Speeduino

Just a quick update that I've (at this 11th hour) finally finished off the project video for the 2017 Prize, of which Speeduino is a finalist!

It briefly runs through the history and motivation for the project as well as where it's going in the future. 

A little late this month due to a few bugs that have taken quite a lot of time to resolve, but the September firmware is now ready to go. The bugs were in relation to the comms system, which underwent a major rewrite this month to not only improve the stability of connections, but also make the tune transfers significantly faster. I know a few people experienced some comms issues with the August release and that prompted me to not only fix those issues, but make some major improvements at the same time. 

I've also made a lot of small improvements that are specific to the MX5 / Miata plug and play unit (and MX5s in general). I know this doesn't necessarily benefit everyone, but I do want to make sure these are working really nicely before the units go into wider production beyond just the Beta units. 

The full list of user facing changes is below:

• Better starting with the 4G63 (Miata) decoder
• Fixed a bug where the fuel pump would not finish priming under some conditions
• The Miata 99-05 (NB) pattern was rewritten to have better sync on startup and be more accurate
• The VVT table now has an explicit On/Off mode to make it more suitable as a generic RPM/TPS based control
• Added a rolling limiter option for hard cuts. This will be expanded and made more flexible over the coming months
• As mentioned above, significantly better comms and EEPROM management which should be both faster and more stable
• The unused analog pins can now be selected as general outputs for some functions (Eg fuel pump)

Note: The changes to the comms code required the internal memory layout to be adjusted. The system should update itself when it starts for the first time with the new firmware, but PLEASE CONNECT TO TUNERSTUDIO AFTER UPGRADING TO ENSURE THAT YOUR TUNE REMAINS CORRECT!

The firmware bundle can be grabbed from: https://speeduino.com/wiki/images/1/19/Speeduino-Sep17.zip

As always, if there are any issues found with this firmware, please leave a reply in this thread.

So time for some more new firmware goodness! This month sees a return to the more standard feature / bug release type changes rather than the larger structural ones I've been working on the last 2 months. I've gone back over the feature request list and tried to get through as many of them as I could, including a few that have been requested fairly regularly for a while now. 

On the hardware front, I am really excited to say that the beta run of the NA6 MX5 / Miata PNP units is done and (mostly) shipped. These have been in the works for a long time and, whilst some development is still required on the firmware side of things for them to be perfect, they are ready for wider testing and use:
The major changes on the firmware front this month were:

• Support secondary pressure sensor for real time baro readings. This has been asked by various people since (I think) the beginning of the project and is now supported. None of the boards currently have this built-in, but any of the spare analog inputs (Such as the ones on the proto areas) can be used for this. Currently it's limited to being an identical sensor to the primary sensor (ie they have to have the same calibration), but I'll probably change that this month
• There's now a cranking enrichment curve in place of the single value. This allows for temperature dependant changes to cranking pulse widths
• Improved MAP sensor reads (Faster and more accurate) that also allow for negative calibration values. You may notice your MAP sensors readings are a touch higher (2-3kPa at most) with the new firmware, this is normal.
• Some experimental changes to the boost control PID algorithm
• Allow the per tooth timing mode on Dual Wheel triggers
• Fix a bug that prevented dwell limiting from working on Basic Distributor setups
• Fix regression where the tpsDOT value would not reset to 0 (Introduced in June firmware)

As usual, the easiest place to grab the firmware is from the wiki: https://speeduino.com/wiki/images/6/69/Speeduino_Jul17.zip

Another month, another firmware drop! As is usually the case, there has been a bit of behind the scenes work happening in the firmware that is designed to both increase general stability as well as preparing for some more core changes that are coming in the next month or two.

There's also been a heap more work on the manual, in particular the layout and formatting of the offline manual. The whole thing is considerably easier to read and things like images are sized correctly etc. As always, if anyone is interested in helping out with the documentation, just let me know

As a bit of a side effort, I've begun work to bring the whole Speeduino codebase into compliance with the MISRA C:2012 standard. The MISRA standard is a set of coding guidelines designed by the automotive industry to maximise reliability and safety in software used in vehicle systems.
About half the code is now compliant and I expect to complete this effort within the next few weeks.

So as far as the new firmware goodness goes, the main changes are below:

• There's now a flex based boost adder that, combined with boost control, allows for additional boost to be added as the ethanol content rises.
• The ignition table now allows advance values below 0, ie after TDC.
• The 4g63 decoder has been expanded to work with the 6 cylinder variation of this pattern used in vehicles such as the 3000GT (Eg 6g72 and similar engines)
• All O2 target values and readouts can now be set in lambda or AFR (Previously only AFR was used)
• Improved the cranking accuracy of the missing tooth decoder (Better tooth to tooth prediction)
• Fixed a bug where the WUE and Cranking indicators would remain on if the engine was stopped during cranking
• Fixed a bug that could force injector timing to be simultaneous on 6 and 8 cylinder setups, even when semi-sequential was configured
• Added a new updater mechanism that allows for slightly smoother firmware updating. This is all behind the scenes stuff but will reduce the number of warnings that may appear in TS when performing a firmware update that alters some of the data structures

Where does the time go? April already and March has been another big one for Speeduino. Forum users and installs are increasing all the time and it's terrific to see the project starting to be mentioned more often on forums etc as a truly viable system!

As a heads up, I plan a slightly quieter month throughout April on the firmware front. I will still be doing general maintenance, bug fixes etc, but probably not so much work on new features. The reason for this is that I want to spend a good chunk of time working through the documentation pages (https://speeduino.com/wiki/index.php) to try and:
1) Have at least something on every topic
2) Cover all of the most used pages with good detail, images etc

DIY Engine Management Systems live and die by their documentation and to date whilst Speeduino's documentation has been minimally OK, I would like to bring this up to a much more professional level. I've already begun restructuring a few things, so there are many placeholders there currently as indicators of what I will be adding.
If there is anything you find that you believe is important, but that doesn't already have even a blank page, then please drop a note in the forum and I will look at adding it.

Additionally, I am ALWAYS on the lookout for anyone who wants to help with documentation! If you have some time and knowledge to share, please do contact me and I can get you the required access!

As for the full feature list from March, here are the primary changes:

• Addition of closed loop stepper idle control. This comes with a fairly major rewrite of the whole stepper control system, affecting open loop as well. Hopefully this should be a big improvement for those who had been asking about stepper idles
• Add a bunch of extra info into logs (Eg boost duty, boost limiter indicator, idle load (Steps or duty cycle) etc)
• Add an option for a number of decoders (Eg dual wheel) to only sync once. Currently these decoders will resync every time they get a cam pulse, but this can be problematic on noisy cam signals.
• Initial Subaru 6/7 decoder. This has not yet been tested on a vehicle, so should be considered somewhat experimental
• Thanks to user dazq, there is now an outputs test dialog in Tuner Studio. This allows you to test board functionality and outputs (Ignition and injectors) without having a stim attached. It can be enabled through the project properties dialog.
• Some compatibility work for Teensy and stm32 (Code will now fully compile on stm32, though scheduler/timers are non-functional)
• Calibration for the VW/Audi/Porsche 250kPa MAP sensor added
• Fixed a bug on the On/Off idle control that could cause it to startup in the wrong state
• Improvements to syncing on the Audi 135 decoder

The firmware bundle can be downloaded from: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/2/24/Speeduino_Mar17.zip
As usual, make sure to reload the latest ini into your TunerStudio project after upgrading the firmware

So after the big release of sequential control in October, Novembers release is less focussed on features and more on under the hood changes, although there have been a few new functions added

For the most part though, November is a stability and bug fix release, with heaps of patches included. Many of these are around sequential (and a big thanks goes out to Dan Elliot for testing throughout November!) but there were also improvements made to a number of decoders, overdwell protection etc.

As far as new features go however, the big one is that flex fuel sensing and adjustment is now supported. This allows for reading from a standard frequency based flex fuel sensor and adjusting the mixture accordingly. The great thing about the standard GM/Continental sensor is that is requires no calibration and so tuning of fuel requirements is largely universal. The default settings included in the base tune will work in almost all cases.

This feature does need some documentation to be written up, which I'll do over the next few weeks, but the support is there and working from this month onwards.

Giveaway!

Finally, many of you will have seen that there is a poll up to vote on a new logo concept. Just incase getting to have a say in the new logo isn't enough incentive (how could it not be!?!) I've decided to add an extra reason to vote....

Once voting closes on Dec 16th, the final logo will be put together based on the results. At that point I'll be choosing 1 person who voted, at random and they will receive a t-shirt and bumper sticker with the new logo from the first round to get printed! This competition is open to all users who have made at least 1 post on the forum at the time voting closes.

Note that the shirts and stickers will take a few weeks to get printed once things are final, so don't expect your winnings before Christmas or anything.

There have been a couple of additions to the voting options recently and everyone can adjust their vote right up to the 16th, so even if you've already voted, take another look and have your say! https://speeduino.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=890

Download

The firm is available for download in the usual locations:

Wiki: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/3/38/Speeduino_Nov16.zip

Github release: https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/releases/tag/201611

Release notes

The full list of changes included in this months firmware is below:

• Move to using the ADC interrupt method of performing analog reads. Thanks to VitorBoss for his work around this!
• Flex fuel control added
• Allow selection of the trigger edge on secondary trigger as well as primary
• Fix ignition miss that could occur when overdwell triggered incorrectly
• Multiple fixes for timing issues that occurred when sequential was selected
• Functional timers for teensy boards
• Enable the injector 3 and 4 angle dialogs when sequential is selected
• Add missing output mode setting on the stepper motor outputs
• Improve the scaling on the acceleration enrichment dialog.[/list]

OK so I'm a bit late with this months update, but there's a good reason for it. I know I've been a little quiet around the forums the last few weeks, and this has mostly been due to putting all of my Speeduino time into the firmware.

So, without beating around the bush. The good news is that the October firmware now supports full sequential fuel and ignition control! This has been a huge piece of work to get in and is one of the reasons things are a little delayed. A couple of points about the implementation:

• Individual cylinder fuel trim adjustment is supported via 4 6x6 3D tables
• Fuel and ignition are independent of one another, meaning one can be sequential and the other not
• Sequential is available for engines up to 4 cylinders
• Currently sequential is only supported with the missing tooth (+ cam) and dual wheel decoders. Support for others will be added over the coming weeks

• Fix for issue of sensor calibrations (IAT and CLT) not saving correctly. This was present on versions of Tuner Studio newer than 3.0.7
• New baro read method on startup will detect if the engine is already running and attempt to use the last known good baro reading
• Calibration profile for MPX4400 was added
• Improvements to some of the fan control logic. This fixes a potential issue of a fan not switching off under certain conditions.
• Changes to the fixed crank timing code to improve accuracy. This may make for more reliable starts on low res decoders such as the Basic Distributor and the 4G63.
• Code will now compile cleanly and run to the point of being able to connect to TunerStudio using a Teensy 3.2 or 3.5/3.6. Note that there is NO scheduling available for these platforms yet, so it is non-functional, but it is a huge step closer to getting these up and running as an alternative.
• A number of code/comment cleanups from VitorBoss (Thanks!)

The firmware is available for download from the usual locations:
Monthly code dump: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/8/87/Speeduino_Oct16.zip
Github release: https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/releases/tag/201610

As a side note, there are issues with the 3.0.10.8 and 3.0.11 versions of Tuner Studio that cause corruption to your tune file! Version 3.0.12 fixes these, but PLEASE avoid the bad versions as they can really mess up your tune very quickly.

So September has been largely focussed on hardware for me, but as always there's been some more solid improvements and new features added in the firmware.

On the hardware front, I've finally had a bit more time to play with the new surface mount design, specifically the MX5 PNP board that has been in the works for a little while. Here's a little preview of the current incarnation:

This board is not yet ready to go and there were some showstopper issues found on this testing version, but given the ground up design, this was expected. The board did run an engine, but a few of the onboard features are not functional due to design issues. Still, it's getting there

Around the firmware, it's been fantastic to see a few people putting forward pull requests for their own work. I will need to begin putting in place some processes to make this smoother in the future (Eg a style guide) but I'm thrilled that others are putting up good quality pull requests that I am confident in bringing into the main code.

As usual, here's the list of major changes:

• A critical fix to the Multiply MAP option to correctly calculate PW for this. Note: If you've had this enabled, you will likely need to make changes to your VE table with this fix. . If you are not using Multiply MAP (Default is to have this off) then there is no impact
• Changes required to support TunerStudio 3.0.7 and newer. This was caused by a change in TS to drop support for a certain label in the ini
• Oddfire support for engines up to 4 cylinders has been added
• More flexible pull up / switch configuration for launch control (Thanks go to Connor McLaughlin for this)
• A 'Non-360' degree decoder. This is a version of the dual wheel decoder that allows for primary tooth counts that don't divide evenly into 360
• A live histogram of O2 and tpsDOT has been added to the acceleration enrichment dialog. This is a huge help in tuning this enrichment as you can directly see the impact that throttle movements are having on the O2 and adjust the curve accordingly.

This firmware can be downloaded from: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/a/a1/Speeduino_Sep16b.zip
Or from the release on github: https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/releases/tag/201609

Despite me being largely out of action due to other commitments that last 10 days or so, there was a lot of progress made throughout July. Some of these things are parts of larger pieces of work and aren't fully completed yet (Eg 5 cylinder support), so this update may look somewhat lite on for new features, but rest assured there's lots happening.

To keep things short and sweet, here's the list of the major changes since last month:

• An error management system has been introduced for handling various types of sensor and operating failures. This is still very much a work in progress, but essentially it will allow for easier diagnosis of errors and the use of default sensor values for a 'limp home' mode. The system flags that there has been an error and will output an error number that can be looked up against the (WIP) documentation: http://speeduino.com/wiki/index.php/Errors
  • Up to 4 error conditions can be managed at a single time
  • For this release, the replacement default values are disabled, so you only get the error being logged for now, but I expect this to be turned on by default (With a configuration dialog) for next month
• Speeduino now uses it's own signature in TunerStudio, meaning that conflicts between the ini file and the code that is loaded will be picked up when you connect. This should hopefully reduce the number of people having disconnection issues due to mismatching config/code. See below for important details about this change
• Fixed a condition that could cause the tacho output to 'miss' every now and then, which resulted in a poor signal.
• Significant performance improvement on the 2D table lookups
• Change code directory structure to work with the recently released Arduino IDE 1.6.10
• Fixes for injector timing issues that were discovered in the June release (These fixes were also included in the rereleased v3 of the June files).

As always, the firmware is available from the wiki: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/2/2f/Speeduino_Jul16.zip
Or now also as a release on github: https://github.com/noisymime/speeduino/releases

<Insert usual spiel about me not being able to believe it's the end of June already>

OK, short, sweet and to the point on the update this month. So much good stuff happening, but at least for June the firmware is a little quiet on the new features front. That's not to say it hasn't got a lot in it though!

On the juice side of things, a lot of work has been done on the Flex fuel capability. Whilst it's not fully ready for June, the ability to read, display and log a flex sensor has been added. classified has done a heap of work on the actual fuel/ignition adjustments side of things and I'm hoping this should be merged within July sometime.

A LOT of work has gone into squashing bugs that were identified, some small, some more significant. I'm happy to say that from a reliability point of view, this release is the best to date by a long margin so I recommend upgrading for this alone.

Rather than drag it out, here's a full summary listing of the changes:

• Flex fuel sensor reading added
• lambda output added
• New decoder added based on info from classified. I have no idea what this should be called, but for now its simply designated 'MazdaAU' as this is apparently a pattern unique to Australian vehicles.
• Include AFR option has been added to allow incorporating AFR target directly in the pulsewidth calculation (Similar to 'Include MAP')
• Decent performance improvements to the corrections code
• Tweaks to the serial comms code to allow newer versions of the Tuner Studio beta (.120 and up) to be used
• Bug fix for potential serial disconnect and display of incorrect values
• Fix bug identified by AndreaRC that could cause injector pulse dropout under certain conditions, particularly when very low injector timing angles were set

As usual, the release is available on the wiki: http://speeduino.com/wiki/images/3/36/Speeduino_Jun16.zip

I have also begun tagging releases on github to allow easier tracking through there.