turbogrill Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 Hi, I had never heard about ECUMASTER until a friend told me about them. Seems really good, decent price and plenty of features. Looks professionally made as well: https://www.ecumaster.com/products/emu-classic/ A friend is thinking about doing this instead of MS3. Anyone have any experience with them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mender Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 Price? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhr650 Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 The prices are pretty good, and Eastern European stuff can be pretty good. We have a big plant in Poland and have even moved a lot of engineering to there. https://ecumasterusa.com/collections The key to any standalone ECU is the software, I don’t know how good their software is but I do know that the Tuner Studio that MS uses is excellent. One of the nice things about MS software is the constant updates and the willingness to incorporate features asked for by the user base. Most people could make do with the Classic but the ECU Black has a feature that is very attractive to me, a 7 amp full bridge output. It is intended for DBW but could be used to drive an electronic wastegate actuator with an update to the firmware. I went to PRI this year to find out what ECU companies could handle electronic wastegate actuators, and tried to hint that the if they couldn’t they should get on it since I haven’t designed a pneumatic wastegate turbo in probably 5 years. The responses were interesting, the high end ECU’s like Motec,and Life said no problem we have the hardware and software ready to go. I am friendly with the MS people since they race ChampCar and I have raced with them several times, they didn’t have either the hardware or software but were interested in working with me with an external H Bridge and firmware update. Holley was really disappointing, they have 2 H Bridge outputs on their hardware but have no interest at all in updating the firmware to make them useable, they are so caught up in their drag racing and muscle car market even though I have a line of communication to their senior engineering management I have never been able to get them to incorporate features that would help us out road racing. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turbogrill Posted February 13, 2019 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 53 minutes ago, mhr650 said: The prices are pretty good, and Eastern European stuff can be pretty good. We have a big plant in Poland and have even moved a lot of engineering to there. https://ecumasterusa.com/collections The key to any standalone ECU is the software, I don’t know how good their software is but I do know that the Tuner Studio that MS uses is excellent. One of the nice things about MS software is the constant updates and the willingness to incorporate features asked for by the user base. Most people could make do with the Classic but the ECU Black has a feature that is very attractive to me, a 7 amp full bridge output. It is intended for DBW but could be used to drive an electronic wastegate actuator with an update to the firmware. I went to PRI this year to find out what ECU companies could handle electronic wastegate actuators, and tried to hint that the if they couldn’t they should get on it since I haven’t designed a pneumatic wastegate turbo in probably 5 years. The responses were interesting, the high end ECU’s like Motec,and Life said no problem we have the hardware and software ready to go. I am friendly with the MS people since they race ChampCar and I have raced with them several times, they didn’t have either the hardware or software but were interested in working with me with an external H Bridge and firmware update. Holley was really disappointing, they have 2 H Bridge outputs on their hardware but have no interest at all in updating the firmware to make them useable, they are so caught up in their drag racing and muscle car market even though I have a line of communication to their senior engineering management I have never been able to get them to incorporate features that would help us out road racing. Why would they have an expensive high capable H bridge in HW but not exposed in SW? Curious about their software! Is tunerstudio constantly upgrading? To me Holley is all about 60 year olds that like to rev their muscle cars in the driveway, probably not correct but that's the image to give (with plenty of autometer products) One of the builders that recommended Ecumaster over MS said it was a more "complete solution" (whatever that means). There is no plug and play display for MS, race capture pro with tablet seems to be the best solution. (Tried the android apps like ShadowDash, that sucked). They also have their super expensive PMU. But a complete system will cost $4000 and the display, PMU and ECU has a lot of overlap. Each component has like 100 IOs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhr650 Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 They do have software support for the H Bridge but it is for DBW throttle control. They would need to add new firmware for me to use it for an electronic wastegate actuator. Instead of controlling throttle angle vs pedal position they would need to control boost vs wastegate angle, not especially difficult to do but it has to be added by them. Tuner Studio and MS3 firmware are both updated often with many incremental releases between major updates, and they are very open to user requests. This can be good if you need the new features, but it is difficult for them supporting people using many different versions of the software. The Holley Dominator is a very capable ECU, but they are so focused on drag racing with their firmware that it is less useful than much cheaper solutions for what we are doing. The package deal does look attractive. It seems expensive but by the time you add up the cost of the parts you are replacing it is much more reasonable, and you end up with a much better overall system. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scribe Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 I just got ECUMaster's PMU-16 for power distribution duties and I have been pretty impressed with it so far. My favorite part is that their CAN network is fully configurable (with USB to CAN add-on) so you can set it up to communicate with nearly anything. I am working with someone to have the PMU emulate a Haltech CAN expansion module to allow it to communicate with Haltech's "propriety" CAN network. I'm sticking with a Haltech 1500 over the EMU Black due to running a MAF setup over speed density (EMUMaster does not have MAF support). It also helps that I already had the Haltech laying around. I really like how the EMU Black has a built-in wideband O2 controller, so no expensive add-ons required. 1 hour ago, mhr650 said: They do have software support for the H Bridge but it is for DBW throttle control. They would need to add new firmware for me to use it for an electronic wastegate actuator. Instead of controlling throttle angle vs pedal position they would need to control boost vs wastegate angle, not especially difficult to do but it has to be added by them. Tuner Studio and MS3 firmware are both updated often with many incremental releases between major updates, and they are very open to user requests. This can be good if you need the new features, but it is difficult for them supporting people using many different versions of the software. The Holley Dominator is a very capable ECU, but they are so focused on drag racing with their firmware that it is less useful than much cheaper solutions for what we are doing. The package deal does look attractive. It seems expensive but by the time you add up the cost of the parts you are replacing it is much more reasonable, and you end up with a much better overall system. Did you talk to Haltech about electronic wastegate support? I have a BMW/Mitsubishi actuator sitting on my desk that I might try to mess with. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhr650 Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 I did talk to someone at Haltech about electronic wastegate actuators, they said yes but I don’t think the guy I was talking to knew what he was talking about and probably thought I just meant the pneumatic PWM valve. That’s always an issue at PRI, they have many more people in the booth than they have people who really know what is going on. I haven’t worked with one of those Melco actuators in a long time, their popularity came and went about 5 years ago, although I know that Honda still likes them. If you do use the Melco actuator be very careful about your kinematics, make sure that you have a good path for the dog bone to articulate. Those actuators really don’t like side loads at all. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ablesnead Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 Any opinions on The Link ecu , more US dealers , and priced at 560.00 for a basic unit ....basic unit supports 2 rotors na , which would work for me in chump I hope .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wittenauer Racing Posted February 13, 2019 Report Share Posted February 13, 2019 (edited) 11 minutes ago, ablesnead said: Any opinions on The Link ecu , more US dealers , and priced at 560.00 for a basic unit ....basic unit supports 2 rotors na , which would work for me in chump I hope .. There's also Microsquirt (from the Mega folks) at $390 with harness, $320 without. Their sales stuff says rotary support with lead/trail plugs too but it's a bit short on IO. I need to dig deeper still but was looking at that plus the ECU masters PMU/Can Keyboard/dash on a 4 banger. Can't figure out if the Micro supports CAN when set up as engine ECU. If I can do CAN between it and the PMU then that opens up some doors in terms of IO/dash/etc. Edited February 13, 2019 by Wittenauer Racing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billy Bob Posted June 12, 2021 Report Share Posted June 12, 2021 mhr650 is spot on! "The key to any standalone ECU is the software" I've ran Megasquirt and Holley, currently changed to Maxxecu Pro and I'm very happy! I'd prefer Ecumaster over Megasquirt. Haltech is very nice as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MR2 Biohazard Posted June 12, 2021 Members Report Share Posted June 12, 2021 I have the ecumasters black on both of my cars. I had the ms3 pro on one of my older cars, but after using the ecu masters black I sold it and put it on there also. For the price it really is a great solution. Wideband bulit in, 2x knock, 2x egt built in, dbw built in, H bridge built in. If you need an ecu with DBW there is nothing I have seen close to the price. Ballenger Motorsports sell them. What I like is that they really give you full control to do what you want and need. At first it might seem like there are a lot of items to adjust and you need to learn what they do, but they do prefill. Others seem to do the same things, just do not give you control over those parameters. The software is nice and easy to configure. When you datalog you can really see what happens and when. At WGI we blew an engine, looked at the data and could see just when the rod bearing went and really told the story of what happened. We had debris in the oil or just a bad older junkyard motor. If you get the ECU masters black I would also get the EDL-1 for dataloging. You just pop in the sd card and it records everything, easy and done. I also have the AIM MXS in Bio 2 and put the AIM PDM32 in Bio 3 with the 6" screen. The AIM PDM32 is simply an amazing system. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atxe30 Posted June 12, 2021 Report Share Posted June 12, 2021 warning! thread semi-hijack. has anyone had any experience with these guys: https://htg-tuning.com/ doing some homework on the standalone GCU for a DCT transmission in e30. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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