What I HATE About FreeEMS! - A Guide To What Sucks :-)

FreeEMS topics that aren't specific to hardware development or firmware development.
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Fred
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What I HATE About FreeEMS! - A Guide To What Sucks :-)

Post by Fred »

I'm using the system every day now and some things are irritating me a lot! Some of the things are tooling related, others tuning, others the firmware itself.

0) Car setup hate list
  • 26/05/14 IAT heat soaks and is a slow moving plastic one, results in lean running sometimes
  • 26/05/14 Injectors aren't consistent and result in lean running sometimes
  • 26/05/14 Lack of cold idle valve of any type
  • 26/05/14 Lack of keyboard backlight + weight of laptop + more, but it was free, can't complain.
Working on the car aspects in the order that makes sense most. Need to save up for a fancy ultrabook or macbook air with lots of RAM...

1) Firmware hate list
  • 26/05/14 Lack of proper support for coil-follows-input style dwell
  • 26/05/14 Lack of sensor fail over protection
  • 26/05/14 Lack of tip in enrichment
  • 26/05/14 Lack of proper warm up enrichment algorithm 09/04/15 Note, this only affects fuel economy, really. On steep WOT sections it may bog too. No longer have steep sections in commute.
  • 26/05/14 Lack of proper starting fueling setup
  • 09/04/15 Lack of after-start enrichment
  • 09/04/15 Lack of better timed priming function
Have ideas and/or code for all of the above, working on it as fast as I can.

2) Build hate list
  • 26/05/14 Having to build EMSTune from the top dir and run it from core, VERY error prone...
  • 26/05/14 Not having proper versioned apps with my own closed source junk
Firmware build is mint! Java builds are mint. C++ builds are slow, but... :-)

3) Log viewing hate list
  • 26/05/14 Having to manually range-adjust my log traces
  • 26/05/14 Having to select the same shit every time in my log viewer
  • 26/05/14 Not being able to batch-open logs
  • 26/05/14 Lack of proper view/parse arch
  • 26/05/14 Various things that OLV has that ULV does not
On the brighter side, ULV is miles better than OLV in most ways.

4) Tuning hate list
  • 27/05/14 Bad default window sizing and lack of scaling, only scrolling, font size huge, etc
  • 27/05/14 Inability to group, order and manipulate numeric values which are naturally in an annoying order from the fw
  • 27/05/14 No "dark mode" for night tuning, which is the bulk of tuning, all backgrounds dark grey or black, darker mix of colours for tables, etc.
  • 26/05/14 Having to kill EMSTune to get a new log file with metadata in it. EDIT: Seconded! http://issues.freeems.org/view.php?id=934
  • 26/05/14 Not being able to choose a log file name once the above is sorted
  • 26/05/14 Gauges all read wrong, and update too slowly
  • 26/05/14 Having to close 2d tables to see the curve updated, EMSTune again
  • 26/05/14 No tracing in 3d tables, 2d tracing very very wrong
  • 26/05/14 Tunable list popping up over what you're doing after a dialogue!!! :-/
  • 26/05/14 Lack of offline mode in EMSTune, really annoying having to work on the car for offline adjustments
  • 26/05/14 Lack of nice disconnect/connect display, but he's changed this, not tried it yet! Tried it, still not good enough.
I have a fair bit of faith in EMSTune to do the basics to some extent. It's a bit flaky at the moment, but not terrible.

5) Firmware load hate list
  • 26/05/14 Not being able to say "put the latest on the car"
Yep, UltimateLoader is awesome :-D At least one part of my UX is good.

Fred.
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malcom2073
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Re: What I HATE About FreeEMS! - A Guide To What Sucks :-)

Post by malcom2073 »

If you don't want me replying here, make a comments thread and move this post there.

Any feedback is good feedback, even "it sucks" feedback, if you state WHY it sucks, thanks for that :)


Can you elaborate on these three:
Fred wrote:[*]27/05/14 Inability to group, order and manipulate numeric values which are naturally in an annoying order from the fw
[*]26/05/14 Gauges all read wrong, and update too slowly
[*]26/05/14 Lack of nice disconnect/connect display, but he's changed this, not tried it yet! Tried it, still not good enough.

Unable to reproduce this one. OS/Arch/EMSTune Hash/FW hash that does this?
Fred wrote:[*]26/05/14 Having to close 2d tables to see the curve updated, EMSTune again

Find me someone that knows stylesheets and I'll teach them how to style Qt apps:
Fred wrote:[*]27/05/14 No "dark mode" for night tuning, which is the bulk of tuning, all backgrounds dark grey or black, darker mix of colours for tables, etc.
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Re: What I HATE About FreeEMS! - A Guide To What Sucks :-)

Post by Fred »

  • 27/05/14 Inability to group, order and manipulate numeric values which are naturally in an annoying order from the fw
"Numeric data" list, it's in firmware order. I'd like to be able to say "show me these N in this order" and maybe also in a different window "these Y in this order" too. Even if this was hard coded with no UI to manipulate, and I could work with you to come up with some nice lists that you could select from a fake "saved" menu or something.
  • 26/05/14 Gauges all read wrong, and update too slowly
Coolant reading 10C in numeric data showing -10C on the gauge, ego showing random numbers when 0.5 to 1.5 and possibly others less noticable?
  • 26/05/14 Lack of nice disconnect/connect display, but he's changed this, not tried it yet! Tried it, still not good enough.
From IRC:
(18:51:49) Fred: OK mike, tried your change, orange flashing is nice, but i can still edit a table and it takes the edit
(18:51:53) Fred: the messages are nice too
(18:52:13) Fred: i don't like that i get a "silent" and then a "device" one, but i understand why
(18:52:24) Fred: maybe when you see silence, do the device check, and just show the latter?
(18:53:10) Fred: i should be in one of three states:
(18:53:18) Fred: 1) connected, changing shit, having those changes end up in the ECU
(18:53:31) Fred: 2) disconnected, attempting to change shit, finding i can't because there's no connection
(18:53:44) Fred: 3) offline mode, changing shit, but only in the computer and consciously chosen
(18:53:57) Fred: with 3 comes able to send that shit back to an ecu if one is plugged in
(18:54:13) Fred: also, you're burning 100% of one core while offline
(18:54:15) Fred: lol :-)
(18:54:19) Fred: feedback!
(18:54:21) Fred: enjoy.
(18:55:09) Fred: (18:53:31) Fred: 2) disconnected, attempting to change shit, finding i can't because there's no connection
(18:55:09) Fred: maybe just grey the entire fucking lot and don't allow any clicks/anything until it's either offline or online
Unable to reproduce this one. OS/Arch/EMSTune Hash/FW hash that does this?
Fred wrote:[*]26/05/14 Having to close 2d tables to see the curve updated, EMSTune again
Your e24696fad42716cd and 9ad63d83d8e0930fae, deb sid and wheezy, fw: all i've tried. hotel has only data and decoder commits. I took screen shots, might upload for you, if you don't believe me :-D
Find me someone that knows stylesheets and I'll teach them how to style Qt apps:
Fred wrote:[*]27/05/14 No "dark mode" for night tuning, which is the bulk of tuning, all backgrounds dark grey or black, darker mix of colours for tables, etc.
This would require at least some app code knowledge to reselect the table fill colours too.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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