- When it comes to choosing an ECU for your project car there's no shortage
of choice out there on the market.
Normally though we're trading off the price point of the ECU versus
the feature set that it offers.
Here we're going to be unboxing an ECU Master EMU Black,
which offers an impressive feature set and a price point of just USD$1099.
So let's open the box and we'll find out what's inside.
The EMU black comes shipped in a tidy cardboard box with an easy
to remove outer sheet.
Once we've removed that outer sheet, we can open the box,
and we've got all of the components laid out right in front of us.
Inside the box we've got our ECU as well as our two matching connectors
for the ECU to allow us to create our own wiring harness.
Now in this case ECU Master have chosen to use a Delphi connector.
And these aren't particularly common in aftermarket ECUs in our experience,
however they do positively locate so this just gives you the confidence that once
those connectors are fitted to the ECU, they're not gonna come loose,
ensuring we know that we've got a reliable connection.
Let's remove the ECU and our connectors here.
We'll see that these were located in a nicely moulded plastic tray and this just
ensures that none of those components are going to move around in transport,
making sure that when you receive your ECU, it is in perfect condition.
Let's remove that plastic tray though, and we'll see what else we've got
in the box.
With our plastic tray out of the way, we've got a USB cable that's going
to be used to program the ECU.
This is going to be interfaced between the ECU and our laptop.
We've also got a range of terminals in order for us to be able to construct
our wiring harness.
Now these terminals are actually also included in two different sizes
to suit different gauge of wire.
So we can use a larger gauge of wire for some of the higher current draw outputs.
Particularly if we are using the EMU black to control a drive by wire throttle
which may draw significant current.
Lastly we've also got a nicely laminated pin out for the ECU with some basic
wiring information that we're going to need to know.
Now if you've followed any of our other unboxing videos you'll know that Zac
is a big fan of printed instructions being supplied
with any product.
Most often we find these days that manufacturers simply provide this
information online and while that's a great resource I do have to agree
with Zac, it is nice to have a physical piece of documentation there
with the ECU for times when perhaps your laptop goes flat.
This is also laminated so it's unlikely to get damaged if we end up spilling
our coffee or a drink on it.
So with everything out of the box, let's jump in and have a better look
at this ECU.
One of the first things that strikes you with the EMU Black is just how
physically small this ECU is, it is a tiny package.
Now don't let that put you off though, ECU Master have still managed
to pack a surprising number of features into this tiny little ECU.
Now the casing on it is CNC machined aluminium and it's also been anodised
black so this gives it a nice high quality finish and it also makes it nice
and robust.
Now if we turn the ECU over we can see we have our two matching connectors,
we've also got a vacuum port, and this is for the onboard four bar
MAP sensor.
So again this brings the cost or price point of the ECU down.
Unless you're planning on running in excess of three bar of positive boost
pressure, the onboard MAP sensor is going to be more than adequate.
We've also got the USB connection port.
So this is where we're going to be connecting the USB cable up
so we can communicate to our laptop.
Now attractive packaging and a CNC machined enclosure are all well and good
but obviously what we're most interested in is what can the EMU black do?
We'll start with the fuel and ignition control and here we've got eight
injector drives and six ignition drives.
While that ECU can control piston engines up to 12 cylinders or also
control rotary engines, the number of injector and ignition drives will define
exactly how we can control the engine.
For example here if we have a six cylinder engine, this will allow us full
sequential control of the fuel injectors, as well as direct spark,
coil on plug ignition systems.
Once we step above this though, if for example we have an eight cylinder
engine we're still going to be able to provide full sequential injector control,
but we will be required to run waste spark ignition.
In terms of the fuel control we do also have the ability to run staged injection
depending on the application.
As our engines are becoming more complex, there's a requirement for us
to be able to control more and more aspects of the engine with our ECU.
And here the EMU Black offers us six auxiliary outputs which can be used
for functions such as radiator fans, boost control solenoids,
or continuously variable cam control.
There's also a dedicated output for a single drive by wire throttle body.
What all this means is that the EMU Black is going to be able to control just about
any engine that you may want to put it on.
The inputs to the ECU are every bit as critical as the outputs and here
we've got nine inputs available.
These can be used for critical inputs such as our coolant temperature
and our inlet air temperature as well as other user inputs such as fuel pressure
and oil pressure.
There is also a dedicated input for an ethanol content sensor and if you connect
one of these this allows the EMU Black to offer full flex fuel capability,
so you can fuel your car on pump gas, E85, or any mixture in between.
Now there are also a couple of inputs that are relatively unique here
on the EMU Black.
This includes two dedicated thermocouple amplifiers, so this means that you can add
for example two exhaust gas temperature sensors and you're not going to need
an external thermocouple amplifier which is going to add cost and complexity
to you installation.
You can wire those thermocouples directly into the ECU.
There is also a built in wideband controller on the EMU Black,
so this allows you to directly wire up either a Bosch LSU 4.2
or 4.9 lambda sensor.
The ECU can directly control the heater circuit in the lambda sensor,
and we've got direct on board lambda readings coming into the ECU.
This helps speed up the tuning process but it also allows the ECU to run
complete closed loop fuel control if you want.
Lastly we can also add up to two knock sensors to the ECU.
And by doing this it allows us to utilise closed loop knock control.
Now this is a feature that I'm a huge fan of.
And while it's not a substitute for proper tuning, what it does do is provide
a nice safeguard that can easily prevent damage to a highly strung performance
engine, particularly if we end up somewhere where we're forced to run
a sub par tank of fuel.
Now the knock control strategy in the ECU provides a huge amount of flexibility
to the tuner, we can select the frequency where knock is occurring,
as well as the background noise level which should help the ECU more
accurately detect knock while ignoring normal mechanical background noise.
Now as well as the typical functions that we've talked about already,
the EMU Black also offers some relatively advanced motorsport functions which are
quite rare at this kind of price point.
These include a fully configurable traction control strategy which can be
adjusted by the driver on the fly via a multi position switch.
There's also antilag for rally use as well as rolling antilag or rolling
launch control.
There's also the ability for the ECU to control a sequential gearbox with
gear change ignition cut.
In this case the EMU Black does only offer a timed cut though so this isn't
full closed loop control.
If you're running a sequential gearbox you can also take advantage of a drive
by wire throttle body to provide automatic blipping of the throttle
to match revs on the downshift.
While there's a lot of features packed into this ECU,
there are a couple that I just wanted to focus on that I personally find
really handy when I'm tuning.
One of these is the built in trigger scope.
And while that's definitely not cutting edge, it's provided by a lot of ECU
manufacturers these days, It does make it really quick and easy
for us to diagnose trigger problems when we're tuning a car.
This essentially provides us with a built in oscilloscope right there
in the laptop tuning software and we can see the inputs from all of the trigger
sensors and figure out quickly what's going wrong.
The other feature I wanted to touch on is the CAN capability of the ECU.
And this allows all of the information being received by the ECU to be
transmitted out via a simple two wire bus.
Because CAN is a universal protocol, this also opens the ECU up to
compatibility with other manufacturer's products.
This is perfect for example if you have an existing dash logger,
and you want to receive and display all of the information from the ECU
Master ECU on your dash.
This is pretty straightforward to achieve.
Right now the CAN capabilities of the ECU are limited to sending out fixed data
streams, however I'm hoping that we may see some development on this
in future firmware updates.
Now the feature set of the ECU is all well and good but we also need
a user interface in order to be able to actually tune the ECU.
So let's jump into the laptop software and we'll take a quick tour.
The tuning software is nicely laid out and it's relatively intuitive to use.
I found it didn't take long to navigate my way around.
Now there's a nice easy menu structure on the left hand side of the screen
which makes it easy to find exactly what you're after in terms of parameters
to set up or inputs or outputs.
Now the ECU does use a volumetric efficiency based fuel model which is
becoming more and more popular.
Part of this requires us to set the ECU up with the correct injector inputs.
ECU Master have gone out of their way to make this pretty pain free.
If we go to our fuelling menu and we click on our injector wizard,
there is a drop down menu which we can select our injectors from.
It's a great idea however right now there are a relatively limited number
of injectors to choose from so we'd expect to see that list grow as time goes on.
Not to worry though, if your injector isn't in that drop down list,
you can manually enter all of the information from your injector
manufacturer's details.
Across the top of the page there's a series of tabs,
and this allows us to access worksheets relevant to the particular task that we're
performing at any time.
This allows us to really simply see just what we need to do,
in order to perform a certain tuning aspect.
Of course we can modify and add to these any time we like.
Another feature that the software provides is logging straight into
the tuning software and here we can see at the bottom we've got a set of graphs.
So these are all configurable by the user, allows us to log and then review the log
data after we've finished a run on the dyno or out on the road or the race track.
This makes it really easy to pinpoint areas of our tune that need further work.
So there you have it, an in depth look at the ECU Master EMU Black.
This is an ECU that provides an impressive punch for its small size,
particularly when you take into account the USD$1099 price point.
Now I will mention that at this point, we haven't personally been able to use
or test the EMU Black but we're excited to get one of these ECUs into
a development car soon and we'll be producing course and webinar material
on it.
If you want to learn more about EFI tuning and learn how to tune an ECU
like this EMU Black, then check out our online training courses
at hpacademy.com