Just a minor update: I've been playing with the stand-by circuit with really good results. Stand-by current consumption is now down to 4uA when the ecu is removed from the car, meaning the standard AAx2 battery back-up is good for approx 80 years. Again, thats assuming the ecu is out of the car sitting on a shelf; installed in a car the back-up battery lifetime should be indefinite. I'm going to recommend changing the batteries once every 10 years, just to be safe. I may rev the board and switch to a coin-cell type battery back-up, but the AAs are cheap, readily available, and have a pretty decent shelf life.

With the ecu installed in the car the daughterboard uses about 600uA of current in stand-by mode (engine off, key removed, ecu shut down). The ecu itself uses ~4mA in this mode (it never really turns off either until you remove the car battery), so the extra 600uA its totally acceptable (this is about the same as an alarm system, etc).

I was planning on shipping the ecus without batteries installed, but with this development I feel comfortable shipping with the batteries installed, meaning you shouldn't have to open the cover for the first 10 years of use. Cool stuff.

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Ok Guys,

I've just about got the B13 Realtime ECU ready for show time, and with a new feature *knock on wood*. I've been testing in car and bench over the weekend and it looks good to go. I need to verify that LiveEdit and anyother existing Romulator software works just fine (I've been testing against EmUtil). I'll post pictures later, but it really doesn't look like much more than an ecu with a usb cable hanging out its butt. :tongue:

Ok, so the new feature: The consult portion of the daughterboard is now 'smart', and supports sharing the consult port with other devices. I designed this is just for you guys that have a Techtom MDM-100 or other hardware consult device (n-probe, etc) permanently mounted in your car, or you want to use one of those devices occasionally and not connect with your laptop. The way it works is that when you have the car on (consult active) and plug in the usb cable to your PC the daughterboard checks the state of the consult lines to see if any other device is already using them. If it sees another device present it prevents its own consult circuit from turning on. If you want to use the consult circuit on the daughterboard and talk to the ecu with your PC via the usb link simply unplug your Techtom before you plug in the usb connection (and once you've started using the usb consult, do NOT plug in your Techtom!). So far I've tested this with just a generic consult-serial adapter, and need to test it against other consult devices. I don't foresee any problems, but it depends on how they're setting the data lines. Btw, the obvious mods to the daughterboard we're the hacks I needed to do to get this working properly. Nothing major, and this won't hold back shipping these guys out.

If you don't ever use an external consult device all of the above is meaningless and the usb consult link via the daughterboard will work like a normal consult link.

Cool stuff. Anywho, it is now ready to order. I will be in Miami demo'ing it this weekend (see dyno day thread in Florida lounge), drop by and check it out if your in the neighborhood. I'll ship the first units when I get back from Miami (I think Ivan gets the first one, then I'll go down the list). I can't make these ecus as fast as the older ones, and the first batch will take me a bit longer until I've got a bunch under my belt. Please give me at least a week to build and install, not counting shipping time.

I'm working on a manual for this dude (should have something by the end of the week), and then I'll start working on the B14/S14 version.

sounds good, what are the prices on these ?

can't wait i hope im on that list calum lol.

can't wait i hope im on that list calum lol.

I was just about to send you an e-mail. :)

sounds good, what are the prices on these ?

$350 for new customers, $300 for return customers.

$350 for new customers, $300 for return customers.

ok sounds good, im gonna check with one of the local tuners and see if hes familiar with tunerpro or romeditor, he mostly tunes hondatan, neptune, aem ect

this ECU is calumsult MULE car approved :)

calum will live edit work with this. i have been messing with live edit and i like how easy it is to adjust things like injector size and vq maps

calum will live edit work with this. i have been messing with live edit and i like how easy it is to adjust things like injector size and vq maps

I think so. This is one of the final things I'm testing the firmware against.

Ok Guys,....
and then I'll start working on the B14/S14 version.

sounds awesome! put me #2 on your b14 list (after eric of course);)

Will do. Yea, he gets the first one. :)

Are these going to ship with a preloaded program?

They can, but uploading a program is as simple as plugging it into the usb port of your pc. The ecu doesn't need to be installed in a car to upload a program, the daughterboard is setup to use the usb power. It takes about 3 seconds to upload a complete program in a B13 ecu.

I'd like to have a higher level of sharing as people start to use these, it makes developing a new program very quick.

I'd like to have a higher level of sharing as people start to use these, it makes developing a new program very quick.

I hope to be able to contribute, you'll be hearing from me. :biggthump

So with this ecu you wouldn't need a romulator or moates burner and spare chips to make changes? This sort of reflashes that ecu as you go to reflect the changes you make live?

So with this ecu you wouldn't need a romulator or moates burner and spare chips to make changes? This sort of reflashes that ecu as you go to reflect the changes you make live?

Yep.

Realtime board in a nutshell:

-usb cable hanging out the butt of the ecu (6ft cable this time, no need for extra cables)
-single usb connection provides both consult (same as always, creates a virtual com port that works with all existing software), and connection to the realtime side of the daughterboard
-uses the existing Romulator command set, so existing software that works with Romulator works with this daughterboard (EmUtil, LiveEdit, etc)
-Upload a fresh rom in ~3 seconds, and with EmUtil running any rom editing program becomes realtime (upload changes you make as the car is running)

Its basically a rom emulator + consult squeezed onto a daughterboard, all accessed via a single usb connection.

Freakin' awesome. I guess I can keep my Techtom after all!

Sweetness! and I get the first one! (Disregard the email question answered)
I can't wait to "Drive n' Tune"!

Ok LiveEdit is a pain in the a$$. Here's the problem: the command protocol for the Romulators isn't well documented (and the documentation is buggy, and there seems to be differences between the different firmare versions, yada yada) and danged if I can figure out what LE is getting hung on when its trying to upload the bin. Eh, I'll e-mail Lawrence to see if he remembers what he wrote LE expecting, but he isn't supporting LE anymore. If I can't get this resolved I'll give up trying to support LE.

Eh. On the plus side both EmUtil and TunerProRT work perfect. I like TunerPro for the ease of adding maps, but don't like how it makes the fuel and timing maps look, and wish it had consult support for map tracing. Running multiple software is kind of tedious.

Anyone want to start an open source rom editing project?

nice stuff, wish i knew how to tune