DIYEFI.org, FreeEMS and the future of TRUE DIY engine management
 

Hi,

This thread is here to introduce and discuss DIYEFI.org, a new community with a difference.

For those of you who don't know who I am, I've been keeping a close eye on DIY EFI stuff since the late 90's and been involved with MegaSquirt for the last 3 years or so to some degree or other. Many things have come and gone and many things have changed in that time. The time has come for an even bigger change. Those of you who "just use" MegaSquirt and don't get too involved won't really care too much about this site for at least a few more months. On the other hand, if you like to participate and get involved, this site is probably for you.

As a way of testing whether you might be interested, I have assembled some questions here :

• Do you use GNU/Linux?
• Does engine management interest you?
• Are you a fan of Open Source Software?
• Do you enjoy printing your own boards?
• How about designing your own boards?
• Do you dislike closed door development?
• Tired of Lance deleting your posts on msefi.com?
• Tired of waiting for UMS, PWC, MS3, Router board, GPIO or Sequencer?
• Willing to put in the hard work to have the engine management system of your hearts desire?
• Clever with electronics or code and willing to work on an open source project for the greater good and benefit to all?

If you answered yes to any of those you may want to take a look at my new site, if not, there is no need to bother :-)

The site is totally non-profit. There aren't even any adverts (yet, probably never if I can help it). The designs will be community produced and available for free download just like FireFox and Linux etc. There are no businesses or companies behind it. Just me and a group of like minded individuals who want to make the DIY engine management world a better place for everyone.

If you are wondering why I have gone and put this much time, effort and money into apparently reinventing the wheel, take a look here http://www.diyefi.org/why.htm

If you are wondering who else is involved in the project, or indeed who has made MegaSquirt the runaway success that it has become, please see the appropriate sections of this page http://www.diyefi.org/contributors.htm

If you are wondering about some of the details of the history of Do It Yourself fuel injection, have a read through this partly incomplete history page http://www.diyefi.org/history.htm

If you want to dig straight in then have a of this thread http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=90

The code is nothing special just yet, but some of the foundations are there and working flawlessly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsXPi2KWRAU

It will be some time before it runs an engine, but that doesn't mean you should wait till then to get involved. If you express your opinion in a constructive way now, you will be happier with the end result when it finally arrives.

It was recently suggested to me that I was trying to recruit the type of people that complain a lot :

This is NOT the case. In fact, that is the LAST thing that I want. If you are just going to whinge, whine and complain about the past, please stay away. If on the other hand you have something positive to offer about the future, please sign up!

The forum is here if you would like to join our efforts : http://www.diyefi.org/forum/index.php

However, before joining, I recommend that you have a read of this first http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=26

If you want to see some of my work that is more or less completed and you have DSL have a look here http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16

If you are wondering more about me, some would say that one word sums me up nicely

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/100_7044.jpg

though, I prefer to prefix it with 'car-' ;-)

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy what you find :-)

Fred.

I love the idea of more DIY and OpenSource EFI projects out there but you might wanna reword a couple of your bullet points if you really don't want B&G Gripers:

# Sick of Lance deleting your posts on msefi.com?
# Sick of waiting for UMS, PWC, MS3, Router board, GPIO or Sequencer?

Those two really are a turn off. I could care less about the politics of MSEFI - I'm more interested in contributing to a cool project and being able to figure some stuff out than I am "sick" of anything.

Best of luck to you though.

The problem is, myself included, we are too stupid. We need things to be done for us and then we'll jump on the bandwagon.

Hi, Thanks for your input :-)

I think it is possible to answer those with a 'yes' and still be a positive person looking forward and not back.

Lance's heavy handed moderation over mentioning the word "extra" is a real problem. It was lance that split the forums apart in the first place. Now he gets upset when people post things such as "where is all the msextra info". Further to that is the appalling treatment that the MSExtra devs have suffered due to this anti-extra bias.

I think it's good that you can ignore such politics, but they do exist, and some can't. I am one of those.

Does the word "Tired" go down more smoothly do you think? Perhaps.

All comments are appreciated.

Fred.

From what I have read of some of your posts in the past around the place, I'm not so convinced that that is the truth. Still, that is what I am doing anyway, but don't hold your breath :-)

Fred.

I agree with Brain. Personally I'd love to contribute 200% to the project but my programming skills are non-existent and my knowledge of circuit design is very very very poor. Those two facts limit me to a sideliner who begs for new developments despite my huge urge to do things for myself. :(

I thought your setup sounded familiar. You've got some fab skills thats for damn sure.

:wavey:

http://www.homemadeturbo.com/forum/i...topic=81330.40

I'm still not convinced that you have to be a god like C coder to be useful here!

Just throwing your opinion and thoughts around a bit when stuff is up for discussion is important. It is that IMO that is missing from MS development. I.E. put me in my place! :-)

To rule out someone like yourself would be a big mistake for any start up like this. You just never know where good talent of various kinds might come from and what surprise uses various people might become :-)

At the very least, if you have a few dollars and hours spare, you can try to make my code not work! :-)

When I was studying at uni, me and my best mate used to do just that. Swap code and try to make it fail. It was an excellent ploy. We always managed to do better work faster than pretty much anyone else :-)

Fred.

Thanks :-)

Caution : beware of flame war (and of course the usual bad language etc that is par for the course on hmt) :

Fred

I've been hanging out over at Fred's place a bit now, and I can say that even someone with no discernible skills such as myself has some ideas - we've spent a lot talking about things like "should we explicity support rotary", or "is logging internally a good thing". Of course, it should do everything and bake you a cake as well, but there are trade-offs, and that's where the talented folks have to weigh the input they get against the reality of putting things together into a coherent package.

Personally, politics aside, I just want to get something more capable. I want sequential injection, individually fired spark, AND things like boost control, water injection, staged fuel injection (or Dial-An-Octane as it's looking like it might be - very exciting), without running out of inputs and outputs. Could you imagine giving up fan control for an idiot light, or dropping EBC just so you can have a tach?

That's the situation I get every time I work on my MS. And it doesn't help that if I ask a straightforward question of the people who laid out the board or wrote the code, they act like it's greek to them.

Plus, I just like projects. So, it's worth my time to see what's going on, and I'm sure I'll be amongst the earliest beta testers... :-)

Thanks Abe :-) I hope not to disappoint!

Hi Fred,

Looks like you guys are a very talented team of people who have the passion and conviction to make this happen. I am pleased to see that some members of the MS/Extra team is also on-board.

Anyway, I read the links that you placed in your post and you guys seem to be concentrating on the code a lot more than the hardware, atleast for now.

I have a couple of comments/questions.

1) Most OEM code is hardly hand-written these days, with rapid-control prototyping being the buzzword in OE circles. Usage of tools like Simulink and dspace is rampant, thus making the development of several thousand lines of code within the reach of people like me who hardly know anything about microcontrollers or C. Now I know that writing the code is part of the fun for you guys, but any intentions of using a graphical coding tool (like Flowcode, for example) in your development process? I ask this with a solely selfish intention, so that "code-impaired" mechanical engineers like myself can get involved too.

2) Since FreeEMS is intended to be the affordable open-source ECU of the future, I think that the hardware and way the system is integrated into the vehicle should also reflect that sentiment. I firmly believe that more and more people who use such a product are going to be leaving most of their OE vehicle systems alone, preferring to take control of only the fueling and timing. So would a piggyback-type version of FreeEMS, with the option of creating a "virtual-reality" around the OE ECU, be a possibility?

Okay so I shouldn't rule myself out 100%, you're right. I do have a lot of ideas I could suggest for implementation and would be more than happy to help test out anything possible. On those rare occasions I have time tinkering is my number one hobby.

You mentioned already something about a digital dash which is something I've really wanted for many years since Ex Vi's Skyline R33 build, and SiTune's Euro Spec Escort. Something like this, only cooler:

http://www.6r4.com/images/SDL.jpg

I had high hopes for something similar when I saw the touchscreen megaview, but was discouraged at the price tag and limited display. Limited display is also something I dislike about Megatune. Sure the 8 gauges can show a lot of info, but maybe I want more displayed that I could take a real quick glance across? Plus the gauges in megatune have a lot to be desired cosmetically.

Jump on and pm ababkin about it. He has a similar master plan, you guys could start a thread and get started drawing it up :-) He codes for a living too, so after him for code, you for ideas, you just need a hardware guy to make it happen :-)

Thanks, I certainly hope you are right. It seems to be true anyhow :-)

Yes, I am also pleased to see them there, 4 so far have suggested involvement, or participated already. However, after receiving a PM a few minutes ago, I feel that I should point out that James and Ken are NOT involved. I was inspired by the great thing they have turned Al's code into, and wanted to acknowledge that inspiration publicly. I certainly did not intend for it to appear that they are involved, and I have made repeated changes to that page to make it more clear. I will make some more drastic changes now to illustrate the point.

I feel that the code is the most important part at this stage. Experience has shown that if there is code around, everyone wants to knock up a board for it to run on. On the other hand, there is no point building a new board without good information about how the cpu will be hooked up and used. Hence, code first, boards later.

Most likely no. There are a number of reasons for this. As you stated, writing the code is half the fun (or more), however the chip is still somewhat underpowered compared to what OEM's would use, and thus hand coding is necessary to extract the performance required to do what we want to do.

If you have been scared off by reading the MS code at all, you should download my code and have a read. It is VERY different to theirs. IMO, much more understandable to an average observer. Together with my initial supporters we have come up with some advanced techniques to make sure the best possible transient response is achieved. However, everything is documented to the tiniest details, so most anyone that can read english can get at the very least, the gist of it.

Another reason would be the lack of free cross platform tools to perform such automated code generation.

Also, I am yet to see any significant generated code of any complexity that is particularly good (exposes his naive view of the code world)

Hmmm, I'm not certain that I agree with that, however, it certainly is a possibility. For a start, OEM style wiring looms have grounding techniques that can cause difficult to track noise issues. Secondly, if you are going so far as to use a "stand alone" surely you want to do it right and replace the old ecu? Because we have 3x the IO than ms2 it should be possible to control all of your accessories fairly easily and still run the engine as well as is humanly possible.

I hope that clears it up a little.

I'll try to fix that page up right now.

Fred.

once my work schedule slows back down this sounds like something I'd be interested in helping out with. my circuit design skills are rusty and were never too great to begin with, but I'd like to learn more so maybe I can post schematic of ideas and get feedback for improvement and robustness. I used to be fairly good with C, C++, and VB but it's been 6 years since the last time I tried. I'd like to learn to code for processors so maybe that's something I could pick up around the forums as well. In the very least someone might recommend a good book to get me going.

See you on DIYefi in a month or so.

I think until January I hadn't written any C in 7 years :-)

Grab the 1300 page pdf for the chip and read that :-)

Also, grab the code 0.0.11 is the latest, and read the links that accompany everything that isn't obvious.

You should be OK. Good coding is a mind set IMO :-)

See you in a month!

Yeah I certainly don't mean to discount with my reference to politics, more that the phrasing gives a feeling of politics which is a turn off. These things are the very reason why we do need another DIY EFI solution. MS is great for many things but it's getting weird and limited for some of the crazier stuff out there.

Hell yeah, I love projects, which is why I'll keep an eye out and possibly jump in when I'm done with my current stuff.

At the end of the day, you still need a standard hardware platform to work from or it will all fall in a heap. I think this is why MegaSquirt has worked so well; the boards are all the same with the exception of minor hardware hacks. In saying that, I'm going to check out your site and I may even contribute in the future.

That is true, and a std base simple design will be priority number one as soon as the code reaches a suitably mature state. In the mean time this is just a fun project to work on with a sky high goal :-)

Shoot for the stars, fall on the moon?

The Adapt card from Technological arts is a fairly nice little unit. It will be pretty easy to design a pair of boards to sandwich around it that can be printed and populated by hand.

Think of it like a ms2 card, but MUCH bigger :-)

(and not auto temp rated, not that that matters)

I look forward to seeing you there.

Fred.

I have updated the contributors page to be much more clear now. My most humble apologies for any misunderstanding.

Fred.

This is awesome. Wish I knew more than I do currently. The best part about being able to build boomslang harnesses is I can try different engine management whenever I please. I'll be keeping track of this, very exciting.

I feel exactly the same way Scot

Personally I think you'd be onto a winner if you put a beefy 32bit CPU with loads of I/O on a daughterboard that can use the MegaSquirt board for the power supply and other standard features. Add an extra connector for the I/O, hey presto! You'd convert a lot of people if it is an easy upgrade path.

Am I totally missing the point here? :)

http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=117

Kinda, yeah, high power stuff like injector switching, relay switching, coil switching, etc IMO need to have their own ground and power feeds. Additionally, there should be a dedicated feed for the 12v reference to the cpu. You could do this the way you describe, but with the amount of extra IO, you are designing a whole 'nother board anyway, none of it will fit in a std MS case, and you may as well start from scratch. All things are open for discussion, and nothing is nailed down. The community can decide where this heads hardware wise. My only "requirement" is that the first iteration is primarily through hole and 2 layer such that BOB in his back yard can crack out his bottle of etchant, print a board and easily solder it together.

Also, about that 32 bit chip... Have you seen the prices?? If MS3 was going to come out next week, be sub 300us for a complete kit and DIY assembled, I likely would have been happy to just use that :-) MS3 is months away, will cost more like 500+us, and will be SMD. That is not acceptable to me, esp when the components and costs associated with producing such a product are in most cases cheaper than the full sized ones.

The board I chose I chose because the CPU does just enough for what the maximal user will want, is cheap enough, is readily available, probably most importantly is in a suitable form factor to pretty much just use as a plug in cpu module much like ms2 is.

I hope that answers your questions properly :-)

Fred.

Thanks for clearing things up Fred. I hadn't looked up pricing or anything, it was just a quick thought.

Good luck with the project!

No problems, a natural question! Cheers :-)

This is Ken from the msextra forum.

James Murray, Phil Ringwood, and I (along with Bruce and Al of course) are the main developers of ms1/extra and ms2/extra (along with tons of other people, at least on the ms1/extra side).

We are in no way associated with Fred's project, and are hard at work trying to make ms2/extra (and our next generation stuff) better.

Ken

Thanks for all the great work you guys have done Ken. It is sincerely appreciated by all of us, and I am certain of that! You and James particularly are an inspiration to us all.

I thought I had finally made it clear that neither James or yourself were involved with this :

However, thank you for confirming that in writing.

Kindest regards (regardless of what any of you think of me),

Fred.

Just wanted to make sure it was clear to all involved what our official take on it is.

Ken

You missed a bit :

That's cool Ken, I understand how you feel about this. FYI, I quoted your post on all the threads that you didn't find ;-)

Glad to hear the possibility of MS3 potentially being more DIY than previously discussed. I know it is supposed to have a header to allow people to add to it, but that alone wouldn't make it DIY in my books.

If my site serves as nothing except a "hey, look after the DIY types" statement, then that alone is enough. I hope it becomes a lot more than that, though.

Fred.

It has come to my attention today that one of our members has been banned from msefi.com just by being a member on my site. Please, if you are signed to my site, or intending to, and also need assistance on msefi.com read this :

http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=26

It is highly unfortunate that I have to post about this publicly, but I feel that not doing so would be irresponsible to my users.

Fred.

I was going to post this in your thread that you link to on your forum, but I talked to Bruce, and apparently nobody has banned Xstatic.

Unless he's trying to use it from a banned IP block, or from your computer, he should still be able to log in.

Nobody will be banned for being on both forums.

That's Awesome Ken, we'll get to the bottom of why he get's that message sooner or later. I guess this :

Means I'm an exception to that "nobody" rule :-) That's OK.

As soon as Alex has access again, I'll put out a retraction of that message.

One must wonder why there are IP blocks banned at all? Who (other than apparently me) would you want to stop accessing it anyway?

I'm both surprised and impressed. It's good that "you" have recognised that this is A not commercial like VEMS, and B not in any way ripping MS off like VEMS somewhat did (with the original name).

Thanks for letting me know,

Fred.

I've added your message to that thread.

Fred.

I agree with everything you say... but the problem here is the LCDash really has nothing to do with MS. It was designed by a few Uconn college students (one of which being a friend from my hometown) who started off making a limited OBD2 touchscreen display which then moved over to megasquirt after the senior design project was over. He now has a real job, and does the LCDash on the side. While I agree it is lacking, much of that is because of megasquirt, not just the product itself. He is completely separated from B&G and is actually lucky DIYAutotune even liked the product enough to sell it. With limited production and very little support from B&G along with making it an out-of-garage opperation, its no wonder the product is so slow in development.

Your friend is not alone in wanting for B&G support. Dave who produces MegaTunix has had a very hard time developing support for MS2 because the serial communication protocol was never documented. To quote his recent words :

"I'm still bumping into things, though the docs are better now.. Not perfect, but much improved... "

http://www.msextra.com/viewtopic.php?t=27827&start=20

I believe a good set of design docs to code to is a prerequisite for any really good code. Those docs weren't present for the MS2 serial comms code (which a large number of external contributors need to work with) let alone the rest of the code base.

I'm still prototyping at the moment, however even now I am documenting everything as I go. I have had a number of positive comments about that alone from people that have looked into it. Once the code actually starts to take shape over the next few months, key elements will be fully discussed on the forums with anyone who cares to join in, and a final design drawn up at the conclusion of such discussions and before final coding takes place.

Fred.

Alex's home address is still blocked on msefi.com, however his msextra.com access is as per normal. Neither were working from his work place. I'll be away for a few days, so won't be able to respond to this thread at all for that period. I hope it is resolved properly before I return.

Fred.

After 10 days away, at least some of Alex's IP's are still blocked on both msefi and msextra. I sincerely hope it's resolved soon as such bulk IP blocking is totally unnecessary and achieves precisely zero.

How about some background on your screenname being rb26dett? (I'm probably picking up an rb20det powered car... and would love to know a few more people who know these motors ;) )

I chose it years ago when I was younger as I liked those engines :-)

I've heavily thrashed my rb20de though, heavily heavily thrashed.

All twincam RB motors are stout and thrashable if tuned properly. Like all other engine/car types, the ones that blow up are mostly from hacked oem ecus and increased boost etc.

Consider importing an RB30E from ozzy or NZ to put an rb25de head on. There are pdf guides available to show how to do that fairly easily and cheaply. With the usual rods and pistons, 600crank hp and 7krpm with 15 - 25psi are achievable fairly easily depending on intake and exhaust mods etc.

Hows that? :-)

Minor update :

Attachment 212721

Human readable serial logging is working as of this morning. I'll tidy it up and add a bunch more variables before doing a release later today.

I also changed the formatting of the forum a bit. The moderators are now Blue, the members that have contributed the most useful stuff to discussions are Green, I am now Fred instead of Admin which feels much more natural, and I added an Admin user for site stuff (who is me for now, but could be others later).

Fred.

Attachment 212716

There was a bug in the handling of char to ascii so now lostcranksync can be displayed it works :-)

Also visible is rpm increasing and decreasing and pulsewidth decreasing and increasing and 1/3 down a processor reset (induced by me). All things that have been happening for ages, it's just that now I can view the exact numbers involved, the RPM jitter etc etc.

Mint!

Fred.

Very very very cool Mr. Fred. This is like the time I wasn't happy with the paper towel holder in my kitchen and fixed it, But you know.... more. It does have a ring of progress to it, and for one guy doing it you're working at a breakneck pace.

You mean like I'm working while having a broken neck? (ie slow) lol

I'd just like to point out that although no one could see it, my code had a lost sync counter BEFORE ms2extra :-) In fact, it may even have been me that suggested it to them ;-) As a bonus, you can now see mine too! lol.

Fred.

ps, nice avatar Abe

Introducing FreeTherm a new little utility that does a similar thing to easytherm :

Attachment 212636

C# + mono = "up yours" to M$. (microsoft)

Result :

Attachment 212637

Real temperatures in the ECU :-)

Too easy.

(in degrees K * 100, so divide by 100 and subtract 273 for deg C, you are on your own for deg F)

Fred.

Screen shot of my little thermistor app running on Vista :

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...ermOnVista.jpg (190kB)

Get it here : http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ease_id=608485 (166kB)

And the library it needs here : http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfco...-win32-0.0.exe (23.3MB)

I'm *hoping* that Stu intends to use GTK# for the tuning app if/when he does it, so that library install should cover both apps and we can produce other utils in C# in future too to keep the downloads to a minimum.

Of course, it's no use to any of you really, and not 100% finished (see the TODO in the zip) either, but I thought I'd post it up anyway.

Fred.

OK, it has been nearly 3 months since I made a code release, but to be fair, I have a few excuses...

I had to get one of those things... what are they called? A job! Yes, that's it! Which took up a bit of time to obtain, and more to maintain... Plus, on my third day of work, my hard disk died a horrible death and I was silly enough to try Ubuntu instead of my usual Debian. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I'm back on track now! And in fine form even if I do say so myself :-)

Tonight I've released 0.0.16-FlashGordon

It does many things like jumping through hoops, but no engine running just yet ;-)

The zip file is nearly 25% bigger than the last release so as you can imagine quite a bit of work has gone into it...

SeanK has written some code to do flash burning, and I've added RAM paging to allow many tables and things to be tunable. Lots of other little things too.

In the mean time a couple of clever blokes called Jared and Dave have been hard at work designing some hardware for us :

Attachment 210720

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...10_A18_P01.png

Those are just drafts, but it is coming along pretty nicely. So nicely in fact that they are well ahead of me. By the time I'm ready to run an engine, the hardware will be chrome plated and capable of running a small city ;-)

Expect more regular releases now as winter is coming and there will be nothing else to do except perhaps keep the missus warm ;-)

Thanks for your patience!

Fred.

Great work. I haven't been to DIYEFI in a couple of months. I need to check out this latest release. What do I need to compile it?

BTW, SW is supposed to come after HW and hold up release. It's just our lot in life.

Cheers :-)

You need : make, m68hc11/12 gcc and friends, zip, and maybe a few other little things. Roughly the same stuff you need for an ms2e build. It includes files for an eclipse project. It should open up nicely in there. I'm using the latest version, but older ones should be fine too.

Fred.

Last week I put out 0.0.17-SpudEchoes With two way checksummed packetised headered IDed data and a matching really really simple gui called FreeEMS-Tuner.

It can do basic stuff like send back it's own name and version etc. It could also return blocks of memory, ve tables etc, thermistor lookups etc, and blocks of setting data.

In the unreleased code it can receive data too and thus it is now tunable :-)

It needs more work, but it's getting pretty close to being useful.

I reckon in a few weeks the gui and firmware will talk to each other in more detail and it will be tunable.

Why spud echoes?

spud because the source in that release is half baked... and echoes because it can echo data back and forth on command, and also because I listened to pink floyd echoes about 50 times while developing it.

I'll give you a screen shot of the big red button because that is fairly cool in a childish sort of way :

Attachment 209963

One guy in Wellington NZ and one in South Carolina are working on that, and I'm working on trying to make the EMS side of the comms deal ROCK solid. Currently it's pretty good, but I'm not done yet!

I hope to finalise more of the comms stuff and do another release in a few weeks or less such that those guys can focus on making a nice GUI for it while I work on the guts that will actually run the engine. Mean while the hardware guys will be working on their share, and hopefully we'll all come to a climax at exactly the same time producing a wonderful system that actually works TM :-)

Fred.

It'd be cool to see if you could get it working with MS Tuner Studio. That has a nice look to it, and the guy who writes it, while not always speedy, seems to be pretty good.

I'm trying to con him into writting a spark map autotuner right now. :-)

You know, I saw the body of your post in my email subscription and was quite looking forward to a witty response.... but it's you... so I'm a bit stunned...

In case you don't know he's about as close to B&G as their underwear and about as likely to add our protocol (do NOT ask me to use theirs... SO many reasons NOT to do that...) as Bruce is to design us a PCB or Al is to join in coding ;-)

I think that about sums it up. Plus, it's too megatune in it's feel if you ask me. Mainly because it works the same way...

Fred.

Attachment 209946

Now it's comprehensible too :-)

He's like me, working on it daily heaps! Will be useful in no time :-)

Teaser :

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3148/...4d880fc5_o.jpg

More to come soon :-)

Fred.

I just gave this thread a quick read. Interesting stuff you've got going on here. However, your last screenshot left me wondering...

Attachment 209823

Ask Aaron, I'm pretty sure that, the version, the reference to me next to that, the icon on the desktop and maybe more were all put there esp for that screenshot to get the likes of you going ;-)

Not my screen shot, not my app, I'm the firmware guy ;-)

Fred.

I suspected that as well haha. Sorry to crap on your thread like that :P

It's all good :-) The more interest the better!

Latest update hot off the press :

New firmware release : 0.0.18 JackTheRipper

The last two releases added real packet based serial communications with extensive error checking and verification. This isn't quite ready for the world as the tuning interface isn't quite finished just yet. It shouldn't be long before we can adjust the parameters the device is using on the fly, and when I say that, I mean almost all of them.

Enhancements over MS due to the serial architecture include, but are not limited to :

• Datalogging at double the speed over the same speed link.
• Reset the device via the tuning app without cycling the key.
• What you send IS what you get (checksummed and verified).
• Random data can not corrupt memory (no DMA setup, all by logic/lookups)
• If it works, it works right, though bad connections will make it slow, but that is FAR better than corrupt maps running your engine!
• Ability to burn small blocks straight to flash without sending the whole page
• Ability to save part of a block from live tunable ram without saving the rest

Additionally, it now builds on windows 2k and XP, thanks to Daniel for his help making that work. Thanks to Sean for his assistance in getting this far, the flash stuff is great. Finally, the mathematics code is much cleaner with no reduction in functionality.

A demonstration of the serial and flash functionality is available in this video :

YouTube - FreeEMS 0.0.18 JackTheRipper + Tuner



Version Control by Git

The firmware source code is now publicly hosted on github with the following URL :

fredcooke's freeems-vanilla at master — GitHub

This is an exciting move for a large number of reasons. Not least of which being the ability to fork the code easily and allow me to keep track of what you are doing with it. In this way if you don't want to discuss what you are doing with me until it is done, you don't have to. Of course, it is better if you say "I'd like to work on XYZ" so I can advise whether that is a good idea, and if so avoid that area myself. It is also possible to just download a tar ball or zip of the current repository version of the code at any time, however I urge you to fork it using github and publish your work for the world to see so we can easily integrate it back in.



Code Statistics by ohloh

With the public source code repository we now have a source of genuine statistics about the code base. These are generated by ohloh.net automatically and available for the world to see. So far the results look good. It will be interesting to see how they change over time. If you are interested, take a look here :

https://www.ohloh.net/p/freeems



Issue tracking with MantisBT

As the system grows and diversifies we will face many challenges. One of these is keeping track of bugs and feature requests from users and testers. In that direction Aaron was kind enough to set up and host an instance of Mantis Bug Tracker. This is available for use right now. Anyone can view it, but you must sign up to create bugs, at the moment an administrator needs to allow a member to create bugs, but we could change that in the future if it is too restrictive. Please use this for anything non-trivial that you notice that needs fixing or that you would like to see. Please us this service if you are planning on reviewing the code and/or testing it out on the bench and/or just want to ask for a feature. Also have a read around the forum and check for existing bugs and requests before creating your own, but don't be shy about it. The URL is here :

http://freeems.aaronb.info/tracker/



User driven documentation on DocuWiki

Aaron has also setup a user documentation system ah la wiki. The wiki is a DocuWiki which is best suited to source code use. To prevent vandalism by those who are less than enthusiastic about this project you need to have a login. If you feel you have something to contribute (So I can keep coding) you can find it here :

http://freeems.aaronb.info/wiki/



Doxygen code documentation

Jared has been generating automatic documentation from the source code with Doxygen for a few releases now. If you want to get a more visual insight into the source code, you can find them at the following location :

Index of /doxygen



Release versions of the code

If you are interested in getting the latest official version of the code to tinker with, you can always find them on sourceforge. It is far superior to get the latest development copy from github as above, however the release versions are guaranteed to more or less just work as described. If you are conservative or want something to use on an actual car in future (once it works as a system) then get your copy from here :

https://sourceforge.net/project/show...kage_id=258422



What is planned?

Hopefully in about 48 hours Aaron will get a tar ball copy of the fully reworked Tuner code to me. This, among other things, is supposed to have threading and a working decoder for the packets, awesome!. Who knows what else it may have in it :-)

For the firmware, 0.0.19 is due out in early January with goals including :

• A revised serial specification and implementation
• A fully documented serial interface and data map
• Restructuring and tidying up of the overall code base
• Multiple datalog types including super fast scope and logic analyser functions
• Other documentation like serial implementation, freemind mind map, readme etc etc updated
• Documented hardware setup design

Of course, all of that is subject to change and re-evaluation, but this is the current plan of attack!

Thanks for reading and your interest in this project and indeed the whole movement!

Regards,

Fred.