Anyone into DIY ECU tuning?
 

Im looking to start a potential venture in regards to ECU tuning. Maybe come out with a plug and play kit.

Wondering if anyone here on these forums has had experience with hacking into the ecu or anything simmilar.

:thumbsup:

Subaru ecu's are pretty awesome. You should look at openecu and romraiders if you haven't already.

I just checked out that open ECU forum. Pretty cool stuff. Does anybody know if there are typically some cool hidden options that can be accessed in the ECU (permanently turning off TC?)

One thing I would like to do is reprogram my "modes". my standard mode would basically be the sport mode (everything off). I would like a "rain mode" that I could turn on certain things (ABS and one of the TC computers, but probally not all).

That would be tight.


I'm not sure I would get too aggressive with tuning since I'm afraid to blow up my car.

Are you secretly working for the insurance companies?

Anyways, I did a "DIY" tune on my WRX and it was pretty simple, but definitely not for everyone. Some of the cool things you can do are launch control and flat foot shifting (really only helpful for turbo cars) and switching off CEL codes for emissions. My car doesn't have traction control so I'm not sure if it has that ability.

I'm not. I'm sure you are joking, but I'm sure an insurance company could find out this information if they wanted to.

I just hate traction control and I don't like pushing buttons to turn it off when I get in my car. I normally don't decide I am going to do something that my TC will try and correct when I get in my car, but I always get annoyed when it does kick in. And no, I am not happy that it did kick in because I am not worried about loosing control in my 200HP car by spinning the rear wheels.

By the way, Its good to know it does sound like there are a few settings to play with. It gives me hope that we could do some customizing.

This could be a Noob question, is the ECU of the BRZ made by Subaru ? Or Toyota ?

Open ECU Forums, are you referring to ECUFLASH ?

ECU is made by DENSO. (I'm not yelling, they just capitalize their name)

This is something interesting that Moto-P posted on Club4AG a while ago:

"Nikkei Japan articles releases details about the TOYOTA 86 "CAN-BUS - Bluetooth/USB systems being developed for user interfacing of data in 30+ parameters, including engine ECU data, Geo location data, yaw and g-force sensors, and chassis sensors. It will be open sourced for licensed and registered software developers and make it's way to smartphone applications for social interconnections, as well as more specific uses such as tuner development, black-box loggers, and even gaming devices interfacing such as GT5 for replay and simulations.

This is basically something I wanted to leak long ago, but have been keeping my mouth shut from our meetings with the Chief, and now I'd like to say that it has been in development for quite a while now, and that it will be a reality, and a reasonably ready state for consumer use.
At least for unregulated states and countries, and on raceways, we might see a future in more readily customizable ECU's as well as development with much greater information parameters from our cars, not just in the FT86 siblings but for many of the future sports cars? I would love to believe so...

What do you think about lifestyle in which we share ECU parameters on the web? and racing our virtual data of actual driving and putting them against each other on GT5? or even testing new engine and chassis parameters on such devices?? World is limitless when it comes to digital integration of cars to modern networked computing.

Perhaps this is one of the very necessary ingredient and by-product of future autonomous cars, but it's exciting to think that such technology will also make possible, more ways to enjoy sports cars and automobile customizations in a whole new way as well.

Lastly, President of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, also thinks so as well, and takes part, first hand, in development of devices like this, as well as classic art of tuning the cars the old fashioned way, by taking it for a blast on race tracks all over the world."

the "modes" your talking are possibly, my older brother tunes pulling trucks for people and he said you can have multi-tunes on one ECU and with a flick of a switch change between the two. as for prementaly turning off TC, no unless you have a tune that is your standard one that does it. As for cars not sure if this applies:iono:

When I said mode I was referring to the standard and sport driving modes the car has (not sure what the actual names are)

I wouldn't expect them to actually release proprietary information. There are a large number of engine parameters reported through the OBD diagnostic protocol as required by law. SAE J1979 appendix contains them. Toyota might encourage the development of products which use certain ones, but that's it. They're not going to give out definitions of RAM addresses in the ECU; you can be sure that only a very small number of actual Toyota/Subaru employees have access to that.

As for CAN signals from other modules along the bus, well anyone with a universal tool can listen to them. You have to know what the data is actually saying though, otherwise it's just a bunch of hexadecimal nonsense. I don't see Toyota revealing anything that isn't somehow required to be available by law.

the whole OPEN source ECU is interesting, and i actually believe it does mean that Toyota will release RAM addresses for (at least some) look up tables, there are companies that do this anyway so I can see toyota doing this to help ensure tuners atleast have good info that they weren't gorged for.


Now for the bad news, in the US (california for sure) you aren't allowed to have a programmable ECU, so for the US market (all have california code that i have seen) we will be getting locked ECU's, atleast as far as plug and tune via Toyota (or subaru) supported channels.

But don't worry I already have started on a soloution (full standalone) and I'm sure we will all benefit from whatever they layout for open source use.

All ECU's are re-flashable at the dealer, so I'm not sure what you mean by not being allowed to have a programmable ECU. If that was the case, all of the current Subaru ECU's are illegal from the factory.

Standalones are great for making the most from a heavily built engine, but are not fun at all to program. If you are not going too far, reflashing the stock ecu is a lot easier and maintains a lot of the daily driver stuff that keeps it all sane.

Regards,

Paul Hansen
www.avoturboworld.com
www.facebook.com/BRZSportsCarClub

or you can buy a new ecu from lets say, not cali and have it unlocked, switch ecus when you do inspection :D

I dont live in Cali. I live in the larger part of the US where cars are free to be who they are and not what other people think they should be. You know, freedom.

Zero. Percent. Chance. They will not give away their intellectual property. There's a lot of wishful thinking in this thread.

What you have to realize about OpenECU is that both Mitsubishi and Subaru used similar hardware from the same supplier for their engine control module. So that made reverse engineering the hardware side easier.

Then maybe half a dozen people went through the trouble to disassemble the code and try to figure out memory addresses for logging data. Then they had to find actual maps and figure out what they did and what units they were in. On Subarus, there was one guy who did the largest amount of work (merchgod on Rom Raider forums). Cobb hired him, because they realized their biggest competition was a guy who did stuff for free. There are a couple really sharp guys who do similar OpenECU stuff with the Mitsu engines and have created modifications to the control logic.

Toyota spends millions of dollars developing their control systems. They won't give it away, not anything meaningful. If you want to log data on a FR-S they will tell you to go buy a dealer tool for a couple thousand dollars.

If you want to reflash the computer, they won't tell you what you can change or the hardware requirements needed to do so. Why should they when they could sell a special edition with a more aggressive tune? From their perspective, you're just going to damage things and increase warranty claims.

If it was really going to be that hard, then Cobb wouldn't have been able to make Accessports for the GTR. And you can bet they are already working on the Accessport for the BRZ/FRS. All the accessport is is a delivery vehicle for reflashing, the overall programming isn't terrible different from the opensource/romraider project. Thus the reason they hired Merchgod away (plus the need to try and shut it down somehow).

It won't happen overnight - but it will happen.

Regards,

Paul Hansen
www.avoturboworld.com
www.facebook.com/BRZSportsCarClub

Say, what do you experienced people think Toyota even means by an "unlocked ECU" (or whatever they said in the press conferences or whatever the rumors say)?

It would be pretty ridiculous and cool if it meant full access to literally everything, but that seems quite unlikely to me.

I've taken it to mean that they'll be working, at least partially, with companies like Cobb to provide some aftermarket tuning. Being able to tune for aftermarket parts is now necessary to fit nearly anything that affects the engine, and Toyota understands much better than Subaru that many potential owners would not be purchasing the car if they cannot modify it at all. If it was, say, a Corolla, that wouldn't be an issue. But this is an enthusiasts car through and through, and there's not many car enthusiasts out there that are going to leave their pride and joy totally stock.

There's quite a few cars out there that are popular because of the large availability of aftermarket parts. American makers know that much better than the Japanese makers, many of them release engineering details of certain models to aftermarket makers many months ahead of the actual car's release, just to make sure the aftermarket is ready to go.

Regards,

Paul Hansen
www.avoturboworld.com
www.facebook.com/BRZSportsCarClub

sorry "USER Programable"

running a full standalone in parallel with a stock ECU is a simple proposition, if you don't know this or think so you are not tuning street cars, i thought that would atleast be understood.

stock ECU's are great, I love modifying the stock hardware VS replacing it when at all possible,

there are channels that will produce all the info that will be needed and it will be available for purchase, if you pay, you can play, there are groups that do just this, it will be done.

This is probably a difference in definitions - in my view, a standalone means just that, stand alone ecu replacement. Running in parallel sounds like a piggyback system, like the perfect power, unichip and other systems.

Regards,

Paul Hansen
www.avoturboworld.com
www.facebook.com/BRZSportsCarClub

using the term "piggyback" seems to ruffle some feathers when describing a parallel control unit arrangement

Considering the strength of the Subaru opensource community, if the BRZ ECU is crackable, we'll see someone pick it apart relatively quickly.

Parallel 'piggy back' MoTeC for example?

Meant what I said.


there are alot of systems in a car best left to the stock ECU, it is not uncommon to leave an S200 ECU in place for: Push button start, throttle body control, dash interface...etc, then you have ALL of the fuel & Spark controlled by an AEM, Motec, Haltech, Vipec, whateverthefuctec...

a "piggy back" is generally just a fuel trim device that manipulates the ECU's signals to EITHER fuel or Spark...

and Yes the ECU will be hacked in short order, because that's what happens, no matter who's ECU it winds up being

I develop control systems for engines that basically use car engine control system hardware. People are talking about all kinds of stuff in this thread.

Our systems generally require being put into boot mode to reflash them. That's done by shorting some pins into the ECU and cycling power. Typically that requires additional hardware and special loading protocols. Obviously this gets figured out for car ECUs all the time. I can't imagine a car company supporting consumers screwing with that and loading their own software though. The liability is just too great. We definitely do not support our customers mucking with the software. Sure they might own the engines but we have to certify them. On top of that we don't want to give our control algorithms away. To meet the requirements of the modern world (power, safety, efficiency, etc) engine controls are a complicated thing. It costs a significant amount of money to develop and build the control software. I can't imagine a company just giving that intellectual property all away. They'd at least make a token effort to secure it.