Fred's firmware development diary

Official FreeEMS vanilla firmware development, the heart and soul of the system!
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Fred
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Bump for helping Mike! Helping Mike is helping me. Helping me is helping yourself. Please help test EMStudio so Mike can make it better!

I just wrote this new thread on DIY builds. I love them, but they're a pain, so builder beware! viewtopic.php?f=62&t=2327

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

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Tonight I took a few photos of the crank and cam trigger disk patterns of a new engine platform that we're about to have support for! Now, I just need to write the code for it to match! I wonder how long that'll take to do this time?
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

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Some days ago I created the decoder to match the photographs. It uses a unique and novel approach, and may not be the final cut due to possible future needs of other engines that use this pattern, but it's still pretty neat in the way it works. No update here for a while, been very busy, hoping to run engine 26/27 tomorrow, though I was also hoping for today, and for the day before, as well. Fingers crossed.

SUPER looking forward to Saturday the 23rd of November! Also looking forward to Wednesday 20th November! Looking forward to basically everything that's going to happen between now and xmas, and beyond, too. HOORAY!!! :-)
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Anyone following the vehicles section knows that engine 26 did indeed run the other day, a bit behind schedule. Since then the setup has been refined a bit and some vids have been posted. Good times.

The first North American FreeEMS meet up was a raging success here at Sim's place in Vancouver, too! Good times with some great people :-) Thanks to all involved, but special thanks to Sim! Muchisimas gracias, tio!

I've been working on some semi-generic bi-directional, linear-feedback, H-bridge, DC motor control code today and will try to complete that to a usable state tomorrow, with luck. Looking forward to trying it out!

Earlier today we tried to PWM idle Sim's Mighty Snot Rocket but found the valve to be very difficult to control with a static PWM signal. It would likely be even worse with some feedback, too. We determined that at high frequencies it's near impossible to control, and that lowering the frequency seems to help, and that lowering the two clocks to 0xFF makes it more like short term on/off than PWM. The last value we tried was 0xF8 which seemed about as good as anything else near by. Sim says the valve has no spring and just relies on electromagnetic force to keep it in the right place. Hmmm. I swear jap PWM valves are a LOT easier to control than that.

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

The H-bridge code mentioned above worked well with almost no tuning, huge success there. Vids are on the way, soon! :-)
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Last night engine 27 ran.
Tonight is the end of one (short) story.
Tomorrow is the beginning of an exciting future.

Wish me, and indeed, us, luck! :-)
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

The future has begun! Fresh fish, steak'n'cheese pies, funny accents, FreeEMSed cars, clean water to swim in, did I mention the great food? :-)

Number three is up and running on FreeEMS again as of today! viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1086&p=37025#p37025

Number two has some corrosion on her, but otherwise looks good. viewtopic.php?p=37024#p37024

FreeEMSer of the month of November 2013 announced: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=1960&p=37026#p37026

More news as it comes to hand!

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

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More lamb and kumara and other great high-quality food, more clean-water swimming (not available in eastern Spain), more progress on the hotel, too. More to come, though.

WikiSpeed mission published: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2338
Comments thread for it started: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2361

Drag racing tomorrow morning, hotel is not in good shape for it, sadly. Instead, I have chores to do, and will be driving around at < 3k RPM, ugh.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Still no closer to having a suitable desk for development. Only one thing can get that (and more) for me: A proper income.

For the good of the project, I need to focus on achieving just that. With that comes the resources to make things happen. Code comes easy to me, but without hardware the code isn't much use. Hardware, be it turbos, pistons, blocks, PCBs, components, desks, PCs, scopes, soldering irons, or even just solder, costs cash. As generous as everyone has always been, it's never been enough to live properly, or do things properly. I've never expected it to be more than that, and I've done what I've had to do to do what needed to be done, at great cost, personally.

So my project duties are purely light at the moment, and until further notice. Hopefully that doesn't last too long, and I can put in some serious night/weekend hours to really drag this project into the spot light, in style. But for now, no, sorry. I have to put me first for a while, and in doing so, you too.

Short of a miracle, that's how it has to be.

Fred.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

By the way, my single biggest living expense right now is fuel and you'll never guess how I have burned quite a lot of it (that's right, setting up the car...), so any donations to my paypal, or from kiwis direct to my account (contact if you want to do that), are most welcome. Accounts are running on empty right now and things will be pretty dire soon. Additionally, being the summer holiday period, right now is the worst possible time to look for a job, so it could take as much as a month or two from this point. Fingers crossed it's much quicker.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
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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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