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 )