ME221 and FM221 rip off DRAMA....NOW WITH 60% less RIP Hydra?
 

Their site is completely neglected, and they no longer respond on their forums. There have been no updates to the firmware or tuning software in years. Does anyone know if they're still actually around, or just manufacturing their stuff for Flyin' Miata to sell?

even FM doesn't sell that junk no more

What?

Rumors have been going around for about last year of them being for sale or going out of business. They also let their domain name expire a bit later back, then managed to renew it. So yeah not sure how much longer they will really be around.

They still sell the Hydra. They are just now starting to sell the FM221 as a cheaper alternative.

FM has a new product they're working on with some English ECU company (I forget the name). They had the prototype board at MRLS this year, it goes inside the stock ECU case like the old Link ECU did.

They're still selling the Hydra and will likely continue to support it for many years to come even when (if) they stop.

--Ian

Anybody have any experience with the new Flyin Miata ECU (FM221) as yet? Looks like they are dirt cheap on their site today ($410 w/o knock sensor or WBO2), and I'm thinking hard about pulling the trigger on it. I wonder how it compares to the Hydra and MS.

It's mediocre at best. And it's not 400 lol

You are not scrolling down to the actual price. The intro price of the FM221 is $999.95. The $410 is just the knock sensor and WBO2 price and IAT sensor.

Yeah I just figured that out, my bad. Well at $1000 it no longer holds my interest versus a Megasquirt unit. Still need an ECU, Reverant still building?

You can buy MSLabs stuff at Trackspeed Engineering in the US (vendor here).

I spent six months at FM working on the FM221 project...
Yet, I'm still on a Megasquirt in my own car.

I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions.

Most of us have, a long time ago :)

Mslabs
 

I am really happy with my MSlabs ms3basic, and yes he is still building, and you can have one made to order directly, if you don't mind a little lead time.

Can't get much more authoritative than that, thankya' sir.

Or buy one sitting off the shelf and have it shipped today :)

MSLabs Megasquirt MS3 Basic

Yeah, you can. Joe's experience is working with fairly early prototypes. There's been a lot of progress since he skipped town early last year. He's never driven what's being offered to the public, and even if he wanted an FM221 there's been no way for him to get one until now.

As for Hydra, yes, there's some change at the company. I don't think they're going away, but I don't know all the details of what's going on behind the scenes. Nobody - including the vendors who sell Hydra on other platforms - wants it to disappear.

Another authority on the subject! Keith the MS platform is proven and costs the same as the FM221, at least until the sale on the FM unit ends.
Why should I buy the FM unit over a MS? I'd seriously like to know. Pretty much everything in my car is from FM but I always balked at the Hydra because of the cost.

In all honesty, after the ridiculous bugs of the last year or so, the me221 is "manageable". A friend of mine has been a guinea pig for the manufacturer, as he released updates to the software based on his and other's bugs. While he got his car tuned by a tuner, some little hiccups were fixed by me and him in several aspects including idle and boost control. The platform is fairly straightforward, though the menus are a PITA if you are used to TS.

Hydra's are still being sold, installed, and tuned on various platforms. Very much not a dead company, just looking to switch hands. Still a great ECU if you are knowledgeable on the platform, or know someone who is.

It's a fair question, and probably a common one. I'm going to ignore spec sheets, because they're roughly similar.

The user base for MS is large, but primarily consists of amateurs or racers. The former vary widely in their experience, knowledge and tuning abilities, so you need to be able to evaluate the quality of what you're reading. The latter pay very close attention to the parts of the map that are important to them, but tend to ignore the street drivability aspects. Remember that the MS is a universal ECU that's being used on the Miata. The FM221 is more of a Miata-specific unit. I know from speaking to the guys at DIY Autotune that we've gone a lot deeper into Miata-specific setup then they have because they simply don't have the time to focus so closely on one vehicle. Our base maps will be more finely tuned and all the difficult corners of the map like AC compensation and cold start are addressed. Honestly, most of our back-and-forth with getting the ME221 ready to sell involved these areas.

The install base for this will grow, so you'll still be able to go to forums if that's how you prefer to get your information. There's already an enormous install base in the UK for the ME version of the ECU, actually. Based on the sales numbers over there, I suspect it's outselling the MS. But you'll also have the option of going to a professional. Instead of digging around to see if someone might have had the same behavior you're dealing with AND solved the problem AND posted a correct solution - you can just email us a log and say "what's going on?". If you're at the dyno and you come across a weird problem, you can make a phone call instead of searching.

We've had a number of MS cars come through our shop. The quality of the tune is almost never what we would expect, despite the size of the install base or the number of forum posts. It's that 20 years of experience in tuning ECUs and a full-time tuning expert on staff, that's what we bring to the table. To a lot of people, this professional support is important. For those who love the smell of solder, then the MS is always an option.

Does it have wheel differential speed based traction control?

No. A full list of features is included on the product webpage if you want to play the spreadsheet game. I'd post them here, but I can't manage to get the forum to format the table legibly so I have to settle for links.

FM221 for 1990-93
FM221 for 1994-97
FM221 for 1999-05

So if I buy this, you guys help get the car tuned every step of the way? You responded to one of my questions on m.net and I realized I misunderstood what your "support" is all about. I am wanting to learn how to tune the car myself, but having tech support on figuring things out sounds great. You said that you guys will talk to a dyno tuner and evaluate logs and all that to help out. That is way more support than I was expecting. I am really tempted to try this thing out, even when I have a MS3 Pro plug and play sitting in my closet...

Anyone looking for a 01-05 MS3 Pro?

Yes, we will give you full tuning assistance. If you send us logs, we'll analyze them and send back tweaked maps. We'll help explain what's going on. We're still building them, but we'll have very complete instructions. You are not expected to know how to tune an ECU when you get it.

It's a pretty solid argument to a tuning novice like me. I can build almost anything, but I get nervous when the soldering irons come out.

Most the MS units available now require zero soldering. Most of them plug right into the stock harness.
There are so much base maps, guides, and tuning knowledge, as well as collective help available nowadays that 90% of sane, intelligent, at least somewhat competent people that took their time to do their homework and are not lazy/ignorant, can get their car running very well. Of course this still requires effort and some knowledge on the end users part. The learning curve is steep for the 1st half of figuring everything out.

With that said, the service FM offers with their new ECU is definitely exclusive and very valuable for some. Those that don't want to take their time digging through threads, reading manuals, learning, applying, etc. Those that just want to follow simple instructions and have their hand held over the phone should something go unexpectedly. (I don't mean any of this to be negative either, it's a service very few companies offer nowadays). Those people would gladly fork over an extra, $500-1000? for the support that is advertised to come with it.

Well said, and right on the money. Let's call a turnip a turnip . . . this is me. My Miata spent years under a steamy tarp in Florida with a busted roof before I got my hands on it. It was a muddy mess, and over the years I've had every nut and bolt out of this car, and I've done all the work myself. I'm in the middle of an engine rebuild as we speak. For every project I've done the thread-digging, the manual reading, the asking questions, learning and applying, and it's all been a great experience except for any of the electrical work. I'm baaaad at it, and I know I could learn it eventually but it just isn't appealing to me. That said, I do recognize what a rare blessing it is to have so much free online support from forums such as these. I just don't have the patience when it comes to electricals.

So having some support when I need it is pretty appealing to me, and sure I'll throw some money at that service. This makes me less cool than the MS Tuner kids, but I think my ego can take it.

Just keep in mind the alternative approach: If you can find a good/competent tuner that will be able to 100% dial in your car, just get what he prefers and not even need to touch any of it, and still end up with a well running car. It all depends on your level of involvement desired.

I do a bit of tuning on the side, and let me tell you: It's my personal pleasure to tune cars that the owner gives me goals for, asks me what to get, gets what I tell him, and then has me tune it.
vs
Doing no homework, asking no questions, having no goals, just buying up craploads of terrible parts cluelessly, then bringing me over a dysfunctional heap and asking me to work miracles and somehow make it run like a top.

FM Hydra, in my opinion, was an insanely overpriced, and mediocre at best MS non competitor.
And every time they'd update, you'd be forced to pay more money. And FM doesn't provide their support forever either, keep that in mind.
I really hope that they develop this ME-whatever ecu into something much better, and not keep milking the customers wallet every couple years for something they should be receiving for free.

I've had numerous discussions with ME about their product and why they think its better than MS, and I'm yet to see them actual give anything quantifiable that makes they product better than say my MSLabs MS2 Enhanced. They've made a few blunders along the way, a friend had an issue that they had fixed in a Beta firmware they told him to flash, but this beta firmware left the bootloader locked so he had to send the ECU back to them to update to the new stable firmware.

Their sales tactic has left a little to be desired as its been quite largely centered around bashing the competition

It's basically $1895 for a Hydra vs $1409 for an equivalent setup from Trackspeed (MS3+LC2+can module+IAT sensor), so the premium is $486.

Additionally, a lot of MS users on this site wind up paying a tuner a few hundred bucks to dyno tune their car for them. If the support from FM enables the buyer to DIY the dyno tuning (as it did for me when I owned a Hydra), then perhaps one should count that too.

Yes, I switched from a Hydra to an MS3, but my reasons for doing so have more to do with me being a software guy and the MS3 being a somewhat more open platform because I can download the source code to it. (not as open as I'd *like* it to be, but still more so than the Hydra)

--Ian

You've obviously more experience comparing/contrasting them than I, and you obviously are far more advanced than some random noob at dyno tuning, but I'm not sure that would apply the same for others: there's a huge difference between dyno tuning/fine tuning and getting a car driving decent by reviewing logs and making adjustments. Unless of course the customer would strap their car to a dyno and literally e-tune it with FM on the other end making real time adjustments, which I'm not sure they'd be able to support. There are companies that do this, and if FM actually will be doing this for the all inclusive price of the ecu, well that would be a game changer. Doubt it though.

I haven't tuned it with FM on the other end of the phone, no. OTOH, a good part of what I know about tuning cars came from talking to Jeremy (and before him, Ken) at Flyin' Miata over the years. When I put my first FM2 on the car, there weren't really any "will tune your car for cash" people around (well, there was Shiv, but he was really expensive and had a reputation for blowing up customer cars), so it was sink-or-swim. I was a random noob at that point. :) The support that FM offered was a major part of how I learned to DIY the tuning, and they offer that same support today.

--Ian

I read this and the attached threads on the ME221 that were added within it, and it seems to me like the company is quick to offer help and suggestions.
I can't imagine that FM would release anything with their name on it that didn't have at least a good amount of bugs addressed. I'm thinking I'll pull the trigger on this thing and will report my findings to anyone here who might be interested, or who just may want to throw some shade.

Do it :)
Document the process

To address this point specifically: we do provide support forever for the original owner. We are still supporting original Link owners if they need it, although very few do by this point. If you buy one of our ECUs secondhand, we offer lifetime support for a one-time cost that's equivalent to 1 hour of shop time. Since we usually have to teach the new owner everything from scratch (as they haven't done the initial research to buy an ECU in the first place), it's still a pretty good value. You get a lot more than 1 hour's worth of attention.

Incremental firmware upgrades have been free for Hydra 2.7. IIRC the earlier units didn't have the capability to reflash the firmware and there were actual hardware changes to jump versions, like 2.6 to 2.7. Everyone with an MS2 didn't magically get an MS3 when that came out either.

We have done live tuning over the net with the car on the dyno, but we do charge for the tech's time for that - it means you're tying someone up to do that and nothing else during that period, and it's a pretty unusual service. We usually work off customer provided datalogs, which is slower but still pretty darn effective. And we'll answer any questions you have about what we're doing, so you'll learn what's going on if you want to. It's the equivalent of having a tutor instead of a pile of recordings of class lectures.

We did go through some pain during the R&D process. Some was hardware, some was software. It took some time to get to this point. Undoubtedly, the very large number of possible combinations of parts means that we'll come across something we missed in testing, but such is the nature of the beast.

486 is plenty to get the car dyno tuned locally if you can find someone that knows what they're doing, no?

That depends on how much you want to mess with it afterwards. The thing about paying someone to tune the car for you is that you don't learn anything, which means when you change out the exhaust for something better and it needs to be tuned again, you're right back where you started. Learn how to tune it yourself and you can re-tune it yourself.

--Ian

Bought an FM221 today. I will report on my experiences.

FYI - thanks to a continuing good UK exchange rate, we're extending the introductory pricing. Still $995.

Meanwhile, my Hydra is working well.

Paul

I think you've missed the point of this thread completely.

Hint:
If you're considering buying an ECU today, purchasing a Hydra is NOT advisable given that its future is questionable.
If you already have one, FM will support its tuning but there may not be any more updates to the hardware/software/firmware (which shouldn't bother you if your setup works well - just like your toaster, who cares if the manufacturer no longer exists or how old it is if it does its job).

I prefer the term "mature product" :)

Don't think I've Missed the Point
 

I was considering the FM 221 as it is a Flyin' Miata product. I'm glad that there is an alternative at a lower price. I recently bought my Hydra for exactly the reasons you point out. Who cares if there are no updates if it works well. If you want to go through the inevitable growing pains of a new ECU, that's fine. Meanwhile, I just installed the latest firmware from the "Dead Company".Even the beloved Megasquirts have lots of issues as evidenced by the forums, but they have a legitimate place in the Turbo Forum as they are a well functioning, for the most part, product.

There is something to be said for a product that has been completely developed and will continue to be supported. This is not a thread about FM221 ECU's or Megasquirts.

If it was intended to be one more thread bashing Hydras then, perhaps you are right, I missed the point. But if it was a discussion of whether or not Hydra was a dead company, then I guess I was merely trying to contribute.

Paul

No case?

It goes in the OEM ECU case.

--Ian

I can testify to Hydra reliability, I have been running one since 2011 and I have only had 1 issue with timing that I think was caused by me skipping an update. I emailed Jeremy @ FM and he wrote me an update and the problem was promptly fixed. Besides that, the unit has been trouble-free.

Do you actually have any experience of the FM/ME221 or are you just here for the warrior points?

It's OK of course if you are just bashing away at the keyboard, just means once you state it, you're opinion can be labeled as inexperienced bias going forward, which is what it comes across as anyway....

ME221 = Matthew's Engineering 2/21 ? Are you the progenitor or just a fanboi?

Motorsport Electronics 221 :)

Yes I am the hardware engineer - we were a trader on here when we first released the ME221, but because of MS fanboy-ism that runs rampant on this forum, we decided against renewing our trade status - we sell 60+/month in the UK now since all of the respected MX5 tuners switched to the ME221, so when I see literal slagging off of the ME221 before trying it, I think its only fair to call it into question....

Your comments on my skills are an exact example of that - I wonder what I did to wrong you? funny though :)

Cheers

You do know we are two different people, right?

You will likely be able to mark 18psi's return to this thread by you not being able to find it again. But me? Not so much.

Dear sir,

You got banned for spamming/advertising without being a sponsor, don't try to twist the truth. I just checked right now since now you created a duplicate account and I can technically ban you permanently for breaking the rules. In fact, it was Braineak that banned you, not me, but now you got my attention so I promise you this is going to be really good and entertaining now.

Now then, I'll answer your question: I am a friend of the person who was WORKING AT FM ON DEVELOPING THIS STUPID PIECE OF JUNK, and at the time, it was pathetic. I've also helped quite a few people troubleshoot crappy problems that should not have existed, so again, when I say it's mediocre I mean just that and it's the truth. Maybe you fixed all the crappy issues by now. I don't know. But don't you dare come in here and spout your stupid nonsense acting like we're MS fanboys and hating on your simply because you're a competitor.

I've tuned or at least fiddled with LITERALLY just about every single ecu for a Miata at this point. I have no preference or allegiance, I use what works best or what's easiest to work with and has good support. Same goes for most/many here. We don't care who you are, if you make a good product you'll get lots of community support here.

So I'm gonna give you one last chance to stop being a douchebag, and start over, before I permanently ban you and any other duplicate accounts you ever make. You can spout your nonsense and deny all the issues your ecu had and how roughly it started on any other forum, they'll probably believe you. But not here. We're not clueless children here.

Indeed this is interesting, so in the interest of fairness, would you please care to elaborate, in a nice bullet pointed list the array of issues that you have seen with the ME221?

I think that way I can confirm if we indeed have fixed said 'crappy issue' or if we have simply pretended it not to be there... Again, any links to where I have denied issues would also be very helpful - apologies if I have I simply cannot remember, links/quotes would be helpful.

Without this evidence, I can't really do alot to refute the claims and as it being "A stupid piece of junk" would then be just your opinion, without even so much as anecdotal evidence - the ignition and fueling accuracy as well as update speed are superior to MS3 - we will be doing back to back testing and having it independently verified very soon, so unless those areas of an ECUs functionality are not important to you, then so be it - I await to hear in what other regards the product lacks features.... of course if you wanted to try one out to really get an idea of what you're dealing with, then happy to look into send one for you to evaluate - thats' the scientific method anyway- I would want to see your issue list first though, as you can imagine if we have missed something obvious (that none of the top tuners in the UK or FM have found either) then we had better get on and fix that ASAP! :)

I am not interested in advertising the ME221 on here - you have no worry of that occurring again, we have no need to.

Awaiting your response...

PS becuase of an experience from an internal tester during development - that is idiotic - ask MS how they got on with MegaTune/MS1 back in the day - DEVELOPMENT is just that - rate the product on its release, not its development - common sense (to me anyway!)

Yes, it is/was my opinion. Everything here is a matter of opinion of members/tuners. It's a forum.
Look through some of the threads linked above. Search around for troubleshooting threads of your product. Why would I go through the trouble of doing your job for you?

PS: I've never gotten any discounts on MS, I've never got any sponsorship, heck I never even got any sort of special attention or support aside from the community support here.
When my multiple MS units had issues, they were all publicly discussed here. All the mistakes, screw ups, errors, everything was always called out. I never hid any issues.
Same goes for just about everyone here. There is nothing to hide. All the issues are public knowledge.
So to say we're all MS fanbois on this site is getting really old and was never true.

And how many issues have ME ECUs had? Seriously? We have had maybe 5 in for RMA in 3 years!!! And 3 of them were due to BETA FW issues that were ran at users won risk, fixed, FOC, under lifetime warranty - and you call our ECU junk??!! That is my position on this... Even the guy Elior whom you link to on MX5nutz stated how the customers car is now running 'OK' despite the fact we did NOTHING to the ECU apart form he added a diode to change the idle drivers action t match our later versions.... wow :)

This is the funniest bit really - we time an time again get told on the phone by customers how they have searched high and low and not only can they RARELY (if ever) find anyone with an issue with our ECU, they see nothing but stellar support and happy user in the end. We have had ONE person require a refund and that was from the very first batch of hand built units - 3 years ago now! You being ONE user had MULTIPLE MS failures! Maybe you should give the ME221 some praise for that instead of, like I said, hating on it from an Ex FM employee who was involved with ALPHA testing of the FM variant in its INFANCY!

Maybe you should read this thread in it's entirety before you go cherry picking posts and crying about unfair judgment of your unit? It was/is a discussion.

We're past that now. The guy already bought one, and promised to document his experience. We've all agreed to hear him out and no one here is hoping for failure, on the contrary, we're hoping it's better than what we remember about it from before.

If he comes back and says it's all great now and works perfect, has no issues, and the interface is easy to work with, do you think we're going to deny him sharing his experience?

I agree that yes, time will tell - however - you cannot deny that for some reason you have been a naysayer since day one - if a product comes along that is adopted well by the tuners in the UK, is it fair to call it a piece of crap? Is it fair to say that to any company without first hand experience? You're welcome to try one out and give feedback, and who knows, you might find it really easy to get on with - I ahve eben tuning ECUs for 15 years - we took the best from the best, Link style layout, MoTeC/Syvecs accuracy, Haltech customizability, VE based fuelling etc and created an ECU that delivers for a good price (in the UK the ME221 is only £550inc VAT so its alot cheaper than other ECUs with alot more features) and we get abused for it? Really?

What is it specifically you remember from before? With those points presented I can address them, and we do always welcome feedback regardless of its source as it only goes to making the product better in the long run for everyone :)

You see this is the issue - you present the argument for it being "crap" but are unwilling to present sources.

The one I see, that Elior chap, customer ended up fine and you can see from the MX5Nutz postings how it ended for him - he said he couldnt get idle right, yet the issue was not the ECU, not if EVERYONE ELSE can tune it - we offered help every step of the way, as usual...

Apart from Elior there was this one on here - turned out to be a starter motor issue after braineack jumped in with his "helpful comments" (Me were subsequently thanked for the help...
: https://www.miataturbo.net/ecus-tuning-54/me221-87465/

So present your sources - telling me to "google it" is no way to present a point - ti wouldnt work in court, so why should it work here? You stated a claim, back it up...

I've used various MS units over the past 8 years, they've been around before you were even in the business of ecu's. Don't try to compare your company to theirs and compare all your "lack of issues" to their "issues".
You've not been around long enough to make claims like that. Only time will tell how your ecu/unit will do, and no amount of PR and self-praise from you will change that right now.
lol again, I'm not doing your job for you. The issues we heard about are posted here.
Being an ecu builder I'd hope you have the brainpower to search forum(s).

You can use the "innocent until proven guilty" approach all you want, it's really not doing much to show people that you've got a good product on the market.

If you don't care about being a vendor here, then why did you make a duplicate account? Why did you come back?
If you're selling these like hot-cakes, why would you care about the opinion of a group of guys on some insignificant Miata site?
Why are you so mad?