though.