What the hell are you all talking about !
mine just has 3 wires and a barrel full of petrol !
A lot of strange stuff about an overpriced ECU.
MS II does everything the more expensive rigs do,and more if you read everything.Also you can buy built up sets from here..as an example..
www.diyautotune.com/catalog/megasquirti-programmable-system-pcb30-assembled-unit-p-56.html?osCsid=c6000913007470a71ba825c8959d98d5But as has been mentioned,it's still being developed...as are all good ECU"S!.I have never come across one that dropped into place and was capable of producing the goods immediately.
The advantage MS has is the development is a hands on experience and is FREE! try asking MOTEC or Heltech for Free advice....
But...each to his own..
It probably does...... if you have weeks and weeks to find all the relevant information
Trouble is the good thing about it is also the bad thing, IE its open source so is being developed by many people all the time.....
But there doesnt appear to be any structure to that development
Thats great if you are an Electronics or Coding Geek,
And there seems to be a lot more work done on MS by coding people that Calibration People
;D
I work with some of the best guys in the business when it comes to OEM and Race Calibration and they are confused as hell by the functionality and layout of the MS software......
It may well have all the features of the higher priced ECUs but they don't appear to have been thought about and they are certainly not easy to find or available at a level where you want to adjust them.....
The added funcionality of an ECU that has been designed and thought about from the outset to be user freindly and easy to set up, adjust , moniter and use is worth the additional purchase price IMHO
By the time I configure MS to do what I want it to do I could have bought the DTA with everything included and support thats 2nd to none from people in the business of Designing ECUs and Mapping cars day in day out...... rather than (no offence to those using it) a collection of clever well meaning techie types.
I design engines for a living and there does seem to be some glaring ommisions and some scary assumptions with MS, the wideband "Self learning" closed loop algorithym for one which is being widely adopted and used with wide limits on it with no reality proper checks in the software.
It kind of works..... while everything works.....as soon as you get a sensor down it just reacts to the voltage seen without saying:
"I'm seeing 0v lamda (Add more fuel normally) but the TPS is at what and the engine is at full load, therefore there is a problem with lamda = Ignore lamda and go open loop on TPS and Load"
What it does is just dump more fuel in as it believes Lamda voltage to be correct, this then leads to Rich misfire etc .... then it tries to control that in another way getting ever more confused....
Just an example of someone designing code with good intentions without have a full understanding of the concepts and Calibration issues involved or a decent Cal strategy to start with.....
Basically I don't trust the existing MS code or those developing it to have a full understanding of Engine Calibration and I have no way of validating the existing stuff without understanding MS in its entirety....
Id rather trust a system built by calibration engineers that do this for a living and put the time into building the car properly, than spend the time learning about MS and potentially that it wont do the job as well as a more expensive off the shelf system that I should have bought in the first place.
I`ll leave you with this thought as I don my Flame proof overalls
There is a guy I know, that has mapped hundreds of cars on every different Management system, both on engine and Chassis dynos, he has no affiliation to any ecu manufacturer and maps them all.
He has never seen a Megasquirt car up and running successfully..... lots of projects on the go but never a running car
It comes down to "Pays yer money takes yer choice"
I don't have the time to spare, so its easier to earn the money and buy the right system, and cheaper too if I apply my hourly rate to learning MS
;D
HTH
Dom