Re-Flasher Shootout.........
03-25-2008, 03:04 PM
#151
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Come on, we're not that stupid. I know exactly what everyone is talking about.....
.....wait for it..................Mystery Meat!!
.....wait for it..................Mystery Meat!!
03-25-2008, 09:49 PM
#153
3. Another point in this shoot out is the ability to make notes on what is edited. So far this is a feature that Hymee will offer with his freeware viewer. I don't know about EFIDude yet, but somehow I expect they would pick up on this and do something that is compatible with Hymee.
This will increase the "collaborative" effect. Meaning a free software flash "viewer" that allows multiple users to comment on a flash in public, can increase the speed of what is understood and learned by the community.
There are other people with various levels of tuner knowledge. Furthermore, what changes can or should be made has already been done. We are not talking a "limitless set of variables", but often specific changes at specific locations, for specific reasons (which can be noted and debated). True, that those changes are based on a number of circumstances, but even those circumstance can be described and changes made accordingly.
All of this makes a free and open source tune all the more likely.
Both Hymee's and EFIDude will have logging ability. It means they can create a procedure for their users, users can see the effect of changes, and then users can make modifications based on a procedure or advice.
Users can look at the "notes" of public tunes (with freeware flash viewer or editing software) and make changes according. This is not to say there will not be complexity involved, but it is to say it can be done.
This will increase the "collaborative" effect. Meaning a free software flash "viewer" that allows multiple users to comment on a flash in public, can increase the speed of what is understood and learned by the community.
There are other people with various levels of tuner knowledge. Furthermore, what changes can or should be made has already been done. We are not talking a "limitless set of variables", but often specific changes at specific locations, for specific reasons (which can be noted and debated). True, that those changes are based on a number of circumstances, but even those circumstance can be described and changes made accordingly.
All of this makes a free and open source tune all the more likely.
Both Hymee's and EFIDude will have logging ability. It means they can create a procedure for their users, users can see the effect of changes, and then users can make modifications based on a procedure or advice.
Users can look at the "notes" of public tunes (with freeware flash viewer or editing software) and make changes according. This is not to say there will not be complexity involved, but it is to say it can be done.
In this shootout there are 2 points that put the advantage heavily on the side of EFIDude and Hymee.
1. International.
EFIDude and Hymee will address RX-8s in the Asian and Europe market.
A tool for the "world market" pushes for a tool that "everybody" can use, regardless of where they are at.
People will use that tool as a common interface to discuss their maps.
Even more, Hymee has advanced this forward with a freeware note making tool for maps and EFIDude will have a freeware/inexpensive version of their software out.
2. Tool designed for "everybody".
A tool that has an elitist design mentality, is a tool that should only be sold to Pro-Tuners.
You can't have it "both ways". Sell a product to the consumer, but tell them they are too stupid or its too dangerous for them to use its capabilities.
A tool that is for everybody is inclusive. Everybody wants to look at it.
What should not be underestimated either is tuning knowledge outside of the U.S and about tuning the RX-8 (like in the Japan market for example).... You are talking a multiplying type effect.
Where somebody in Australia figures out "A", a guy in Singapore figures out "B", and some guy in England figures out "C".
So what will be the common tool they collaborate with?
Both 1 and 2 above just begs for people to collaborate with each other and exchange knowledge. You simply can not suppress information for too long. Sooner or later, it gets out.
The egos and maneuvering will not stop the usual commonly known market forces from applying to RX-8 re-flashers.
1. International.
EFIDude and Hymee will address RX-8s in the Asian and Europe market.
A tool for the "world market" pushes for a tool that "everybody" can use, regardless of where they are at.
People will use that tool as a common interface to discuss their maps.
Even more, Hymee has advanced this forward with a freeware note making tool for maps and EFIDude will have a freeware/inexpensive version of their software out.
2. Tool designed for "everybody".
A tool that has an elitist design mentality, is a tool that should only be sold to Pro-Tuners.
You can't have it "both ways". Sell a product to the consumer, but tell them they are too stupid or its too dangerous for them to use its capabilities.
A tool that is for everybody is inclusive. Everybody wants to look at it.
What should not be underestimated either is tuning knowledge outside of the U.S and about tuning the RX-8 (like in the Japan market for example).... You are talking a multiplying type effect.
Where somebody in Australia figures out "A", a guy in Singapore figures out "B", and some guy in England figures out "C".
So what will be the common tool they collaborate with?
Both 1 and 2 above just begs for people to collaborate with each other and exchange knowledge. You simply can not suppress information for too long. Sooner or later, it gets out.
The egos and maneuvering will not stop the usual commonly known market forces from applying to RX-8 re-flashers.
Last edited by sosonic; 03-25-2008 at 09:53 PM.
03-25-2008, 10:35 PM
#154
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Completely related.
He has stated that he wanted an "open source" tuning product.
Yet, the only calibration information he is interested in having "open" is the work of others who are not part of the project.
As soon as he realized he wasn't going to have his homework done for him, he got belligerent.
I'm sorry if his MO is not obvious to you, but it is to those of us from which he wishes to steal.
Furthermore, there is a whole subtext to this that is not plain to those just reading how it plays out here.
He has stated that he wanted an "open source" tuning product.
Yet, the only calibration information he is interested in having "open" is the work of others who are not part of the project.
As soon as he realized he wasn't going to have his homework done for him, he got belligerent.
I'm sorry if his MO is not obvious to you, but it is to those of us from which he wishes to steal.
Furthermore, there is a whole subtext to this that is not plain to those just reading how it plays out here.
I am not anti-Jeff or anti-Cobb. I respect both very much so. But the notion that there is some magical N/A tune that Bill is tryin to steal is just ridiculous. There is only so much hp that can be extracted on N/A tune, and only so many edits to achieve it. Time will tell what they are and it wont be a secret, so, i dont see all the fuss.
03-25-2008, 11:06 PM
#155
Well, seeing as it is a fact that your N/A flashes have produced some 8's with AFR's in the 14-15 range (and gaining no more than 10hp at that range), i highly doubt he's interested in stealing any of your N/A tunes for personal use. Especially since it took him all of 20 minutes (naarleven) and a few general mixture edits and he was making 8hp with AFR's in the 12's with his flash. I mean come on, if he made those kind of gains with such little edits, why would he want to steal yours?? Does that make sense to you, or anyone else?
The customer in question never completed the tuning procedure - he went straight to Bill so he could hack the AccessPORT firmware.
Making some "tweaks" to my tune in a few minutes after I spent several weeks on them makes Bill a genius, I guess.
Meanwhile, just about every other person that has adopted the AP and followed my tuning regimen has produced results.
Bill's whole point was to grab a reasonably correct Cobb-based tune so that he could find the mapping points that yield the changes. He was stumbling around in the dark before that. I suspect he still is.
Where were his successes before he got hold of one of my calibrations?
I have 48 people running around out there with the AccessPORT. Of those a few required new calibrations.
I planned on ALL of them needing custom callibrations.
I guess that I got it almost completely correct right out of the box for more than 90% of the users makes Bill a genius as well.
03-25-2008, 11:17 PM
#156
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Id like to add that im dam sure that if you wanted to copy one of EFIdudes flashes it wouldnt result in a blown motor. That would just be wrong. Id say if you wanted to protect your tunning so bad from other users, me personaly, I would just brick the unregistered ECU as a slap on the wrist. It would make things more difficult for the attemted bootleger and im pretty sure after getting it unbricked they wont try it again. Just saying that a blown motor is a result of trying to copy a file would be considered damage to anothers property. For example, I copy a DVD and the copy rite protection fries my dvd player, that just dosnt happen, it just dosn't work as a result.
03-25-2008, 11:33 PM
#158
RX-8s Official Cool Guy
03-26-2008, 12:41 AM
#159
It should be apparent to anyone that has any mechanical empathy that the thing isn't running right and to run the motor hard would be stupid.
Of course, we know that EFID tunes may blow your motor, even when you pay for them legitimately.
However, you can't stop someone from reverse engineering the ROM
What Lola was trying to do was look at what changed in the pure ROM data between an OE flash and a Cobb altered flash and use that information as pointers.
03-26-2008, 12:45 AM
#160
So your trying to tell me that someone that can reverse engineer the ROM data and figure out the Checksum etc to reflash...can't figure out how to read the data...the constants and offsets are all there to see if you can pick apart the bin file...
Doesn't make much sense to me .........dunno??
Doesn't make much sense to me .........dunno??
03-26-2008, 05:51 AM
#162
There is so much mis-information on here it isn't funny. I shouldn't even bother trying to post the truth, cause I know people have there own (wrong) opinions on history, and their own agendas.
The RX-8 community owes a great debt of gratitude to Lola for his work has been the catalyst to this whole flurry of RX-8 tuning solutions coming to market, and was first used in forced induction RX-8's.
If you were to read the "Scan Tool Challange" thread, you will indeed find that I took up the challange, as opposed to what is posted above.
Yep - Guns don't kill people. It is unwise to blame a tuning solution for lunching an engine, when in fact it is the numbers that a human puts in there that does the damage. PCM editing software does no more to kill an engine than does an incorrectly used screwdriver or wrench does on a pre-EFI vehicle.
The connundrum is that people want a plug and play tune as it is easy. I.e. a pre-packaged tune. As we have seen, a pre-packaged tune can be dangerous unless it is refined. The challange to the tool maker is releasing one-size fits all tunes so that people get the plug and pray, yet trying to accomodate the "fits all" aspect. The best plug-and-play tune is the Mazda factory tools. So good that they back it with warranty on all the multitudes of engines out there is various parts of the world. But to do that, there must be compormises and factors of safety built in.
My approach is that I want to make the very best screwdriver. I don't wish to tell the exact setting the main jet should be at, or the distributor should be at, or the tension of the advance spring. That is the tuner/users responsibility. Some people will probably go too far (get greedy) and blow up there motor's with my tool. I cannot prevent them from doing that anymore than Smith and Wesson cannot prevent the gun from killing. That is something I have to be aware of, and my customers must be aware of. As an attempt to mitigate this risk, I made a very conscious decision to announce my "freeware" map viewer and note maker. I need a name for it. But in the publics hands, all users should be able to better manage what they are playing with.
Remember - the whole process of tuning is really an excercise in preventing a grenade going off. The engines sole purpose in life is the blow up. Every device bolted on to that basic air pump, whether rotary or piston, is trying to control and prevent it from blowing up, and at the same time trying to get as much power as safely can be obtained.
The thing I have in my favour is that I have the know-how and experience of the only person (I am aware of) who has tuned 2 seperate 6 second rotary passes standing behind me. And one of those passes was the worlds first 200MPH rotary pass. Any tunes that go into my car, or end up getting shipped with my blower will benefit from all of that knowledge (and associated heartache at times) painstakingly gained over the years.
I sincerly hope that all what I have been learning along this journey will help others learn and demystify to a certain degree the marvels of modern EFI systems. The goal is when we get to the point when we rarely hear "I wish I could just fix it myself with the screwdriver" being uttered.
Cheers,
Hymee.
The RX-8 community owes a great debt of gratitude to Lola for his work has been the catalyst to this whole flurry of RX-8 tuning solutions coming to market, and was first used in forced induction RX-8's.
If you were to read the "Scan Tool Challange" thread, you will indeed find that I took up the challange, as opposed to what is posted above.
Yep - Guns don't kill people. It is unwise to blame a tuning solution for lunching an engine, when in fact it is the numbers that a human puts in there that does the damage. PCM editing software does no more to kill an engine than does an incorrectly used screwdriver or wrench does on a pre-EFI vehicle.
The connundrum is that people want a plug and play tune as it is easy. I.e. a pre-packaged tune. As we have seen, a pre-packaged tune can be dangerous unless it is refined. The challange to the tool maker is releasing one-size fits all tunes so that people get the plug and pray, yet trying to accomodate the "fits all" aspect. The best plug-and-play tune is the Mazda factory tools. So good that they back it with warranty on all the multitudes of engines out there is various parts of the world. But to do that, there must be compormises and factors of safety built in.
My approach is that I want to make the very best screwdriver. I don't wish to tell the exact setting the main jet should be at, or the distributor should be at, or the tension of the advance spring. That is the tuner/users responsibility. Some people will probably go too far (get greedy) and blow up there motor's with my tool. I cannot prevent them from doing that anymore than Smith and Wesson cannot prevent the gun from killing. That is something I have to be aware of, and my customers must be aware of. As an attempt to mitigate this risk, I made a very conscious decision to announce my "freeware" map viewer and note maker. I need a name for it. But in the publics hands, all users should be able to better manage what they are playing with.
Remember - the whole process of tuning is really an excercise in preventing a grenade going off. The engines sole purpose in life is the blow up. Every device bolted on to that basic air pump, whether rotary or piston, is trying to control and prevent it from blowing up, and at the same time trying to get as much power as safely can be obtained.
The thing I have in my favour is that I have the know-how and experience of the only person (I am aware of) who has tuned 2 seperate 6 second rotary passes standing behind me. And one of those passes was the worlds first 200MPH rotary pass. Any tunes that go into my car, or end up getting shipped with my blower will benefit from all of that knowledge (and associated heartache at times) painstakingly gained over the years.
I sincerly hope that all what I have been learning along this journey will help others learn and demystify to a certain degree the marvels of modern EFI systems. The goal is when we get to the point when we rarely hear "I wish I could just fix it myself with the screwdriver" being uttered.
Cheers,
Hymee.
Last edited by Hymee; 03-26-2008 at 06:20 AM.
03-26-2008, 06:11 AM
#164
I started this thread because I was looking for a very simple comparison of the available tools to do RX-8 reflashing. I really just wanted to concentrate on the mechanics of doing the reflashing and not get into the whole tuning part of it. I was not able to separate the two so I had to wait a bit for results. I now have some (not all) results. This is not meant to be “The definitive last word” on anything. It is just some data and my thoughts on the data.
I use the EFIDude tools, like them and thus must be considered biased. That being said, I’ve not doctored the attached graphs in any way nor have I fudged the math below.
I have attached three dyno graphs. They are my “Stage 1” versus a Cobb AP Stage 1, my “Stage 1” against a stock pull and Cobb AP Stage 1 versus Cobb AP Stage 2. I put my “Stage 1” in quotes only because I would never do something like this. I only did this tune to match the A/F ratios of the Cobb AP Stage 1 tune so it would be more of an apples to apples comparison.
The bottom line is you get about a 15 hp max bump in the middle of the pull no matter how lean you make the car run. I’ll use that number in the comparison below-
Cost per Horsepower
Cobb $700 (used for round numbers) divided by 15 is $46.66 per horsepower
EFIDude $300 divided by 15 hp or $20 per horsepower
Time to Reflash
Cobb Just under three minutes
EFIDude Just under a minute
Neat Factor
The AP is a neat little hand held device that I would guess is running Linux connected through a USB cable to a dongle that plugs into the RX-8’s OBDii port. It is nicely packaged and presented.
The EFIDude is nothing more than a dongle with an LED. There are absolutely no frills here.
Lastly, neither has file editing right now so there is nothing to compare. The Cobb is supposed to ship a file editing capability for an extra charge. EFIDude is supposed to offer a freeware editor downloadable from their web site. I suspect the Cobb software will be much nicer but have nothing to base that on.
Please feel free to comment, or correct me, on any of the above. I will not take offense.
I use the EFIDude tools, like them and thus must be considered biased. That being said, I’ve not doctored the attached graphs in any way nor have I fudged the math below.
I have attached three dyno graphs. They are my “Stage 1” versus a Cobb AP Stage 1, my “Stage 1” against a stock pull and Cobb AP Stage 1 versus Cobb AP Stage 2. I put my “Stage 1” in quotes only because I would never do something like this. I only did this tune to match the A/F ratios of the Cobb AP Stage 1 tune so it would be more of an apples to apples comparison.
The bottom line is you get about a 15 hp max bump in the middle of the pull no matter how lean you make the car run. I’ll use that number in the comparison below-
Cost per Horsepower
Cobb $700 (used for round numbers) divided by 15 is $46.66 per horsepower
EFIDude $300 divided by 15 hp or $20 per horsepower
Time to Reflash
Cobb Just under three minutes
EFIDude Just under a minute
Neat Factor
The AP is a neat little hand held device that I would guess is running Linux connected through a USB cable to a dongle that plugs into the RX-8’s OBDii port. It is nicely packaged and presented.
The EFIDude is nothing more than a dongle with an LED. There are absolutely no frills here.
Lastly, neither has file editing right now so there is nothing to compare. The Cobb is supposed to ship a file editing capability for an extra charge. EFIDude is supposed to offer a freeware editor downloadable from their web site. I suspect the Cobb software will be much nicer but have nothing to base that on.
Please feel free to comment, or correct me, on any of the above. I will not take offense.
I did not want the actual comparison to get lost in the conversation. I can be reached via PM if I can be of any help.
Thanks, Lola
03-26-2008, 08:58 AM
#165
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No one but you has been calling Bill a genius. His whole point here is letting people know you dont have to be a GENIUS to plug in simple edits for a good N/A tune.
Your lame accusations are quickly deteriorizing by your own words, so, by all means keep talking.
03-26-2008, 09:02 AM
#166
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Is there a thread on the forum where Naarleven posted about this whole experience?? It seems to me if his name is being used in this "discussion" on the open forum, then the public should be made aware of his opinion on the matter.
03-26-2008, 09:03 AM
#167
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Is not about Naarleven, just about the flash done to his car. He is actually parting out his car and selling it due to something that happened to him(didnt say), check the parts for sale section, he was actually selling an AP as well.
Last edited by jones75254; 03-26-2008 at 09:19 AM.
03-26-2008, 09:06 AM
#168
Naarleven said his parent's are splitting up, forcing him to sell his car.
He appears to be located in WPB, so he's nearby to Pettit.
I'm curious why he would be getting the AP if the EFIdude stuff was available to him locally.
He appears to be located in WPB, so he's nearby to Pettit.
I'm curious why he would be getting the AP if the EFIdude stuff was available to him locally.
03-26-2008, 09:10 AM
#169
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i hope he made that public (about parents) prior to you making it public. I fnot you may want to edit ur post man. Is a little personal. If he already has then forget i said anything
The efidude tool is pretty much a logger/flasher only and is still in early stages. The AP has many more bells and whistles, not to mention much more R&D, so im sure that is why he got the AP. Hell, i want an AP also, its freaking sweet. As a flasher alone, its no diff than others, but im more interested in its other functions.
The efidude tool is pretty much a logger/flasher only and is still in early stages. The AP has many more bells and whistles, not to mention much more R&D, so im sure that is why he got the AP. Hell, i want an AP also, its freaking sweet. As a flasher alone, its no diff than others, but im more interested in its other functions.
Last edited by jones75254; 03-26-2008 at 09:19 AM.
03-26-2008, 12:23 PM
#173
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03-26-2008, 01:00 PM
#174
Fortunately, I'm not particularly interested in educating you.
I know what actually happened, Lola knows what actually happened and my only concern is making sure that the people that decided to go with the AP get what they paid for.
Lola's main concern is that people that get the EFID get the same things that the AP get.
Unfortunately, he felt that required breaking into the AP's firmware.
03-26-2008, 02:16 PM
#175
RX-8s Official Cool Guy
This thread has more accusations flying then it does have factual information regarding the different options of the flashing the stock RX-8 PCM. It is a damn shame because I thought this was going to actually be a good thread but there are to many egos at play in this thread I am officially Unsubscribing.