A message from a COBB engineer
Feb 24, 2011, 05:05 PM
#77
This is going OT but I don't get that. The effort that goes into designing, coding, testing and maintaining code can be far more complicated and expensive than soldering transistors and resistors to a PCB board and attaching a piece of wire to it. Or, bending pipes and welding it together. The fact that you can suck the ones and zeros over a internet connection into you laptop quickly hides the engineering behind the effort.
Feb 24, 2011, 05:33 PM
#79
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I went through the 6 pages and didn't really see what sparked this thread. Can someone explain what exactly happened? Specifics like what part of the code is in discussion would be useful. Thanks.
Feb 24, 2011, 05:56 PM
#80
I removed three posts, only because I felt it was getting a little too personal. I want the tech of this thread intact. As migs said, everyone please play nice.
You have stated this more than once in the thread. In a past thread, your point was that there are great Cobb tuners near people who are laypersons that cannot tune their own cars, so they run Cobb to get nice shelf maps. IMO, they should support their local tuner, be it AP or Ecuflash, and that is great!
But there are also great open source tuners available to others. For the price of a custom tune from many Evom vendors, the end consumer is out $0 for hardware. They are paying the tuner for his services and perhaps usage for his dyno added in there.
These guys aren't "competitors"; Cobb is a developer, Buschur is a full service shop. I personally think most shops would want to offer both to be able to tune any customer that walks in the door. David was relating his experience and opinions and thus why he has made the choices he has as a shop.
But there are also great open source tuners available to others. For the price of a custom tune from many Evom vendors, the end consumer is out $0 for hardware. They are paying the tuner for his services and perhaps usage for his dyno added in there.
David Buschur entering the conversation raises a couple of questions. Is it ethical of a vendor to make a profit selling products and services that are highly dependent on the work done by open software volunteers? Is it ethical of a vendor to be openly critical of a competitor that offers the same products - although the competitor also just so happen to offer a complete end to end solution including a tuning option?
Feb 24, 2011, 06:02 PM
#81
I removed three posts, only because I felt it was getting a little too personal. I want the tech of this thread intact. As migs said, everyone please play nice.
You have stated this more than once in the thread. In a past thread, your point was that there are great Cobb tuners near people who are laypersons that cannot tune their own cars, so they run Cobb to get nice shelf maps. IMO, they should support their local tuner, be it AP or Ecuflash, and that is great!
But there are also great open source tuners available to others. For the price of a custom tune from many Evom vendors, the end consumer is out $0 for hardware. They are paying the tuner for his services and perhaps usage for his dyno added in there.
These guys aren't "competitors"; Cobb is a developer, Buschur is a full service shop. I personally think most shops would want to offer both to be able to tune any customer that walks in the door. David was relating his experience and opinions and thus why he has made the choices he has as a shop.
You have stated this more than once in the thread. In a past thread, your point was that there are great Cobb tuners near people who are laypersons that cannot tune their own cars, so they run Cobb to get nice shelf maps. IMO, they should support their local tuner, be it AP or Ecuflash, and that is great!
But there are also great open source tuners available to others. For the price of a custom tune from many Evom vendors, the end consumer is out $0 for hardware. They are paying the tuner for his services and perhaps usage for his dyno added in there.
These guys aren't "competitors"; Cobb is a developer, Buschur is a full service shop. I personally think most shops would want to offer both to be able to tune any customer that walks in the door. David was relating his experience and opinions and thus why he has made the choices he has as a shop.
ECUflash if you are getting pro tuned you pay for the tuning thats it, Cobb you pay 600 and the tuning...so unless you are running OTS maps, stick with ECUflash.
Kracka, you were all about ECUflash until you moved to Texas, traitor, lol (just playing)
I think this has all gotten out of hand...
I have always firmly believed that you should use whatever platform your tuner uses as you are putting your car in his hands so give him the right tools.
After all this, if Tephra is content then it isn't my place to give a ****. Its his work/man hours, I donated several times to him, few hundred or something (includes a 4bar MAP sensor) so I gave him props that way but this has gotten to a point its just dumb.
Last edited by murlo26; Feb 24, 2011 at 06:04 PM.
Feb 24, 2011, 08:41 PM
#83
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After reading all these threads I have to say a few things.
1. There are A LOT of heavy hitters posting in this particular thread. Regardless of the topic you are all pretty awesome and I'll say thanks to all you guys since you have have propelled the Evo into new realms. I have a lot of respect for you guys, Especially you DB.
2. To reiterate what I, and I think Jumperalex agrees with me, is that the issue we're having is in fact how COBB is implementing the solution, which was found by Tephra. That's it really. COBB brought this issue to the forums attention by posting a PSA, so getting some flack is expected, but the point remains that someone is investing a lot of time and hard work, and, well basically, COBB is reaping the benefits.
I'm just a lowly Evo owner whose still feeling out the waters and learning about the car and everything else, so it's just my opinion on the matter. Since I was 10 I wanted and Evo and I busted my *** to finally buy myself one, so...
Again, I still thank all you guys who further the advancement and development of our vehicle. I just don't appreciate when a shared passion turns cut-throat.
1. There are A LOT of heavy hitters posting in this particular thread. Regardless of the topic you are all pretty awesome and I'll say thanks to all you guys since you have have propelled the Evo into new realms. I have a lot of respect for you guys, Especially you DB.
2. To reiterate what I, and I think Jumperalex agrees with me, is that the issue we're having is in fact how COBB is implementing the solution, which was found by Tephra. That's it really. COBB brought this issue to the forums attention by posting a PSA, so getting some flack is expected, but the point remains that someone is investing a lot of time and hard work, and, well basically, COBB is reaping the benefits.
I'm just a lowly Evo owner whose still feeling out the waters and learning about the car and everything else, so it's just my opinion on the matter. Since I was 10 I wanted and Evo and I busted my *** to finally buy myself one, so...
Again, I still thank all you guys who further the advancement and development of our vehicle. I just don't appreciate when a shared passion turns cut-throat.
Feb 24, 2011, 09:47 PM
#84
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After reading all these threads I have to say a few things.
1. There are A LOT of heavy hitters posting in this particular thread. Regardless of the topic you are all pretty awesome and I'll say thanks to all you guys since you have have propelled the Evo into new realms. I have a lot of respect for you guys, Especially you DB.
2. To reiterate what I, and I think Jumperalex agrees with me, is that the issue we're having is in fact how COBB is implementing the solution, which was found by Tephra. That's it really. COBB brought this issue to the forums attention by posting a PSA, so getting some flack is expected, but the point remains that someone is investing a lot of time and hard work, and, well basically, COBB is reaping the benefits.
I'm just a lowly Evo owner whose still feeling out the waters and learning about the car and everything else, so it's just my opinion on the matter. Since I was 10 I wanted and Evo and I busted my *** to finally buy myself one, so...
Again, I still thank all you guys who further the advancement and development of our vehicle. I just don't appreciate when a shared passion turns cut-throat.
1. There are A LOT of heavy hitters posting in this particular thread. Regardless of the topic you are all pretty awesome and I'll say thanks to all you guys since you have have propelled the Evo into new realms. I have a lot of respect for you guys, Especially you DB.
2. To reiterate what I, and I think Jumperalex agrees with me, is that the issue we're having is in fact how COBB is implementing the solution, which was found by Tephra. That's it really. COBB brought this issue to the forums attention by posting a PSA, so getting some flack is expected, but the point remains that someone is investing a lot of time and hard work, and, well basically, COBB is reaping the benefits.
I'm just a lowly Evo owner whose still feeling out the waters and learning about the car and everything else, so it's just my opinion on the matter. Since I was 10 I wanted and Evo and I busted my *** to finally buy myself one, so...
Again, I still thank all you guys who further the advancement and development of our vehicle. I just don't appreciate when a shared passion turns cut-throat.
It was brought up before in this thread, that before open source had a foothold in the X, Cobb had the AP up and running, and found many of the tables that opensource now uses as well; as was stated, when that's the table, thats the table. It seems that now, when Tephra was a pimp and found a new table, cobb can't use that new-found knowledge too? If tephra is aware that they are using the table he found, why does anyone else have an issue? I get DB's issue he brought up, I'd be pissed too in that situation. Others, I'm confused and not seeing the big deal.
Further clarification - murlo, you do not have to own an AP to get a cobb protune. You can do it for just the dyno time etc like with open source. Not sure where that idea came from.
Feb 24, 2011, 10:11 PM
#85
I'm just glad the EVO community has both options and we aren't trapped into using some over priced reflash options like many other communities are where the price is high because of features that might go completely unused by those more interested in self tuning.
There are LOTS of users out there that don't have the knowledge or skill set to tune their own cars. Picking up an AP or getting a local "tuner" to use ECUFlash to slap a tune on their car is a valuable option.
If you are willing to put in the leg work, this community is truly awesome as there are lots of guys willing to give you pointers on not only how to use the ECUFlash software, but there are threads on how to break down the factory code. I'm no expert like Tephra, Merlin, or MRFred, but I've gone from knowing almost nothing about machine code to being able to write my own patches just from following threads on this message forum and reading the processor manuals. I don't think there is a single other car community out there that can say that?
As for support for this community, I believe that if Cobb focused on a good quality user interface that does high speed datalogging (DMA) without a laptop connected and then allowed user defined tables like ECUFlash, I think they could retail a product for this community very well. Particularly if they did a good job of managing and verifying any new user defined tables using solid revision control methods.
Jumping back and forth between ECUFlash, EVOscan, Excel, etc. is a freaking joke. The DMA logging software might make sense once you get use to using it, but it has frustrated me too many times at this point and I don't even bother with it any more.
Make it come in around $300-$350 or so for the cable and software and I'd pick one up in a heart beat. Put an emphasis on the visual datalogging/graphing features by devoting the screen real estate to the datalog and then use drop downs and pop-ups for all tuning/maps. That's my preference anyway.
There are LOTS of users out there that don't have the knowledge or skill set to tune their own cars. Picking up an AP or getting a local "tuner" to use ECUFlash to slap a tune on their car is a valuable option.
If you are willing to put in the leg work, this community is truly awesome as there are lots of guys willing to give you pointers on not only how to use the ECUFlash software, but there are threads on how to break down the factory code. I'm no expert like Tephra, Merlin, or MRFred, but I've gone from knowing almost nothing about machine code to being able to write my own patches just from following threads on this message forum and reading the processor manuals. I don't think there is a single other car community out there that can say that?
As for support for this community, I believe that if Cobb focused on a good quality user interface that does high speed datalogging (DMA) without a laptop connected and then allowed user defined tables like ECUFlash, I think they could retail a product for this community very well. Particularly if they did a good job of managing and verifying any new user defined tables using solid revision control methods.
Jumping back and forth between ECUFlash, EVOscan, Excel, etc. is a freaking joke. The DMA logging software might make sense once you get use to using it, but it has frustrated me too many times at this point and I don't even bother with it any more.
Make it come in around $300-$350 or so for the cable and software and I'd pick one up in a heart beat. Put an emphasis on the visual datalogging/graphing features by devoting the screen real estate to the datalog and then use drop downs and pop-ups for all tuning/maps. That's my preference anyway.
Feb 24, 2011, 10:11 PM
#86
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This is off topic and I am sorry for that, but has anyone else noticed the best electronics and engine management stuff comes from Australia??? 
To name a few:
Tephra
Motec
Autronic
M&W
Is there something is the water?
To name a few:
Tephra
Motec
Autronic
M&W
Is there something is the water?
Feb 25, 2011, 12:52 AM
#88
Evolving Member
it is true - and Bryan@GST is probably my biggest "contributor" in this regard. Over the years he has sent me quite a few $$$'s - which I am truly grateful for. So thanks!No more free TOOL for you....... J/k
