While I love that this is possible you have to be very literate in electronics for this to make sense. A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors. That being said I'm currently looking into this for a turbo econobox. Haven't decided whether to go this route or a standalone but I still have plenty of time to source parts.
>A lot of car guys just aren't going to rip apart their wiring harnesses and do testing to make sure it'll work with their onboard sensors.
I'm not so sure about that.
My go-to mechanic is an older gentleman, late 60s, and oftentimes I'm surprised how quickly he updated his workshop to include electronics. He went from barely having a multimeter and not knowing how to use a computer in the early 2000s to having a well equipped electronics bench with oscilloscopes, scan tools, soldering equipment, etc. He told me he went to a bunch of courses to get updated on modern car technology because his clients started bringing newer cars. Keep in mind this is in a developing country (Mexico) so he has to keep repair costs down to keep clients, because the more affluent people will go to dealerships to get a proper fix. A lot of his repairs that I've seen involve what I'd charitably call "bodging" using parts that aren't original or intended, but they get the job done on a budget.
Similarly with car guys I hang around here, there has been a noticeable uptick in electronic knowledge, maybe not to the level of custom ECUs yet, but stuff like making an arduino controlled radiator fan or making a custom box to read the CAN-bus to get the steering wheel controls do stuff they weren't intended to do is pretty commonplace.
People working with cars are already used to complexity and learning new things, after all, so I don't think electronics will scare them off. We don't see as much of it yet because of all the lockdown and manufacturer's insistence at straight up replacing parts, but now that modern-style fully electronic cars (2010 or so) are becoming affordable enough to be "project cars" for average car guys, we'll see more and more stuff like this. A car guy might not want to rip into the wiring harness on his daily driver that he paid 15k for, but a 3k shitbox he bought as a second car for fun? Well, people are already doing that.
To be fair, it seems to me that most car guys are not necessarily literate in electronics. And for them, there's various aftermarket options that are a bit more plug-and-play than this. And that is fine, IMO. But for nerds like me whom are inveterate tinkerers, and familiar with both engines and electronics, there's projects like this.
Agreed. In fact, the engine bay wiring harness can probably be kept mostly or completely intact. If the stock sensors are being reused, there's no need to mess with the wiring harness at the sensor end. If the position of components in the engine bay is not significantly changing, then the routing of the wiring harness doesn't need to change either. At most, you're going to have to figure out how to connect the harness to this new computer, which can possibly be done without having to modify the stock ECU connector. I have seen adapter harnesses before.
Oh OK. You are correct it seems to support most CKP and CMP designs. So most of the work is actually just getting the pin out and putting those in the speeduino board... I may have to give this a shot then. Not sure about ignition wiring but when I get some time after work I'll read up on how thats handled.
