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Thread: The super secret box tour

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
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    '97 840CI

    The super secret box tour

    The first rule of Super Secret Boxes is that there are no super secret boxes. /joke*


    Out of that pile, and as of Jan 2019, here is the current roster as far as the E31 is concerned.


    Starting at the bottom-center, a copy of the ETV which is/was in my E-box, adapting a M62TU to the M62 DME as found in the Up Before Six project.
    The ETV is now obsolete, for the reason it contains a whole lot of features unrelated to the core mission of engine adaption.

    Bottom-left, the E31O2, which allegedly reads 4 channels of O2 sensor and delivers 4 channels of O2 signal to the M62 DME, tricking it to run at least stoichiometric at WOT rather than lean.
    The board shown is from 2014, and never developed other than to keep the schematic maintained, ready to go again.
    The objective of the tuning tweek is to lift our M62B46 from a measured 327hp, to its rightful position at 347hp and hopefully making this number still smaller.



    At the top of the roster pic, the MID got a heart transplant, and now contains features that should no longer belong in the ETV.
    For instance, a general purpose analog port allows additional sensing, for example looking at hydraulic pressure as we did in UpBeforeSix.

    Just today, we added the Cam Signal Converter (CSC), and its mission is to adapt the M62 to the M60 DME.
    For this situation, the over-educated ETV is out of the E-box...


    ... and CSC is in.


    The ETV design is then updated, killing off redundant features that are now in the MID, and adding in the new CSC technology to allow, if you wish, an adaption of a M62TU vanos engine all the way back to the M60 DME.

    **********************
    Whereas UpBeforeSix project relied heavily on a character display panel...



    ...the USB resources have since been developed and the serial port (and character display) deprecated.
    The character display panel was then pulled and the CD43 put back in.

    USB technology allows multiple overlapping conversations between a host computer and the box and allows us to virtualize the cabin instrumentation on the desktop.
    For instance the character display was virtualized and the exact ascii stream that formerly went to the physical device now gets routed across USB to the corresponding character display emulation within the desktop app.



    One major benefit to the desktop link is that any information inside the box or accessible via the existing vehicle bus links, can then be captured, plotted, saved, replayed.
    Second, we can now download code and operating parameters, rather than taking the box apart for reprogramming, which is what was happening in UpBeforeSix.

    There is just one desktop app but it adapts itself to the box that is plugged in.
    BMW gets the BMW instrumentation, MBZ and Ford get theirs.
    Pic below, same software as above, just different box plugged in.



    In the case of the MID, the output not only is written to the physical LCD in the cabin as it always was, but the exact same data is dropped onto the USB where it is shipped to the LCD driver simulation (ed: emulation!) on the desktop.

    Synchronization across USB means that operating a MID key on the desktop is equivalent to operating the same key on the real MID and visa versa.
    Fyi, not much activity shown just this moment. No analog sensors plugged in, no simulations in progress, etc.

    Above the MID, a slim "vehicle" window allows the simulation of the ignition switch and other body electronic events.
    Iirc, pressing the 0 thru 3 keys, launches an message onto ibus, as if it were the DME doing so.

    Not shown, but on another tab, a utility for snooping/logging the Ibus and scripting sessions for the purpose of talking to other ibus boxes.
    Yes, the MID gets access to datalink, to snoop OBD etc.
    Yes, it can CAN also.

    *** footnotes ***
    1) Echo of Brad Pitt's character, Fight Club, 1999, "You do not talk about Fight Club".
    Last edited by Hyper; 01-12-2019 at 04:08 PM. Reason: Giving credit

  2. #2
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    Brilliant work. At least I think, the parts I understood anyway.
    Desecrator of all things Sacred

  3. #3
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    Yet another Epic design.

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    Quote Originally Posted by 72tpik5 View Post
    Brilliant work. At least I think, the parts I understood anyway.

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