ever heard of emerald standalone?

[detforme]

Im looking into getting a standalone setup for my car, finally. I was gonna save up for the tec3, but some friend that run a sop told me to check out the emerald http://www.emeraldm3d.com/em_m3dk.html. its a british company that theyve been workin with, seems kinda like a knockoff on a tec3. But they say they made 400hp on a 240 with the emerald. Anyways i can get everything for about 1100 or so. Let me know if what ya think.

[shockload]

1100 is a killer deal if it includes the whole setup. i think all the features they say it has would be fat as ****.

[KATwo40]

1100 for one you've never heard of, or 1500 for an AEM plug and play that's been proven...

[deviousKA]

I would say an MS is a better option than that emerald, probably similar hardware but without the open-source potential. In a couple months MS is going even better.

If your going to fork over 1000+ for a standalone, get a haltech or motec, forget the AEM it is over rated.

MS is just as good as any of these, but requires some personal effort to set it up.

[detforme]

yeah i was thinking the same thing about the AEM, ive seen it run on some supras and was all that impressed with it. Yeah ive looked at the new megasquirt stuff, have you had tuning expirence with it? How does it compare with say, haltech? Is it worth the extra money to get the haltech?

[deviousKA]

The thing to wait for, for msefi, is the router board.

This is a seperate signal handling controller that will be able to provide up to 8 sequential injector drivers as well as up to 8 COP ignition control. This along with the superior processing control of the main processor of the MS unit is going to provide excellent fine resolution efi tuning.

Many other standalones have a seperate processor to handle crank/cam spark and fuel distribution just like this, but most are on a serial (sci, spi) bus. This is really fast, but the MS will be distributed on CAN bus which is highly superior. You have the oppertunity to distribute 3-4 different 8-24mhz processors for various control,,,, lots of power..

Once this routerboard comes out, the megasquirt will basically be the "ultramegasquirt" that you have been hearing about.

Its more difficult to set up than a haltech id say, maybe a little more expensive if you consider the time involved. A full MS with all the future goods, assemble yourself is going to be about $600 or so.

[detforme]

when is this supposed to be out? Also do they sell the part directly, or must they be outsourced?

[deviousKA]

They are making it, it will probably come in kit or semi-kit form, couple months id guess.

Check the msefi.com forums.

[WDRacing]

Devious, you're smart SOB, I'm glad your here to answer questions like this and give out all the info you have been lately. Just wanted to extend some gratitude.

WD

[SeanC]

so since this thread is going towards megasquirt. my brother is running it on his stario making 400 ft lbs. i like the system it was very easy to tune and can drive a bunch of things. launch control, nitrous, water injection etc... one tricky thing was the crank trigger we made a pick-up wheel on the crank pully and trued it with a file while the car was running... worked great. but could i possibly use just a stock dizzy without the cap and rotor to fire the EDIS? (system i think i am going to use cause i already have one) thanks.

[180sx]

don't volvo have same as ka24e disributors , well works on same theorie, lots of volvo's use mega. also z32 run it.

[BlackHat]

The Megasquirt definately looks interesting. So, you're talking about one that will be coming out in the next couple months. How does the existing one work? I couldn't find anything on a newer one (other than v3, which appears to be out already).

Sorry to pull the thread off topic, but I was also wondering if a stock KA would benefit from this kind of setup? It's an eventual turbo project, but currently stock.

[deviousKA]

Devious, you're smart SOB, I'm glad your here to answer questions like this and give out all the info you have been lately. Just wanted to extend some gratitude.

WD

Oh, well, hey thanks! Glad I can help.

There is potential for full nissan distributor support soon, the whole problem with this currently is that the nissan CAS is such a high resolution wheel. The amount of processing power required to accurately read say, a 1 degree signal (360 slit) at 6000-8000+ rpm is relatively intense. The current ms systems are based on a single (yet powerful) processor, but this particular type of task (high res wheel decoding) is a bit steep.

So, that is one of the purposes of these up and coming external boards that work on the CAN bus. They will have seperate distributed processors to handle these things.

The main MS units that you see available now will be part of this system. The MS2 is capable of using what is called CAN bus (you will hear this a lot in the automotive world these days), simply put, this is a system for multiple processors to "talk". All of the new external units such as the routerboard (used for sequential inj, and COP) and the GPIO (general purpose i/o) will be "chained" on this CAN bus and they will all talk to each other.

This makes it very easy to put together an MS system as money permits, you buy the main MS unit first (MS2 w/ v.3 board), and then have option to upgrade to the router or gpio board (and maybe more stuff too) in the future. In other words, if you are thinking about MS and not sure if you should get into it now, or wait, no worries. Buy the base MS2/v3 unit, you wont miss out on anything, you will have a head start.

Ok, and another thing about ignition control. You can swap a mitsubishi or mazda CAS disk into the nissan distributor (which is made by mitsu). Some of these disk's dont have quite the high resolution of the nissan part, and are easier to interface to MS with current options.

You can also use Edis, like I did a while back, a hacked distributor and some sort of HEI, and a few other methods as well.

I have the nissan CAS simulated electronically on my bench, once I pick up a gpio and a routerboard I will see what I can do to interface it.

I forgot a few things I wanted to say, but there you go.

[BlackHat]

How does a nissan currently handle these processes? Surely the MS2 is more powerfull than the stock ECU?

Maybe I misunderstood the role of the MS2. It is a standalone computer right?

[deviousKA]

The original ecu does have a seperate processor to handle the CAS along with a few other sensors, its not that fast really. There is also another seperate A/D (analog to digital) chip that takes care of all the sensor voltage to digital conversions.

The MS processor (base) has the a/d built in along with everything else, in one 40 pin package. The i/o pins and capability are literally swamped, expert programming is what has carried it along thus far. Now that the CAN bus is an option, all sensor data as well as outputs can be on this bus, allowing seperate units to do the work. This takes the burden off the main processor and really all that it will need to concentrate on is fueling (all 24mhz of it).

It is a standalone, always has been. There have only been limits on ignition setups, direct oem interfacing and things like that. Thats why everyone converts to crank based trigger and gets rid of their distributor.

For the new routerboard to work with the sequential and COP, it will need both a crank and a cam trigger. The oem distributor would be able to handle that as is, but personally I will be running a custom crank trigger + cam driven CAS, I dont want any pesky chain slack causing slightly erroneous ignition events.

[detforme]

yeah, great advice, like wd said, lots of thanks. i read a little on their site, and it sounds like this new ums is gonna be really good for the price.

[BlackHat]

The original ecu does have a seperate processor to handle the CAS along with a few other sensors, its not that fast really. There is also another seperate A/D (analog to digital) chip that takes care of all the sensor voltage to digital conversions.

In reading more, the A/D chip makes the O2 wideband less accurate right? Is this one of the things the Router will be correcting? It wasn't too clear on that point.

The MS processor (base) has the a/d built in along with everything else, in one 40 pin package. The i/o pins and capability are literally swamped, expert programming is what has carried it along thus far. Now that the CAN bus is an option, all sensor data as well as outputs can be on this bus, allowing seperate units to do the work. This takes the burden off the main processor and really all that it will need to concentrate on is fueling (all 24mhz of it).

So basically, you would could handle anything the 240 could throw at you with a MS-II ECU and Router chained with the CAN connection? The ECU to handle fuel and sensors, the Router to handle all ignition events?

It is a standalone, always has been. There have only been limits on ignition setups, direct oem interfacing and things like that. Thats why everyone converts to crank based trigger and gets rid of their distributor.

For the new routerboard to work with the sequential and COP, it will need both a crank and a cam trigger. The oem distributor would be able to handle that as is, but personally I will be running a custom crank trigger + cam driven CAS, I dont want any pesky chain slack causing slightly erroneous ignition events.

You lost me a little bit here. How do you just get rid of your distributor? I'm also not sure on what the crank trigger is. So obviously, not understanding those two things I'm not sure I understand how you could run the MS2 ECU only with the KA.

Sorry for the noob questions. You're helping a lot though. (Learning kicked into overdrive)