Last week I visited the Professional MotorSport world expo.
We are always on the lookout for new things like E motors and drives for our
Smesh-E-Axle - POWERFUL EFFICIENCY. project.
Parallel to this it also interesting to see what ECU manufacturers are offering and some of the mid en hi end ECU now also have open program structure were you are able to write your own control strategy. I think the main accelerator behind this is hybrid applications in combination with E drive systems that are relative new to this marked.
I have a industrial background and yes I’m involved in motorsport but my way of working and thinking is industrial engineering so some of the process are different. Lets call it a different mind set pointing to wards development as in contrast to a race engineer probably is more use to using the tools he or she gets to get the job done and my jobs is to build these tools in house where we can. On most industrial projects I have done there is nothing to compare to so you start from zero and this industrial workspace offers you the tools manly PLC systems to progress and develop your project as automotive hardware is more defined monkey see monkey do and you can not get any better that what for sale on options. Bit limited I would say. Also an ECU manufacturer is no expert on specific hardware build that’s needs to be run by a ECU. You can ask for specific functions but question is do they really understand and as your still dependant on this manufacturer to get your job done. I would say not ideal.
Now here it gets interesting as developer meets developer with a different background. Any day of the week I’m able to program any function. So if I see a function that an ECU has to offer I’m able to copy and improve with a 3 step system. 1e Write the control strategy for it. 2e make sure things can be adjusted properly. 3e Make sure the function is able to log parameters so progress can me made by evaluating data.
Than the thing is how do you know and where to start? Well practice dos the job. If you go to the gym and work out your muscles after some time become stronger and lifting weight will become easy. The same thing goes for your brain as well.
Now for the interesting part. Most mid en hi end ECU manufacturers offer extra function @ a extra cost. Mainly data logging and data acquisition software. Question is do I need this? For the most part no. Data logging is a ? mark. Can be more cost efficient to put this data on the cambus and use an external data logger if they let you do this that is. Than for data acquisition software. They ask what do you use??? As longs as the data format is CSV there is plenty of free data acquisition software that dos the job just as well so we use or build if needed these functions our self and educate our customers how to use it.
controls.is MPC1 can interface. For next year we going to use this unit on our race trucks build. So what dos it do? We are going to use the 2 canbus lines to move data from one bus to the other between the different ECU/VCU and data loggers. The race organisation has it’s own data logger with live data to race control but also transmit data by can on a open bus.
Next to this we have a Stack data logger that’s easy overloaded by data so parallel we going to use a AIM PDM32 that’s also has a data logger but also transmit things like break temperature engine parameters like RPM and engine temp and so on by can as well to the Stack data logger. Than the engine ECU has a datalogger inside as well and same goes for the MPC1 can unit that has 8 GB On board data logging memory Capable of recording data at up to 1000Hz and offers analog and digital inputs as well as aux outputs an this all can be controlled with custom strategy. Youtube link will give more information on this.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHVNS665VFI&t=934s"]Custom strategies walk through - YouTube[/ame]
