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Interesting thread! No question is a stupid question right?! So mine is what does all this mean? Possibly tuning without software?
All of this means that we are blowing the top off the of the 99-07 J1850 VPW pcm's.
The end user is now in control of "How" they read and write the bin to or from a pcm. Rather then supporting one tool and potentially creating a monopoly for that company we are supporting EVERY tool that is capable or can be made capable with little to no technical skills needed to use most of these. For the die hard DIY guy or someone that really does not have the money to buy an interface they will also have the option to build their own for next to nothing out of pocket other then some time and basic electrical skills.
Now as far as the actual file modification or "Tuning" are concerned there are going to be a few Avenues that people can use, again it's up to the end user how they choose to do this. We have a small group actively working on definition file development(Xdf's) for select 03-07 1mb pcm's. Creating the Xdf files takes nearly as much time as developing the software to read and flash. The number of available Operating systems supported will be limited initially how ever we have chosen OS's that are well suited to a number of types of swaps.....lets just say we've even got E85 covered
Another option will be to use an "Online" tuner that you could email your read out file to and have it modified. They would email you the file back and you could then flash the file yourself. Of course this route isn't going to be free when you have someone else making the changes for you but it is far less of a hassle then mailing pcm's across the country. We will talk more in depth about this possibility and how we can work with mail order tuners to stream line the process....that discussion is a ways out still at this point.
There are other ways you could also make changes to the file if a "friend" has a tool and you have a bit of imagination on how his stuff could help change your file..... But that's outside the scope of this discussion and not something we will not offer help with.
Need to send a big shout out to Cmaje72 over on Gearhead-efi for some amazing work he's been doing with Xdf creation. Our first 1 mb Xdf is pretty close to being done. Right now it supports.....well I think everything. It will cover all the commercial tools parameters and a bit more that what you might expect. The overall layout has been setup to more closely reassemble what people are accustom to using. These definitely don't feel like your typical Xdf for a free tuning program
Ya same here. What does it take to run this software? What do I need to get? I currently use hp tuners on my turbo car but I'd love to play around with this.
The PC software program is still in early development, Antus from Pcmhacking.net has been gracious enough to supply this project with a Flash Kernal (Boot Loader) for Bin readouts that is rather amazing. The Read Kernel is likely of better quality then even the Big Guy companies even have. One flash kernel to rule them all.......so to speak. You guy's won't believe what this thing can read
Now that we have a working Kernel to work with the real progress on the software can continue. Currently we are at the point we need to start hacking firmware for devices to add 4x support to several commercial pieces of hardware. The only interfaces that do not need to be "hacked" for 4x support would be the Avt-852, Avt-842 and any GM compatible J2534 tool. We are using the Vxdiag Nano for testing with the J tool aspect since it's by far the cheapest J tool around even if it is of Chinese design but any genuine J tool will work. The Drewtech Mongoose would likely be the next cheapest device but those are nearing the price of the Avt and unless you plan on using TisWeb they wouldn't have any added benefit.
Now the reason we are needing to add the 4x VPW support to the cheaper devices are because.......well the Elm family of devices were never intended to support it
Now not just any old Elm device is going to work with this......at least not in 4x mode(Genuine Elm327's may work in 1x mode). We have two cables selected we are working with and both are under $35 bucks shipped with in the US. There are also two Bluetooth devices selected that will also work with this but again will need firmware modification to add 4x support.
The Arduino will likely end up as a standalone piece of hardware for a while, although the Pc software does have a place reserved to add support for it once it gets that far. Reading a BIN is very doable with it, writing a calibration file back with it would also be likely......but don't expect this to be able to do something like an OS swap, at least not until it get's support to work with the PC software. This may just end up as something you would take to the track with you to swap between tunes so you can leave the laptop at home.
It's a bit premature to run out and buy any hardware just yet, some of these devices are likely going to work better then others and speed may become a factor for some of them due to small packet sizes being used. Any type of "Beta" release is still a ways out even for just Bin readouts at this point but know that we have a group of very dedicated people working on this several hours a day just about every day of the week.
Coming from the Subaru world, that was the first thing I looked into. Unfortunately, the Tactrix doesn't support the VPW protocol, so it's not a viable option right now. There is a chance that they will add support in the future, but it seems to be a very slim chance.
Supposing I already have a Bluetooth J-2534 will this be able to be run through that? Or would that be another layer to ‘hack?’
now I see it in the screenshots, sorry.
The beauty of the J tool is they have a universal API so they are universally interchangeable. I'm not going to say 100% that it will work but I'd say most likely it should work with out any issues or firmware changes
Awesome, I already have an Autel J2534 and Cardaq at my disposal I’ve been hoping to find software I can just use with what I have, since I currently have no software capable of editing parameters and can only upload prewritten files.
Awesome, I already have an Autel J2534 and Cardaq at my disposal I’ve been hoping to find software I can just use with what I have, since I currently have no software capable of editing parameters and can only upload prewritten files.
Perfect and people like yourself are exactly the reason we wanted J tool support. This project is literally a "Go Big or Die Trying" type of thing. If we had focused on support for only one tool it could have created a monopoly for that company or it's possible a tool could be discontinued, by adding support for pretty much every tool that's capable of doing this it ensures that our work will reach the largest possible user base and offer the most flexibility of any tool to date. Since the entire project is being done Open Source this is one of those things where you put your faith in the community to take what's been done and continue improving it as time goes on.
Wow! This is fantastic, keep up the hard work. Is there any sort of time line that you are shooting for? Any idea of when a potential release could occur?
Wow! This is fantastic, keep up the hard work. Is there any sort of time line that you are shooting for? Any idea of when a potential release could occur?
There is no time line for this but it will become avaible in stages as each aspect works and is stable. Being able to read a Pcm isn't all that far out at this point. Calibration write would come next followed by a full OS write but those are a ways out still at this point. I would hope calibration flashing is up and running early summer but that's just a wishful guess and not a promise it will happen that soon.
03-23-2018, 11:50 AM
