I had some fun a few years ago developing a replacement circuit for Ferrari 308/Mondial ignition ECUs, and then subsequently the ones for the 328/Mondial 3.2/Testarossa cars. It was interesting to see how crude but still effective the original circuits from the 1980's were, but also how much polish I could give to it while retaining form/fit/function compatibility, using an ARM Cortex-M0 and other modern ICs available to me.<p>One of the biggest updates I was able to do was to add a much more rugged power supply. The original boxes get fried easily by dirty jump starters, pulling the alternator while running, etc. It was pretty easy with the components available now to make a new circuit that protects from all that.<p>The most interesting thing to me was that when I went to a more modern ignition map rather than the crude 8 stepped curve they had originally implemented, while testing showed it produced more power and better emissions, people beta testing for me reported it felt 'too smooth, less fun'. So I went back to the original crude steps <shrug>.<p>Anyway, it was an engaging project that taught me a lot about engine ignition, and I've now sold about 100 boxes and helped keep these old classics on the road.
Shout-out to the OG of open and DIY engine management systems: MegaSquirt.<p><a href="https://megasquirt.info/history/" rel="nofollow">https://megasquirt.info/history/</a><p><a href="http://www.megamanual.com/MSFAQ.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.megamanual.com/MSFAQ.htm</a><p>I participated in the Yahoo group where the early development of this happened and had a car that my friend and I retrofitted. Bowling and Grippo deserve all the credit due for making this in a free and open spirit.<p>The original way one made the kit is to order a board in a group buy, and import a BOM .csv file to digikey to put together your own parts kit. It looks like you can mostly still do the same today.
I've used to run my it in my miata, until I've moved to Haltech. Given what it's worth speeduino is a killer in terms of price to performance. IIRC I've moved because speeduino being based on ATMega, doesn't allow for high resolution tables, and overall it's quite basic. My friend used to run megasquirt and while it had more features according to him megasquirt was harder to setup right than speeduino
This is so cool, a nice push towards low cost repairs and de facto "right to repair" for hobbyists. The MX5 is also a cool and inexpensive test vehicle. Hope more models are added.
Out of interest does a typical engine management system used in a car, make use of an MCU which supports lockstep computing, with multiple cores executing the same instructions simultaneously?
This has me thinking, are there any similar projects for antique "dumb" cars? I have a 1940 Chevy with a simple distributor, points, timing, etc that all need tweaking now & then. When any of those are out of tune, it runs rough, starts hard, stinks, and so on. I'm not looking for performance, but more efficient and reliable operation would be wonderful.<p>It would involve a lot more than just an Arduino & some wiring obviously. And a lot of the car's charm is its low-tech originality.
One of my favorite examples <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH9lp-Nms-o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH9lp-Nms-o</a>
Having gone down the rabbit hole of researching aftermarket ECUs for my cars I've discovered that in the US it's basically illegal to make changes to any part of a street legal car's emission control system which of course includes the ECU. It seems that it has been for several years but the EPA did not enforce the regulation consistently.<p>* <a href="https://www.saveourracecars.com/about.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.saveourracecars.com/about.html</a><p>* <a href="https://www.aemelectronics.com/product-legal-restrictions" rel="nofollow">https://www.aemelectronics.com/product-legal-restrictions</a><p>* <a href="https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/07/13/how-californias-bar-approved-smog-stations-know-you-have-a-modified-ecu-resulting-in-a-failed-smog-test/" rel="nofollow">https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/07/13/how-californias-bar-app...</a>
I'd love to convert my ninja 250 from 1987 over to fuel injection but I don't think I have the electrical expertise to figure it out. There are even throttle bodies available from japan where they had fuel injection much earlier than north america. Oh well.
Love speeduino! I'm using it to resuscitate an old 87 corvette in batch injection/ignition mode. Starts up but I've got wayyy more to fix on this old turn.