PL wrote:The other problem that people often overlook is that, although some code re-use exists, all the Nissan ECU families are different. So the effort put into say a Z32 ECU would need to be largely repeated to add the same functionality to an SR20 ECU.
Often this sort of stuff comes down to individuals like Eric who know the code for one particular family of ECU's intimately. People with a personal interest in a certain vehicle. They then have the motivation and hopefully the time to really get to know their ECU. Unfortunately it's just too much to expect Matt to re-write code for all of them.
I suspect the EVO success was largely due to the open source development you speak of. Having lots of people helping would share the load. But often you'll find that once somebody spends days and weeks investigating code and getting things working then they become a lot less keen to share!
PL
I totally agree with you there mate. Having done dis-assembly at uni it's not something I want to do again any time soon TBH! I HATED it and do not envy the likes of Matt and other guys who dis-assemble these ECU's to enable us to remap them. My degree was a joint one between Electronic Engineering & Computer Science (2/3 engineering, 1/3 comp science). Needless to say I aced the engineering aspect of the course, but did not do too well on the comp science, purely because I hate software and love hardware. :p
As you say, the success of the Evo is most definately due to the open source community. Just look at the likes of ECUtek, they are a company who have been able to remap the OEM Evo ECU for far longer than any open source stuff has been out for, but they are obviously quite secretive about their work. As such, they don't have ANY of the extra features available that the likes of EcuFlash has thanks to open source.
Also, I am not sure about the Nissan ECU's, but when you look at an Evo ROM in the likes of IDAPro you can see that less than half the ROM is actually used and there is lots of free space for people to write code for all these extra features. Now I'm guessing Matt should be able to tell us whether or not this also applies to the Nissan ROMs or if they are pretty much full as it is after being patched??
Like you said, it also comes down to what processor you are working with, and doing it with 1 does not mean it can be copied over. Again, back to the Evo scene, most of the extra features I listed above were only available on the Evo 7 ECU onwards because it was mainly Americans who were working on it, and they don't get older Evo's over there, just from the 8 onwards. So only very recently has the Evo 5/6 ECU been coded to add these extra features, because what worked on the 7/8/9 ECU did not work on the 5/6 ECU's.
It most definately would be A LOT of work, but seeing the OEM Nissan ECU do more than what a lot of aftermarket systems can do would be immense. I would love to see everything on the list above there one day, but for now Speed Density and 3-port boost control are top of my list for what I want to see.
I bow down to the likes of Matt who have the patience to sit and dis-assemble these ECU's with little info at hand and having to do lots of trial & error. Not something I could ever do TBH. Like I said, I prefer hardware to software any day of the week.
