- It's Andre from the High Performance Academy,
and we're at World Time Attack with Andy from Adaptronic.
And we wanted to investigate Andy's brand new
modular range of ECUs and just get some insight on that.
It's not often in this market
that we see an innovative product come out.
The market for after-market ECUs is relatively mature,
and really, the ECUs all in the mainstream
do kind of the same thing.
So Andy's new modular ECU is quite unique.
So, Andy, for a start,
let's talk about what makes
the modular range of ECUs unique.
- Okay, I'll probably start off by describing
some of the problems that we're trying to overcome.
So what we found
was that people often wanted to upgrade their systems,
and so they'd start off with a lower level ECU,
and then add on other bits as required.
So they'd up end up with this series of multiple boxes
connected to the ECU, which ended up being quite messy.
And the other problem is that,
at some point, you end up, you're running out of outputs
and connections that you can make on the ECU.
So, I wanted to make a system
where people could upgrade their ECU over time
and not commit to buying a system
that was way beyond what they needed right now
and not be limited by buying a less expensive system
at the beginning.
- I think that's a situation a lot of people have been in.
When you're initially deciding to start out on a project,
and you look at what you need,
you pick a product that suits on paper.
And obviously, the bug bites,
and you start modifying the car further.
All of a sudden, you find that
what you initially had that suited fine
doesn't quite cover the full range of what you now need.
So, with the modular range of ECUs,
you can purchase an ECU
that covers your initial requirements,
but then you can add to it,
so tell us how that works.
- Well, even the basic version of the modular ECU
actually has a lot of inputs and outputs on it,
so that should do quite a few cases for people.
But what the customer can do
is they can buy additional modules,
which would give them more inputs or more outputs
or more control.
So for example, the basic M2000 ECU has,
I think it's 15 analogue inputs
and four temperature inputs and lots of things like that.
It has eight injector, eight ignition,
and four auxiliary outputs.
But if you want more, you can just buy another module,
which gives you another six auxiliary outputs,
and put that in the same box
so you don't need to install another box and mount it
and then wire it up and make everything messy.
- So, initially, that M2000 that would be suitable,
I'm guessing they're for a four-cylinder
or an eight-cylinder engine, up to an eight-cylinder engine
with eight injector and ignition outputs?
- Yeah, so it can run an eight-cylinder engine direct fire
and fully sequentially.
The only question is four auxiliary outputs
going to be enough to do what you want?
You do get another two with
the tacho and fuel pump as well.
But if you want to run, say,
an idle stepper motor and boost control
and a few other things,
then you're going to run out pretty quickly.
So you probably need to get
the additional module to do that.
- Okay, so let's move to the bigger ECU.
What's that capable of?
- [Andy] Well, that's called the M6000,
and the basic version of the M6000
has got the same capability as the 2000.
So it's still got the eight ignition, eight injection,
but you can upgrade it a lot further.
You can fit more modules into the box.
So you can run up to three of the output modules.
So you can run up to 24 injectors, 24 ignition,
and you can run four of the smaller modules,
and the smaller modules can be either
a drive-by-wire controller
so you can run full drive-by-wire,
or six auxiliary outputs, so you can run
another 24 auxiliary outputs on top of the other ones,
so I think that's 84 in total, or something.
(laughs) I'm not sure.
- So there's not, shouldn't really limit you too much,
so we're talking, perhaps, V12s with quad variable,
cam control, dual drive-by-wire, that sort of thing,
really advanced engines?
- Yeah, that's what I basically planned it for,
so in addition to that,
the fuel control's got two completely separate channels,
so on a V12, we've got two separate throttle bodies
and two separate inlet manifolds.
You can run a separate map sensor on each,
and control each bank
as a complete separate engine, basically.
- How's that addressed from the tuner's perspective?
Probably getting a little off topic here
but just because that's quite interesting and unique
how's that dealt with by the tuner?
- Well there's only one fuel map, so the ECU
basically looks at the fuel map twice.
One for each bank,
and on the screen we've got
your injector milliseconds, you have two different
injector milliseconds, one for each bank.
- So it's modifying the injector millisecond pulsewidth
per bank based on the manifold pressure reading
for that particular bank, is that...?
- It's not a modification, it actually does
all the fuel calculations twice,
so they're two completely independent things.
Same with boost control, you can run
two separate boost loops if you've got
a separate turbocharger on each side.
- It sounds great.
Now the actual process outlay, the software,
the firmware that's operating in the background
that's exactly the same between the two ECU's?
- Yeah that's right, and the way that you can
control so many outputs with running the same processor
without everything slowing down is because
each additional module that you buy has got
its own processor on it, and so you've got
enough power to...
- So essentially there's no downside
if you've got a basic ECU
or you've got it fully optioned out
with all of the additional modules
there's no downsides to that in terms of processing power.
- Correct, that's right.
Some additional calculation features slow the ECU
down a little bit, so for example if you want to run
individual correction maps for each cylinder
then the ECU's got to look up each of those
correction maps each time.
But even still, the testing that we've been doing recently,
the ECU's running at 1000 hertz
main loop speed, which is very fast.
So that's not a problem.
- What we've seen with a lot of cars these days
are a lot of modern aftermarket ECU's
and additional aftermarket componentry electronics.
There's a lot of now relying on CAN communications
so that we can read in data from other modules
and then send out data perhaps to dashes.
How are you dealing with that with the modular ECU?
- Well, basically the M2000's got a single
CAN port and the M6000's got two CAN ports on it.
What we have is several preconfigured CAN templates
is I believe the vernacular that a lot of the other
manufacturers use, so you can just select whether
you want to output in the, say, the motec
compatible format or something like that
to drive to a dash which already supports that.
And inputs, you know again we can have inputs
for, say, the lambda CAN converters for motec,
that sort of thing.
In terms of making it fully configurable for people
so that people can reverse engineer
factory car protocols and then implement themselves,
haven't done that yet.
It is on the cards, and I'm aware
that some applications are going to need that.
But that's not the highest priority right now.
- One function or aspect I want to focus on
because as far as I'm aware it's completely unique,
I haven't seen it before,
is the onboard knock control that you're using.
And this comes back to your older select ECU's as well.
Knock control, obviously nothing particularly new there
but you have an onboard audio jack, a 3.5mm audio jack
so the tuner can plug a headset
straight into the ECU and listen for knock.
How's that all work?
- I don't know why other manufacturer's haven't done this.
I've seen, I guess when I started tuning
I had a lot of mentors help me
and they all had these knock boxes
which they hooked up to the engine
and listened with their headphones.
And I thought, well hang on a second
we've got a knock sensor connecting to the ECU.
Why don't we amplify that and filter it?
So, a tuner can listen to it
and not have to have another box.
Because you know yourself, when you're in a car
you've got two keyboards here and it all gets quite messy
so I thought, why don't we just eliminate
a box and a bunch of wires and just have someone
be able to plug it into the ECU?
- It makes a lot of sense, and obviously as well
you then don't need the additional expensive
and external or additional knock box
or knock audio detector, so yeah
it makes a lot of sense to me.
Now these ECU's right now, as I understand it,
they're really kind of in beta testing.
They're not quite available
for public consumption yet.
Can you give us some indication
of how long it will be before these are available
to retail customers?
- About four weeks.
At the moment we're held up with some of our suppliers
that manufacture the components that we're using.
But that's the timeframe that I've been given.
So, when I say four weeks what's that,
mid-November.
- And if someone's interested in finding out more
or purchasing one of these ECU's
how could they go about doing that?
- The best way is to contact our sales guys,
that's sales@adaptronic.com.au.
We are looking for certain cars to develop
good base maps on for these ECUs
so we're open to more beta testers
as well as sales when they're ready.
- Alright well look, thanks for giving us
some insight into that ECU Andy,
it is a really exciting product.
I look forward to seeing it meet the market soon.
Thanks.
- Thanks very much Andre.