Hi
Thought my pet project may be interesting to some of the people on this forum.
About 3 months ago I started coding a wasted spark ECU mostly to improve my coding skills. I was quite happy with the code so I bought a cheap Bosch imitation coil pack and bench tested. Again I surprised myself when the thing passed all my bench tests. I plugged a really rudimentary development setup into the engine expecting a poor result. Again the thing ran better than I had hoped.
So after some more refining my project now looks like this.
The ECU has two cores, one runs the engine ignition, the other runs the wifi and a webpage to provide the data you see on the laptop. Any wifi capable device could display the data as the webpage is hosted in the ECU.
Obviously the wiring is very quickly 'hacked' into place, the coil is held in place with a piece of scrap metal, the crank pickup is mounted using a piece of coat hanger but it gives you an idea of where I'm headed. Ultimately the coil will be mounted behind the head where the original coil is.
My engine was running a distributor with electric ignition which ran very well. The new system runs at least as good using the 'ear' test. The spark is massive, the Atomic is so lowly strung compared to the vw group engines the coil was designed for I can run a huge dwell and the coil(s) never develop any heat. I can also start the engine at only 1 or 2 degress advance so it starts softly. There's also rev limiter.
Thought I'd share. I've been enjoying building this thing.
Thought my pet project may be interesting to some of the people on this forum.
About 3 months ago I started coding a wasted spark ECU mostly to improve my coding skills. I was quite happy with the code so I bought a cheap Bosch imitation coil pack and bench tested. Again I surprised myself when the thing passed all my bench tests. I plugged a really rudimentary development setup into the engine expecting a poor result. Again the thing ran better than I had hoped.
So after some more refining my project now looks like this.
The ECU has two cores, one runs the engine ignition, the other runs the wifi and a webpage to provide the data you see on the laptop. Any wifi capable device could display the data as the webpage is hosted in the ECU.
Obviously the wiring is very quickly 'hacked' into place, the coil is held in place with a piece of scrap metal, the crank pickup is mounted using a piece of coat hanger but it gives you an idea of where I'm headed. Ultimately the coil will be mounted behind the head where the original coil is.
My engine was running a distributor with electric ignition which ran very well. The new system runs at least as good using the 'ear' test. The spark is massive, the Atomic is so lowly strung compared to the vw group engines the coil was designed for I can run a huge dwell and the coil(s) never develop any heat. I can also start the engine at only 1 or 2 degress advance so it starts softly. There's also rev limiter.
Thought I'd share. I've been enjoying building this thing.
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