EFI Electronics

["McCarty, Richard" <RMcCarty@domain.elided>]

Hello All-
I have been playing a professional embedded programmer/designer for the last
6 years or so I have few comments about the need for a laptop and the
possibilities that small embedded processor have to offer. Without knowing
any of the particulars, I would imagine that the serial protocols for the
various EFI systems are fairly simple and reasonably straight forward. So,
assuming that the EFI maker is willing to share his low-level serial
protocol, I believe it would be fairly easy to use a small embedded micro to
control and/or monitor various parameters of the EFI system. The micros
available these days are powerful & cheap, some with reprogrammable flash &
EEPROM storage. Here's a few ideas that come to mind (in order of complexity
):

1) A small box with, say, 4 buttons & 4 LEDs that could download 4 different
maps of some kind to the EFI computer.
1A) A PC application that could read the data/configuration files generated
by the EFI PC software and download these to the micro in the box. A regular
desktop computer could be used.

2) Another small box with a display and maybe 2 buttons, up & down, that
could be used to monitor a parameter from the EFI system and trim a
parameter in the car.
2A) PC software that allows one to change the parameters being monitored and
changed

3) A "Black Box" data acquisition device that could be easily removed from
the car and downloaded to a PC.

As the crew at Bonneville discovered, one of the difficult things about cars
and electronics is noise and crappy power & grounds and could prove to the
most difficult problem to solve when trying to use micros in cars.

Just some things to think about,
Rich M
72 GTV, with a very awesome mechanical fuel injection system.

PS - Has anyone ever tried making a hybrid Spica / EFI system ? Add some
sensors & replace the Spica logic section with some electro-mechanicals and
viola!
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