Well I see in the News headlines on Moates.net that Craig Has come up with a new product. Here is what the Headlines on his site say.
It will be called the OSTRICH, and it's not just another EMUlator. It's a USB-based RealTime emulator, can emulate anything from 2716 to 29C040. That's right, and everything in between. Lots of other info coming, but suffice it to say that this device fills a little void in my offerings. Hope you'll enjoy it! Target pricing is $175.


Craig Let us in on the Excitement!!!

 

Agreed!! Is this going to be like a smaller subset of the autoprom (not chip burning, but emulation capability?)?? I'm interested.

 

Precisely. Emulation only.

 

Are we talking a device to leave in place of the chip? (Install OSTRICH, forget about a chip?)

 

I guess you could do anything you want with it.

It's gonna be pretty brutal...

Probably just a lead-in of other things to come...

I'm learning to count up from 8 to 16...

 

I like the sound of that!:yes:

Any details, pics?

 

Craig,

The big question is: WHEN??

I want one. Checkbook is standing by.

Steve

 

You guys are always in such a hurry. Muahaha!

Couple weeks, I'll have 10 pieces ready to go. I can unload a few prototypes right now if people are REAL interested.

 

I'd like to know when Craig finds time to sleep! With all the new stuff he keeps putting out, and I'm sure he still has a job, he still shipped out an order I placed on the same day! Thanks Craig!

 

Craig is one of the newer models that requires sleep on a semi-annual schedule. I'm due for upgrade in a few weeks.

 

:rockon:

Yep, newer model.

Actually, if it weren't for my wife, everyone would be waiting weeks for their stuff. I'm not real good when it comes to time management. Obsession, on the other hand, I've got that down pat.

 

Well Craig, I don't mind if it's you or your wife I have to thank for the awesome service! You'll always get my thumbs up for speed of delivery and quality of product!

Perhaps I'll need to get an Ostrich or an Autoprom from you soon. Now I just need to find some time to practice this tuning business!!

Cheers!

Gordon (Glasgow, UK)

 

Alrighty then. Elaboration continues. Ostrich prototype tested in a stock 1227730 testbed. Flawless. Buffered from application.

So, are you guys ready for the Ostrich? I think it's ready for you. Price is $175...

Many thanks to Jeremy 'Biohazard' Barnes for being the test mule...

 

Pictures Please. I need Pictures for Emulator Section of Prom artical

 

I need pictures for drool factor.

 

Pic #1:

 

Pic 2:

 

Trying again here:

 

The energizer bunny would freak out if he saw that picture!

 

Hey, that looks as good on the inside as I imagine it does on the outside while its sitting in my car!

What did you say you did for a living? EE? No, that wasn't it...

You impress me, there, Craig!

 

Since I think others may be wondering as well, I'll ask here; Are the batteries there for backup purposes? (incase of a loss of vehicle power?) Or are they required to operate the unit (ie: it operates independantly of vehicle power?)?? Just wondering because I'm thinking about this product (looks great btw!) as use in my car instead of a chip and don't want to worry about the batteries running out..

 

The batteries are there to back up the memory.

I did some calculations, and it looks like the batteries should last about 74 years. Should be pretty OK.

 

put me down for 1

 

So are the batteries what will hold the bin file while the car is off? Craig can you do a quick comparison between the Ostrich and the Autoprom? I was going to buy your Autoprom but I have decided to wait until the Ostrich comes out to see what it’s all about. I don't need the ALDL logging or prom burner on the Autoprom, since I have all that equipment right now. I just want an emulator that I can keep up under the dash and not have to burn chips or take it out when I am done with it, is this what this is?
Keep up the good work!

 

Since Craig's probably asleep (wait, what am I saying?!), I'll answer your questions if only for promptness:

- Yes, the purpose of the batteries is to save the bin for when the Ostrich is connected to neither the car nor the laptop (both of which would be a power source). So yes, you can run your car for 74 years off of the Ostrich. Any longer and you're going to need new batteries. No need for a chip.

- The Ostrich is just an emulator. So comparing to the AutoProm, its just the emulation portion, no chip burner/reader, no ALDL interface, no additional A/D.


Preemptively:

- The Ostrich will function fully with TunerPro, and will work great with TunerCat's RT Tuner.

- It can emulate chips up to 4 MBit.

- The Ostrich will be available in USB only. Your system will have to have a USB port. If it doesn't, but it has a PCMCIA slot available, Craig has some PCMCIA 4-port USB host cards available at a very, very reasonable price (Craig can confirm, but I believe its around $20).

 

Yeah, what he said.

 

It needs to be here, so I'll put it here...

:hail:

As soon as I round up the funds....

 

So I can do "real time" emulation using my G3 switcher on all programs? I'm believing this to be true.
Is the ribbon cable long enough to reach the glovebox from the ECU? If not, are there different lengths available?
This is Sweet! Good job :yourock:

 

Forgive me if I sound like the neophyte I am, but:

Why would you use an emulator?

If you have all the stuff to burn a chip why wouldn't you burn a chip?

Jason

 

Really quick (a more in depth answer can be found using the "search" feature of the boards):

The answer to this is found in the definition of an emulator. An emulator allows you to make changes in real time, while the engine is running. If you've spent any amount of time tuning using the ol' "burn a chip" method, you may have found that trying to tweak in stubborn tables can be quite time consuming.

Imagine, if you will, cutting out the steps of: a) returning home, b) pulling the chip for re-burn, c) reburning the chip after changing, d) re-inserting the chip, e) starting the engine yet again, f) going for yet another drive only to discover things still aren't right.

Replace those steps with these: a) discover things aren't right, b) pull over and leave the engine running, c) make the changes in your editor, d) pull back into traffic (safely) and test them.

Make sense?

M

 

OH!

Yeah, I can see why that would be awesome. And for $175? WOW!

I suppose it would even do well if someone else oriented to this sort of thing was driving so it would be even faster.

That was actually about as much of an answer as I could understand right now... Thanks.

Jason

 

And if you don't have anything for chip burning yet, you may want to check out the Autoprom from craig. It is an emulator with much much more! Basically and all-in-one solution!

 

(voiceover by Rod Serling, creepy music...)

"In a world... a Man, a Car, the two nearly indistinguishable..."

"Imagine if you will..."

 

Craig why you always so funny when it's late, Is it a BudLight Thing.

 

It's early. Been into the Agave I suppose...

 

Just add alchohol! Hmmmm...
creepy music fades into Bad to the Bone playing softly in the background...

Beware of old Plymouths!

 

This looks great, I'll probly be getting one when funds permit this winter
Question/suggestion (no creep intended, separate thing)
Now that the ability exists to completly emulate the chip with ram, etc.
How possible is it to pull off register data for logging?
I'm thinking directly at the registers in memory itself.
Datalogging must wait for the program to sequence and update the registers, then send to the serial, then into recording device.
Is there any way (within reason) to actually be able to have something attached that the registers or locations in memory could be exported continuously?
Get away from the serial data altogether and get it from the source.
You could log any program execution parameter or feedback from sensors at the speed of the program.
We are now using just feedback as a tuning tool, What if we could use the calculation values as well (as they happen) and compare to the feedback to see the effects.
Opens a whole can of worms for thought processes and making custom code testing easier.
I'm sure the actual capture and storage of the register data will be the worst part. maybe definable 32 or 64 data registers.
Daydreaming again, Oh, the music stopped...
Back to what I'm supposed to be doing.
Jp

 

For hardware to monitor for registers, or any code being run by the ECM, would be prohibitively expensive in firmware, nor would it be simple.

That said, it is possible to monitor address hits. In fact, the Romulator does this now. This allows you to monitor when the ECM requests data from, for instance, the spark table and from what cell.

Thats probably the best you're going to get from the hardware side of thing (IMO).

It would be (much) easier to completely re-write the ECM code base and do what you want with it at that point (debug output, etc). In fact, I'm surprised no one has gone down this path.

 

The 'trace' functionality Mark alludes to is planned for a future device, but it does indeed require more complex logic. Not too hard, just gotta have the I/O.

What you're talking about is something like what Bill and them are doing with the SpeedReader I believe. This is certainly possible, but like you say, it's creep.

What do you mean no one has gone down the path? The serial stream is whatever you want it to be. I tried messing with redefining the ALDL stream for wideband purposes and that worked. Then I tried to mod the code to provide a shorter (ie. faster) data packet. For some reason that I didn't get to work, but I just took a brief stab.

So anyways, yeah, the other stuff would be of interest. I did it with the AutoProm to some extent (A/D inputs, integrated ALDL buffering), but what you're getting at is indeed a separate project.

Good idea though!

 

Considering you didn't see success in shortening the ALDL output, I guess its not whatever *you* want it to be, eh? :-D

Anyway, I have yet to see anyone get crazy with the serial output, outside of modding it to output WB data in place of other data.

Thats what I mean by no one has gone down that path. There is lots that can be done with the serial output. New messages can be defined, data can be outputted from the middle of code paths for debugging and general information purposes, etc. Its all just a matter of (reverse) engineering the code to do so. And that, I know, is quite a challenge.

 

So it's a USB version of the xtronics Romulator. One other advantage is that it'll support big capacity unlike the romulator. Oh, and this uses the cars battery to retain memory unlike the unmodified romulator .

 

Actually, it uses 3 run-of-the-mill AAAs to retain memory.

 

Not to get too far out in left field but,
Was the reason the short packs didn't help was the loops still all needed to be updated so were just getting the same data twice by oversampling?
I hope that was understandable.
It seems to me there is no way of shortening the the time between mux sampling and calculations due to loop structure.
Removing code is the only way to get all the datapoints updated in memory for the serial routine to output when requested.
Less points to output also decreases the program execution, but I think its impact is minimal.
Is there something I'm missing there to improve on comm rate?

Also, I figure I'll keep my car running for 74.5 years.
Will the unit hold memory when plugged in so the batteries can be changed?

 

Yep! You can power it off the USB port or the target device. So you could swap batteries at that time and memory would be maintained. In fact, if you powered it at all times through that 74 years, the batteries would still be fresh. Don't know if we'll have USB ports in 74 years, but if we do, then it should work.

What you say on the coding makes some sense. I was just trying to shorten up the message length. It would still be hitting at 8192 baud, but since the packet would only be like 6 bytes instead of 64+, it would be much faster in terms of completion. So you could push something like 50Hz instead of 10Hz. I didn't dig too much, but probably should on one of these lazy Sunday afternoons.

By the way, I'll try and be right by your side with that running ThirdGen on down into 2078!

 

Craig, Whats the ETA for this bad boy?

 

can i order a beta? i really wont one ASAP

 

I'm sorry if I'm a little slow on this. I just got back from Iraq and Afghanistan. I already have all the stuff needed to record and burn chips thanks to Craig Moates.

My question is: Can I record data using the same USB cord connected to the Emulator or do I still need the ALDL cable hooked up while using Datamaster?

 

Good to have you back, glad you made it! How is it over there? Hopefully not too bad, hope everything works out.

There's a good thing about USB in that you can have a hub and connect all kinds of stuff simultaneously. Theoretically, you could connect the following all at once:

BURN1
ALDU1
OSTRICH

And do everything at the same time pretty much. Might be a software limitation here and there, but by and large you should be good to go. Separate USB cables yes, but it all comes back to being able to do it how you want I think.

ETA is ASAP. I've got several here, just gotta get em together and out the door. Check the website shortly, ordering should be open for business!

 

Craig, the reason why I'm asking is because I have yet to buy an ALDL cable and I'm going to buy the OSTRICH from you. I just want to make sure I have all the stuff I need.

So correct me if I'm wrong. I need a still use the ALDL cable along with the USB connected to the Emulator?

And yes it was kind of crazy at times being deployed for 16 months and people trying to blow you up all the time.

 

There's two ways to go:

1) All-in-one which is the AutoProm. That would give you chip burning, emulation, and ALDL all in the same device.

2) Three separate deals. The BURN1 for chips, the OSTRICH for emulation, and the ALDU1 for datalogging.

Of course, for option (2), you can have any given device (Romulator, Pocket Programmer, AKM Cable, etc) as a substitute. So if you have any of the three listed in (2), you just get that which you don't have in terms of functionality. There's three functionalities, and nine ways till Sunday to get each one.

But yes, you should be able to use any ALDL cable along with the OSTRICH for datalogging with simultaneous realtime emulation via integrated TunerPro RT software. Or, you can do the TunerPro software for emulation or TunerCat RT for emulation while you use the DataMaster or what-not for simultameous datalog.

The Ostrich is just an emulator. No ALDL built in. No chip burning built in.