Flashable SBEC vs Ostrich

[SactoShadow]

So Chuck finally sent me his Willem burner! I set everything out and began setting it all up to test it out and start working on tuning my shadow. I came across a problem though, my laptop doesn't have a parallel port. I ran around the house checking all our laptops and none of them have one. A search on here suggested that 25 pin to USB converters don't work for this. So instead I am looking at changing how I will be getting cals to the ecu. There isnt much price difference between the boost button flashable sbec and an emulator. I am leaning towards the flashable sbec as in my head it seems like the simplest setup (and I read a lot about battery drain with the ostrich). Any thoughts on one versus the other? I have a backup ecu so I could easily send one out and still have the car running. Thanks in advance for any input! I know I ask a lot of questions but I'm still pretty new to all this :p

[tryingbe]

Ostrich you can do a live tune without shutting the car off.

I use ortrich to tune the car until I am happy, then I burn the files onto a chip and put the chip in.

[minigts]

Ostrich you can do a live tune without shutting the car off.

I use ortrich to tune the car until I am happy, then I burn the files onto a chip and put the chip in.

Yeah. The idea of burning your own cal is great and all, but the cost of the Ostrich is outweighed significantly (to me anyways) with the ability to tune on the fly. With a chip burner, you have to pull, burn, test, rinse, repeat. Granted when you get it tuned you may not ever have to really mess with it again, but I would easily say that you can and probably will have a tune for the seasons, not to mention as you make upgrades. I like plugging my laptop into it, burning the cal I want while the car is on and then be done. For around $200, we can tune and scan our cars like the newer stuff. Ostrich is close to $200, Rob's cal for $40 and heck MP Scan and Tuner are free? Crazy stuff!

[tryingbe]

Yeah. The idea of burning your own cal is great and all, but the cost of the Ostrich is outweighed significantly (to me anyways) with the ability to tune on the fly. With a chip burner, you have to pull, burn, test, rinse, repeat. Granted when you get it tuned you may not ever have to really mess with it again, but I would easily say that you can and probably will have a tune for the seasons, not to mention as you make upgrades. !

Some people have more than 1 car to tune and only want to buy 1 Ostrich for all cars.

In fact, my Ostrich is not even in any of my cars, it's in AJ's van....

[minigts]

Some people have more than 1 car to tune and only want to buy 1 Ostrich for all cars.

In fact, my Ostrich is not even in any of my cars, it's in AJ's van....

Man, so true. If you have socketed computers, it's a low cost solution. I mean, you can only drive one at a time. :) I guess that becomes an issue when you want to take more than one car to a car show.

[A.J.]

I prefer the Ostrich. I have multiple cars to tune. I've had some SMECs go bad so all I have to do is socket a new one and I'm good to go. No waiting for a new one. I've also had a glitchy Ostrich and I was able to borrow one to use as a diagnostic tool. I also have the Willem USB burner so I can flash a chip and then move the Ostrich to another car.

[SactoShadow]

Went ahead and ordered the ostrich, which should arrive Thursday!

[minigts]

Get ready for tuning on the fly. You will never want to buy a chip or burner again unless you have 10 cars, then it could get costly. :)

[jonnyb]

Get ready for tuning on the fly. You will never want to buy a chip or burner again unless you have 10 OR MORE cars, then it could get costly. :)

Hey - I resemble that remark! Note: I edited it slightly...LOL!

I use the Ostrich on my LM and SMEC cars, but have been trying BoostButton's flashable SBEC in my van and I do pretty much the same thing - try to get the tune right and then burn it to a chip and move the Ostrich/BB Flash Module to another vehicle.

Jon

[ShelGame]

Went ahead and ordered the ostrich, which should arrive Thursday!

If you have an SBEC, you'll need a latch adapter to run the Ostrich. The SBEC uses an odd chip from the factory. The latch adapter makes the Ostrich (and/or a regular chip) look like a factory SBEC memory chip...

[wowzer]

curious - for those using an ostrich with mptune. i have never had any feedback on how the realtime tuning actually works. i assume you are able to make cal changes and update the table to the ecu without an issue? i only ever bench tested it. or are you not using mptune to do the realtime updates? lmk.

to me, the pros of the ostrich are the real time updates, cons are that you cannot log with the ostrich. with a flashable chip you lose the real time updates (at least until rob and i can figure out a way to do this) but it still is very easy to flash the ecu and be able to also log using mpscan/mpscandroid.

[SactoShadow]

If you have an SBEC, you'll need a latch adapter to run the Ostrich. The SBEC uses an odd chip from the factory. The latch adapter makes the Ostrich (and/or a regular chip) look like a factory SBEC memory chip...

I just looked at the SBEC latch adapter board on boostbutton (your site right?) and it looked a little different from what I have.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/07/5uqy8u2a.jpg
This is what both of my ecus have, to accept eproms. Do I need an adaptor from the ostrich to this 32 pin socket?

[A.J.]

curious - for those using an ostrich with mptune. i have never had any feedback on how the realtime tuning actually works. i assume you are able to make cal changes and update the table to the ecu without an issue? i only ever bench tested it. or are you not using mptune to do the realtime updates? lmk.

to me, the pros of the ostrich are the real time updates, cons are that you cannot log with the ostrich. with a flashable chip you lose the real time updates (at least until rob and i can figure out a way to do this) but it still is very easy to flash the ecu and be able to also log using mpscan/mpscandroid.

MPTune and the Ostrich works well. You can select (forget what it's called) in the Ostrich software and every time you save it, it automatically updates the Ostrich with your changes. I have a Snap-on Solus Pro to data log.

[minigts]

curious - for those using an ostrich with mptune. i have never had any feedback on how the realtime tuning actually works. i assume you are able to make cal changes and update the table to the ecu without an issue? i only ever bench tested it. or are you not using mptune to do the realtime updates? lmk.

to me, the pros of the ostrich are the real time updates, cons are that you cannot log with the ostrich. with a flashable chip you lose the real time updates (at least until rob and i can figure out a way to do this) but it still is very easy to flash the ecu and be able to also log using mpscan/mpscandroid.

Hold on, you can't use MPScan with the Ostrich?! If that is the case, that would explain why it's not working with my setup. Why doesn't it work?

[tryingbe]

curious - for those using an ostrich with mptune. i have never had any feedback on how the realtime tuning actually works. i assume you are able to make cal changes and update the table to the ecu without an issue? i only ever bench tested it. or are you not using mptune to do the realtime updates? lmk.

I use MPtune to open the cal, then I use EmUtility to update the ostrich.

http://emutility.software.informer.com/1.0/

[ShelGame]

I just looked at the SBEC latch adapter board on boostbutton (your site right?) and it looked a little different from what I have.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/07/5uqy8u2a.jpg
This is what both of my ecus have, to accept eproms. Do I need an adaptor from the ostrich to this 32 pin socket?

That's just a socket. You need the adapter board to run the Ostrich.

[wowzer]

MPTune and the Ostrich works well. You can select (forget what it's called) in the Ostrich software and every time you save it, it automatically updates the Ostrich with your changes. I have a Snap-on Solus Pro to data log.

thx. mptune allows you to update the ostrich without using the emutility software. when you make changes to a bin you should be able to click on the little ostrich button and it should update the ostrich immediately. also there is a setting in the program settings that will auto update the ostrich when a change is made. also, you can directly flash the entire bin to the ostrich similar to a flashable ecu.

i'm curious how the snap on tool allows you to data log.

[wowzer]

Hold on, you can't use MPScan with the Ostrich?! If that is the case, that would explain why it's not working with my setup. Why doesn't it work?

for some reason the ostrich would not allow direct access to the ram locations. shelgame could probably add more clarification to this. i imagine the ram is in a unique location onboard the ecu.

i am curious how the snap on tool works. i probably need to spend some time on this again. i'm thinking maybe when i first tested this i was still using the hi-speed interrupt hack that was popular way back when which directly accessed the ram. i believe i'm just using the drb protocol now which looks up the ram info for you. hmmm...... i need to get the ostrich out again......


------------edit-------------
if i recall correctly, the 68hc11a8 chip has its own internal ram that will overlay the ram on an external chip (i.e. the ostrich, a regular chip, etc). when i first tested the ostrich i was trying to read the ram addresses directly off the ostrich, not realizing they were not accessible/valid since the ecu internal ram took precedence. my guess now is that you will need to use the ftdi cable as normal to access the ecu's internal ram, where the program data is being stored. so theoretically, you would have the ostrich plugged in to flash/read the binary and a regular ftdi cable plugged in to read the ram locations.

[tryingbe]

wowzer

Any way you can make the UNDO button work even after the file is saved in MPtuner? Often time I made a change and if I find out I don't like it, I have to close it up, load up the backup file and open them all again... a undo that will work after the file is saved will make tuning much easier.

Plus, I don't think the current undo button actually do anything.

[wowzer]

let me think about that. the way it works now is that when a cal is loaded i create a copy of all the tables and that is what is displayed and modified. when the cal is actually saved, i update the original tables with the copy and start fresh (e.g. reset various 'modified' flags, etc). i suppose i could keep the original tables no matter what until the cal is actually closed. ...........

the undo button typically was set up to work with text fields, e.g. table descriptions. since you can "reset" a table i never did much with the undo. i did think at one time of having an undo similar to excel, word, etc but i determined the overhead cost was alot more that the benefit.

[A.J.]

i am curious how the snap on tool works. i probably need to spend some time on this again. i'm thinking maybe when i first tested this i was still using the hi-speed interrupt hack that was popular way back when which directly accessed the ram. i believe i'm just using the drb protocol now which looks up the ram info for you. hmmm...... i need to get the ostrich out again......

What's there to understand? You plug in the tool and read data or codes. On the Solus Pro you can select either text or graph. Unless what you want to know is HOW the Snap-on tool communicates with the PCM.

[minigts]

for some reason the ostrich would not allow direct access to the ram locations. shelgame could probably add more clarification to this. i imagine the ram is in a unique location onboard the ecu.

i am curious how the snap on tool works. i probably need to spend some time on this again. i'm thinking maybe when i first tested this i was still using the hi-speed interrupt hack that was popular way back when which directly accessed the ram. i believe i'm just using the drb protocol now which looks up the ram info for you. hmmm...... i need to get the ostrich out again......

I was asking Rob about it, but I didn't mention that I was running the Ostrich. I mean, we both knew it, but when I was telling him how I couldn't get it to work, I didn't mention it and I don't think he was thinking about it, so there you go. :)

Man I was really excited about using MPScan to pull the data from the ECU and really tune the car. Any hope that it could work or is it a non issue? Guess I may BE investing in a scan tool.... :( Darn it all to heck.

Rob any ideas on this? :D

[wowzer]

I was asking Rob about it, but I didn't mention that I was running the Ostrich. I mean, we both knew it, but when I was telling him how I couldn't get it to work, I didn't mention it and I don't think he was thinking about it, so there you go. :)

Man I was really excited about using MPScan to pull the data from the ECU and really tune the car. Any hope that it could work or is it a non issue? Guess I may BE investing in a scan tool.... :( Darn it all to heck.

Rob any ideas on this? :D

i'll pull my bench ecu with the flash smec in it and hook the ostrich back in and see if it still works that way. unfortunately heading out of town until sunday so it won't be for a while.

[wowzer]

What's there to understand? ...

ouch - i ain't 2 smart ya no!

[minigts]

i'll pull my bench ecu with the flash smec in it and hook the ostrich back in and see if it still works that way. unfortunately heading out of town until sunday so it won't be for a while.

No worries, just curious if this can be done or not. I would love for it to work, but some things just aren't in the cards. Hoping this is! :)



ouch - i ain't 2 smart ya no!

lol, yes you only WROTE the code for some of the tools we are using. What a lughead you are. hahahaha

[wowzer]

its all good. my wife let me wear my big boy pants today ;)

[A.J.]

ouch - i ain't 2 smart ya no!

I didn't mean my comment to be insulting. I've never had anybody ask or wonder how a scan tool works/communicates. We just plug it in and go. Except for Jon T. His car doesn't want to cooperate.

[minigts]

Well now that I know there is an issue where MPScan doesn't work with the Ostrich, I should try a scan tool to see if it will pull anything. Given the issues I still have with mine, that was my reasoning for nothing working. Still, I would prefer to have MPScan work, but for now guess I'll have to get some info from a diagnostics tool and go from there. A stand alone engine management system may be my next big investment. SDS? MS? BS3? No, no that's too much. :)

[wowzer]

jon - mpscan is setup to NOT recognize the ostrich/burn2 by design since i originally could not get them to work. so when mpscan starts it specifically looks for the ostrich/burn2 and prevents access to it. give me a few days and i'll be able to confirm for you whether i can get the ostrich to work with the newer version of mpscan. if the otc, drb2, snapon stuff works there should be NO reason mpscan wouldn't work also. since the time i originally wrote the program i acquired a drb2 (as well as a salaea logic analyzer) so i should be able to trace the low level activity on the tx/rx lines. in fact, i used the drb2 and logic analyzer to work on the diagnostics routines in mpscan. Actually, there should be basically nothing the drb2 device does that can't be replicated in mpscan fwiw.

[minigts]

Man Morris if you got this to work, that would be great. I'm honestly amazed that we have such available technology for our cars. People are stunned I can do some of the things I can do with it, well that CAN be done with it. I've not done anything really, just what Rob has done with my cal. :) Looking forward to the outcome, thanks again!

[SactoShadow]

That would be amazing if you could get mpscan to work with the ostrich. It would make for a very simple tuning setup.

[minigts]

That would be amazing if you could get mpscan to work with the ostrich. It would make for a very simple tuning setup.

Yes it would be incredible.

[wowzer]

realized both of my smec ecu's have flash modules in them and have been rewired and repotted. i'll probably just pick up a stock smec instead. don't really want to undue the others. delays, delays.... sorry.

[Reaper1]

Has anybody needed to use the "amplifier" that the Ostrich can use to boost the data signal?

[SactoShadow]

Ostrich arrived today! And just now ordered the latch adapter. Looks like another week or so till I can finally start tuning.

[wowzer]

ok - undid my flashable smec and just stuck in the ostrich. i also had my ftdi cable hooked up to do the logging. fired up mpscan, it recognized the ftdi cable, and started logging. i had a gauge showing injpw for testing. i then fired up mptune and loaded the proper bin. mptune recognized the ostrich. i selected the pumping efficiency table, made some adjustments and hit the rtt button. immediately the pulsewidth gauge in mpscan changed as needed.

so, the short story. you can scan with the ostrich. however, you scan as you would without the ostrich, i.e. using the ftdi cable. you do not scan directly using the ostrich cable. i did notice that "resetting" a table did NOT auto send the bytes back to the ecu so i will need to fix that. for now you just need to move the points back manually and hit rtt again.

basically then, since you do still have to use the ftdi cable you need to justify whether the cost of the ostrich is worth it for the real time tuning features.

edit-------
i did post earlier that the ecu uses it's own internal ram so it is not available to the ostrich. you must access it thru the ecu using the sci/diagnostics port. fyi

[SactoShadow]

So if I want to datalog I need to also order an ftdi cable and hook it up to the diagnostic port?

[minigts]

ok - undid my flashable smec and just stuck in the ostrich. i also had my ftdi cable hooked up to do the logging. fired up mpscan, it recognized the ftdi cable, and started logging. i had a gauge showing injpw for testing. i then fired up mptune and loaded the proper bin. mptune recognized the ostrich. i selected the pumping efficiency table, made some adjustments and hit the rtt button. immediately the pulsewidth gauge in mpscan changed as needed.

so, the short story. you can scan with the ostrich. however, you scan as you would without the ostrich, i.e. using the ftdi cable. you do not scan directly using the ostrich cable. i did notice that "resetting" a table did NOT auto send the bytes back to the ecu so i will need to fix that. for now you just need to move the points back manually and hit rtt again.

basically then, since you do still have to use the ftdi cable you need to justify whether the cost of the ostrich is worth it for the real time tuning features.

edit-------
i did post earlier that the ecu uses it's own internal ram so it is not available to the ostrich. you must access it thru the ecu using the sci/diagnostics port. fyi

Oh ok. Well I have this configured, still isn't working. :( For some reason my computer recognizes when I connect to the ECU, but it doesn't do anything, i.e., doesn't pull any info. I tried a much of settings and no go. Scott, if you get yours working (MP Scan) will you post that up? Just not sure what is wrong with my setup.

[wowzer]

So if I want to datalog I need to also order an ftdi cable and hook it up to the diagnostic port?

yes - the only way currently to get access to the internal ram is using an ftdi cable and the regular sci/diag port.