7 ms·

Speeduino: Open-Source Engine Management

141 points by johnnycarcin 7y ago

westmeal 7y ago
While I love that this is possible you have to be very literate in electronics for this to make sense. A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors. That being said I'm currently looking into this for a turbo econobox. Haven't decided whether to go this route or a standalone but I still have plenty of time to source parts.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  I mean, I don't think you have to "rip apart the wiring harnesses".
  - korethr 7y ago
    Agreed. In fact, the engine bay wiring harness can probably be kept mostly or completely intact. If the stock sensors are being reused, there's no need to mess with the wiring harness at the sensor end. If the position of components in the engine bay is not significantly changing, then the routing of the wiring harness doesn't need to change either. At most, you're going to have to figure out how to connect the harness to this new computer, which can possibly be done without having to modify the stock ECU connector. I have seen adapter harnesses before.
    - westmeal 7y ago
      Oh OK. You are correct it seems to support most CKP and CMP designs. So most of the work is actually just getting the pin out and putting those in the speeduino board... I may have to give this a shot then. Not sure about ignition wiring but when I get some time after work I'll read up on how thats handled.
- korethr 7y ago
  To be fair, it seems to me that most car guys are not necessarily literate in electronics. And for them, there's various aftermarket options that are a bit more plug-and-play than this. And that is fine, IMO. But for nerds like me whom are inveterate tinkerers, and familiar with both engines and electronics, there's projects like this.
- temporaryvector 7y ago
  >A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors. I'm not so sure about that. My go-to mechanic is an older gentleman, late 60s, and oftentimes I'm surprised how quickly he updated his workshop to include electronics. He went from barely having a multimeter and not knowing how to use a computer in the early 2000s to having a well equipped electronics bench with oscilloscopes, scan tools, soldering equipment, etc. He told me he went to a bunch of courses to get updated on modern car technology because his clients started bringing newer cars. Keep in mind this is in a developing country (Mexico) so he has to keep repair costs down to keep clients, because the more affluent people will go to dealerships to get a proper fix. A lot of his repairs that I've seen involve what I'd charitably call "bodging" using parts that aren't original or intended, but they get the job done on a budget. Similarly with car guys I hang around here, there has been a noticeable uptick in electronic knowledge, maybe not to the level of custom ECUs yet, but stuff like making an arduino controlled radiator fan or making a custom box to read the CAN-bus to get the steering wheel controls do stuff they weren't intended to do is pretty commonplace. People working with cars are already used to complexity and learning new things, after all, so I don't think electronics will scare them off. We don't see as much of it yet because of all the lockdown and manufacturer's insistence at straight up replacing parts, but now that modern-style fully electronic cars (2010 or so) are becoming affordable enough to be "project cars" for average car guys, we'll see more and more stuff like this. A car guy might not want to rip into the wiring harness on his daily driver that he paid 15k for, but a 3k shitbox he bought as a second car for fun? Well, people are already doing that.
- travbrack 7y ago
  People do this all the time, go search any car forum for 'megasquirt'.
asguy 7y ago
> Ever wondered why black box, aftermarket engine management systems can cost thousands of dollars? There’s actually a pretty good reason. I can’t imagine starting a new engine management project in 2020 without using an FPGA to interface with engine positioning sensors and outputs. Modern engines tend to be way too complicated to coordinate without paying close attention to your modeling of where all the fast moving mechanical bits are currently. It’s cool they released this as open-source but the tech would have been novel circa 1992.
- jascii 7y ago
  Well, My 1999 motorcycle (Kawasaki Concours ZG1000) is still carbureted.. If there is an affordable product to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions without giving up my privacy to corporate black boxes I would totally be interested.
- matthewvia 7y ago
  I'm not aware of any aftermarket EMS's using FPGAs, and there are quite a lot of them. The engine position sensing isn't something that requires a lot of specialized hardware: The sensors are usually one or two reluctors or hall effect sensors that give, say, 12 to 64 clock edges per engine rotation. Determining engine position is pretty easy with most microcontroller's built-in timers. I know that megasquirt, and freeems use hardware timer capture inputs for this purpose. It is certainly something that is easy to cause engine damage if you get it wrong, but the application for these is usually offroad vehicles. There is a community of people that do convert their engines to use these systems. I've eyed rusefi for a while, I've personally used freeems, and even started to write my own EMS for fun (https://github.com/via/viaems/ https://github.com/via/viaems/). I don't think engine position sensing has changed even with the most modern engines, though the direct injection engines certainly have more specific timing requirements for fuel injection.
  - leon_sbt 7y ago
    I'm fairly confident that Motecs line of ECU products all have FPGA's internally. I vaguely remember taking apart an old M400 and it having an FPGA. Thankfully their ECU manager software abstracts that all away from you.
NietTim 7y ago
This is neat, I've been daydreaming about this being possible to make for years now. Practical? Probably not, hard to beat a multi million dollar budget, but still, neat.
Grazester 7y ago
I believe the Mega Squirt is also Open source and has been around since the early 2000's
- matthewvia 7y ago
  It may still be open source, but it is not free software anymore, at least for MS3 software and hardware.
- noisymime 7y ago
  They make the source available, but it's not under an open source license. You can't modify it, copy it, run it on your own hardware etc. They basically just make it available so that people can help find issues for their own products.
tabiv 7y ago
I've been looking into this for my Miata. There are a few plug and play options for hardware that you can buy from small companies. This is all platform dependent of course. https://speedyefi.com/ https://speedyefi.com/
donquichotte 7y ago
If anyone is interested, here is the source code for speeduino [1], megaSquirt [2] and rusEFI [3], two comparable open source ECUs. [1] https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/ https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/ [2] https://github.com/onesk/ms3-source https://github.com/onesk/ms3-source [3] https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi
- VectorLock 7y ago
  I'm curious what the big differences between these 3 are?
  - noisymime 7y ago
    There's a few. A big reason why Speeduino and RusEFI exist as open source projects is that Megasquirt, whilst they make the source available for viewing, is very much NOT under an open license. You can't use it on anything but their hardware, can't modify it, can't copy it etc. It's also quite hardware specific with big chunks of assembler in it. Speeduino started as a way of getting a DIY ECU that was far cheaper than what Megasquirt offerred and it's currently about 1/3 the price. It's not on the same level for features at the moment, but I do new firmware releases every 2 months or so with more functionality etc.
    - Unklejoe 7y ago
      I’ve been watching Speeduino for a while now and the amount of progress you guys are making is insane. Keep up the good work. I currently run/tune Megasquirt in several cars, but I’ve been waiting to give Speeduino a shot.
korethr 7y ago
Nice to see another option in this space. I shall have to come back to this when it comes time to resume on various engine-related projects I have on backlog. A question for any of you more familiar with this project: Does it support MAF sensors for measuring intake air? Or is this purely a speed-density system? Scanning the documentation, I see mention of different MAP sensors, but a search finds nothing for MAF sensors. If this is presently only a speed-density system, is support for mass airflow on the roadmap, or this intended to remain only a speed-density system?
- noisymime 7y ago
  At this stage it's Speed-density / Alpha-N only and I don't have any real plans at this point for adding MAF support I'm afraid. The easiest way if you really want to keep the MAF would be to use a hardware based frequency to voltage converter and such devices do exist. Otherwise, any reason not to convert to MAP?
  - l8rlump 7y ago
    Any links/info on these devices?
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Some cars, like the Mitsubishi EVO, have both.
virgil_disgr4ce 7y ago
Am I supposed to already know what "engine management" means by the time I click on this? I get that it has something to do with car engines, but ...?
- tyingq 7y ago
  Managing spark advance/retard, injector "on" duration, idle speed, etc, based on lots of sensor readings (knock sensors, o2 sensors, mass air flow readings, throttle position, rpm, engine temp, boost pressure, etc). If you, for example, improve airflow in your car drastically, or install larger injectors, or a high flow exhaust...the stock ECU code/maps may not be flexible enough to optimize for that. Also for bolting fuel injection onto an engine that was previously had a carburetor.
farisjarrah 7y ago
This is super cool. Much like the Raspberry Pi, I could see this as a way for non-developers to start getting interested in FOSS software/hardware hacking.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Some caution required, you can damage your engine by running too lean, for example. Might be good to just start with displaying metrics...
  - wolrah 7y ago
    I'd say it's generally a good idea to stick to "bolt on" style modifications at most for any vehicle you need to count on. Save any real deep tinkering like this for something you can afford to have out of commission. Personally I'm now contemplating fuel injecting my gokart as a way to learn.
akeck 7y ago
Is my car still insurable if I run this?
- westmeal 7y ago
  Who says they need to know?
  - ihattendorf 7y ago
    The problem is if it's found after an accident and leads to a denied claim. Not likely, but possible.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      Does anything similar to Magnuson-Moss apply to insurance companies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
VectorLock 7y ago
I've been looking at EFI options for a 427 ci stroker Windsor build so this is very interesting to me, but I'm curious really how much effort it would be to put together a working system for this vs. just buying something like a Holley Sniper EFI.
leafmeal 7y ago
What is engine management? This is not a very "searchable" term.
- tyingq 7y ago
  I answered this on a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467998
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
chrisMyzel 7y ago
Is this about internal combustion engine management?
martinmunk 7y ago
This is really neat! About 13 years ago (when I was a late teen) I was really keen on the whole engine management idea, and tried to wrap my head around megasquirt. Today I'm running diesel lumps from the late 70's (Land Rovers) so can't really use this even tho it would be really cool. Makes me want to get a small petrol engine from a scrapyard to play around with this. A note: took me a little too figure out which MCU this is build around. Surely it couldn't be the classical AVR arduino, but yes, it's a ATMega 2560.

141 points by johnnycarcin 7y ago

While I love that this is possible you have to be very literate in electronics for this to make sense. A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors. That being said I'm currently looking into this for a turbo econobox. Haven't decided whether to go this route or a standalone but I still have plenty of time to source parts.

microcolonel 7y ago
I mean, I don't think you have to "rip apart the wiring harnesses".
- korethr 7y ago
  Agreed. In fact, the engine bay wiring harness can probably be kept mostly or completely intact. If the stock sensors are being reused, there's no need to mess with the wiring harness at the sensor end. If the position of components in the engine bay is not significantly changing, then the routing of the wiring harness doesn't need to change either. At most, you're going to have to figure out how to connect the harness to this new computer, which can possibly be done without having to modify the stock ECU connector. I have seen adapter harnesses before.
  - westmeal 7y ago
    Oh OK. You are correct it seems to support most CKP and CMP designs. So most of the work is actually just getting the pin out and putting those in the speeduino board... I may have to give this a shot then. Not sure about ignition wiring but when I get some time after work I'll read up on how thats handled.
korethr 7y ago
To be fair, it seems to me that most car guys are not necessarily literate in electronics. And for them, there's various aftermarket options that are a bit more plug-and-play than this. And that is fine, IMO. But for nerds like me whom are inveterate tinkerers, and familiar with both engines and electronics, there's projects like this.
temporaryvector 7y ago
>A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors. I'm not so sure about that. My go-to mechanic is an older gentleman, late 60s, and oftentimes I'm surprised how quickly he updated his workshop to include electronics. He went from barely having a multimeter and not knowing how to use a computer in the early 2000s to having a well equipped electronics bench with oscilloscopes, scan tools, soldering equipment, etc. He told me he went to a bunch of courses to get updated on modern car technology because his clients started bringing newer cars. Keep in mind this is in a developing country (Mexico) so he has to keep repair costs down to keep clients, because the more affluent people will go to dealerships to get a proper fix. A lot of his repairs that I've seen involve what I'd charitably call "bodging" using parts that aren't original or intended, but they get the job done on a budget. Similarly with car guys I hang around here, there has been a noticeable uptick in electronic knowledge, maybe not to the level of custom ECUs yet, but stuff like making an arduino controlled radiator fan or making a custom box to read the CAN-bus to get the steering wheel controls do stuff they weren't intended to do is pretty commonplace. People working with cars are already used to complexity and learning new things, after all, so I don't think electronics will scare them off. We don't see as much of it yet because of all the lockdown and manufacturer's insistence at straight up replacing parts, but now that modern-style fully electronic cars (2010 or so) are becoming affordable enough to be "project cars" for average car guys, we'll see more and more stuff like this. A car guy might not want to rip into the wiring harness on his daily driver that he paid 15k for, but a 3k shitbox he bought as a second car for fun? Well, people are already doing that.
travbrack 7y ago
People do this all the time, go search any car forum for 'megasquirt'.

asguy 7y ago

> Ever wondered why black box, aftermarket engine management systems can cost thousands of dollars? There’s actually a pretty good reason. I can’t imagine starting a new engine management project in 2020 without using an FPGA to interface with engine positioning sensors and outputs. Modern engines tend to be way too complicated to coordinate without paying close attention to your modeling of where all the fast moving mechanical bits are currently. It’s cool they released this as open-source but the tech would have been novel circa 1992.

jascii 7y ago
Well, My 1999 motorcycle (Kawasaki Concours ZG1000) is still carbureted.. If there is an affordable product to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions without giving up my privacy to corporate black boxes I would totally be interested.
matthewvia 7y ago
I'm not aware of any aftermarket EMS's using FPGAs, and there are quite a lot of them. The engine position sensing isn't something that requires a lot of specialized hardware: The sensors are usually one or two reluctors or hall effect sensors that give, say, 12 to 64 clock edges per engine rotation. Determining engine position is pretty easy with most microcontroller's built-in timers. I know that megasquirt, and freeems use hardware timer capture inputs for this purpose. It is certainly something that is easy to cause engine damage if you get it wrong, but the application for these is usually offroad vehicles. There is a community of people that do convert their engines to use these systems. I've eyed rusefi for a while, I've personally used freeems, and even started to write my own EMS for fun (https://github.com/via/viaems/ https://github.com/via/viaems/). I don't think engine position sensing has changed even with the most modern engines, though the direct injection engines certainly have more specific timing requirements for fuel injection.
- leon_sbt 7y ago
  I'm fairly confident that Motecs line of ECU products all have FPGA's internally. I vaguely remember taking apart an old M400 and it having an FPGA. Thankfully their ECU manager software abstracts that all away from you.

NietTim 7y ago

This is neat, I've been daydreaming about this being possible to make for years now. Practical? Probably not, hard to beat a multi million dollar budget, but still, neat.

Grazester 7y ago

I believe the Mega Squirt is also Open source and has been around since the early 2000's

matthewvia 7y ago
It may still be open source, but it is not free software anymore, at least for MS3 software and hardware.
noisymime 7y ago
They make the source available, but it's not under an open source license. You can't modify it, copy it, run it on your own hardware etc. They basically just make it available so that people can help find issues for their own products.

tabiv 7y ago

I've been looking into this for my Miata. There are a few plug and play options for hardware that you can buy from small companies. This is all platform dependent of course. https://speedyefi.com/ https://speedyefi.com/

donquichotte 7y ago

If anyone is interested, here is the source code for speeduino [1], megaSquirt [2] and rusEFI [3], two comparable open source ECUs. [1] https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/ https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/ [2] https://github.com/onesk/ms3-source https://github.com/onesk/ms3-source [3] https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi

VectorLock 7y ago
I'm curious what the big differences between these 3 are?
- noisymime 7y ago
  There's a few. A big reason why Speeduino and RusEFI exist as open source projects is that Megasquirt, whilst they make the source available for viewing, is very much NOT under an open license. You can't use it on anything but their hardware, can't modify it, can't copy it etc. It's also quite hardware specific with big chunks of assembler in it. Speeduino started as a way of getting a DIY ECU that was far cheaper than what Megasquirt offerred and it's currently about 1/3 the price. It's not on the same level for features at the moment, but I do new firmware releases every 2 months or so with more functionality etc.
  - Unklejoe 7y ago
    I’ve been watching Speeduino for a while now and the amount of progress you guys are making is insane. Keep up the good work. I currently run/tune Megasquirt in several cars, but I’ve been waiting to give Speeduino a shot.

korethr 7y ago

Nice to see another option in this space. I shall have to come back to this when it comes time to resume on various engine-related projects I have on backlog. A question for any of you more familiar with this project: Does it support MAF sensors for measuring intake air? Or is this purely a speed-density system? Scanning the documentation, I see mention of different MAP sensors, but a search finds nothing for MAF sensors. If this is presently only a speed-density system, is support for mass airflow on the roadmap, or this intended to remain only a speed-density system?

noisymime 7y ago
At this stage it's Speed-density / Alpha-N only and I don't have any real plans at this point for adding MAF support I'm afraid. The easiest way if you really want to keep the MAF would be to use a hardware based frequency to voltage converter and such devices do exist. Otherwise, any reason not to convert to MAP?
- l8rlump 7y ago
  Any links/info on these devices?
- tyingq 7y ago
  Some cars, like the Mitsubishi EVO, have both.

virgil_disgr4ce 7y ago

Am I supposed to already know what "engine management" means by the time I click on this? I get that it has something to do with car engines, but ...?

tyingq 7y ago
Managing spark advance/retard, injector "on" duration, idle speed, etc, based on lots of sensor readings (knock sensors, o2 sensors, mass air flow readings, throttle position, rpm, engine temp, boost pressure, etc). If you, for example, improve airflow in your car drastically, or install larger injectors, or a high flow exhaust...the stock ECU code/maps may not be flexible enough to optimize for that. Also for bolting fuel injection onto an engine that was previously had a carburetor.

farisjarrah 7y ago

This is super cool. Much like the Raspberry Pi, I could see this as a way for non-developers to start getting interested in FOSS software/hardware hacking.

tyingq 7y ago
Some caution required, you can damage your engine by running too lean, for example. Might be good to just start with displaying metrics...
- wolrah 7y ago
  I'd say it's generally a good idea to stick to "bolt on" style modifications at most for any vehicle you need to count on. Save any real deep tinkering like this for something you can afford to have out of commission. Personally I'm now contemplating fuel injecting my gokart as a way to learn.

akeck 7y ago

Is my car still insurable if I run this?

westmeal 7y ago
Who says they need to know?
- ihattendorf 7y ago
  The problem is if it's found after an accident and leads to a denied claim. Not likely, but possible.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Does anything similar to Magnuson-Moss apply to insurance companies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

VectorLock 7y ago

I've been looking at EFI options for a 427 ci stroker Windsor build so this is very interesting to me, but I'm curious really how much effort it would be to put together a working system for this vs. just buying something like a Holley Sniper EFI.

leafmeal 7y ago

What is engine management? This is not a very "searchable" term.

tyingq 7y ago
I answered this on a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467998
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

chrisMyzel 7y ago

Is this about internal combustion engine management?

martinmunk 7y ago

This is really neat! About 13 years ago (when I was a late teen) I was really keen on the whole engine management idea, and tried to wrap my head around megasquirt. Today I'm running diesel lumps from the late 70's (Land Rovers) so can't really use this even tho it would be really cool. Makes me want to get a small petrol engine from a scrapyard to play around with this. A note: took me a little too figure out which MCU this is build around. Surely it couldn't be the classical AVR arduino, but yes, it's a ATMega 2560.