MicroSquirt.com read only forum (Jan.15,2018)

Hi all, are any news about the Ultra MS available ?

There are features that will be available on the GPIO and the router board that will need to be worked out before they can be implemented into the UMS, along with a lot of other developments in both hardware and software.

From what I understand they UMS will not be under heavy development until well after the router board and the GPIO are in the mainstream, which could be measured in years. There are a lot of other projects on the development table according to the State of the Union release that also pushed back the UMS or made substitutions make more sense- like the signal interceptor which would allow you to intercept signals coming from the engine/ecu and adjust them for tuning purposes while the ECU is none the wiser and thereby not throw any codes. There's some rad stuff being put on paper.

I personally believe the GPIO and router board should not go into heavy production for a long time, but rather a short limited edition production and it should be a short intermediary step used as task oriented learning/development tools and proving ground for the features and once they have been standardized the UMS or version 4 PCB should go into development using all or most of the useful technology acquired through the GPIO and router board with the intent to make the GPIO and router board obsolete. While PCB space is limited I'm sure there are a lot of clever ideas to stuff quite a lot of the goodness on there.
Unfortunately, and fortunately, this is an open source community so there is a large group of loosely connected engineer types adding to this and it will take time, however, with more minds involved there is usually a better end product because so many people are dumping fresh ideas. The down side is that it is difficult to set everybody on tasks and expect it to be done quickly, like it would be in a big R&D firm. But we're becoming more like a firm all the time, with open source too.

Anyone want to take the ball on the subject?

What has evolved is that there will always be two systems - a cutting edge experimental system (which wil have several boards attached because that is how you do new development), and a base model that is well tested. But if you look at what is happening today, there is no ultimate Holy Grail. Things just keep getting added year after year. So the big plan is to keep developing the pieces, and incorporating them into one board when it makes sense. The router board can be used as a 1 board ECU with sequential 8 cylinder fuel and spark, all based on angle position rather than time-based. This is a big step that simplifies many things in the code. Plus the processor will have double the present pin count and on-board WB control. That is a big step toward UMS.

That will be sweet, the next project (after my garage) is a Turbo BMW M52 inline six engine with COP, by this time I hope US will be out and running, sweet work keep it up.