O2 sensor and EFI332 Status

[Rod Barman]

> It's incredible how much the aftermarket suppliers can charge for simple 
> electronics.  I made one of these devices (also using the LM3914) for a 
> friend after I saw similar products in catalogs.  It took me about a day.

You can get these O2 led meters through JC Whitney for almost nothing. 

> So why hasn't someone come out with an inexpensive (around $300) generic EFI 
> computer?  The price for existing aftermarket EFI computers is around $1000.

I think $1000 is reasonable when you look at the size of the market, the
amount of support/hand-holding necessary and what it would cost to develop
such a product commercially.

>  What's the parts cost for the EFI332?  Maybe someone could take it to 
> market when all of the bugs are worked out.  This would be a great step for 
> those of us looking for more performance.

Although I haven't added up all the bits, the parts count is in the
hundreds of dollars range.  EFI332 is a fairly powerful EFI computer
compared to what's out there in most cars and aftermarket systems.  We
chose a more expensive microcontroller (the MC68332) because we believed that
the benefits of programming in a high-level language (C) and the 
availability of free development tools (GNU) outweighed the 
disadvantage of increased cost.  There are many excellent 8051 variants
that would work well at the heart of a VERY low-cost EFI systems if
you wanted to program in assembler.

< ... hopping on to my miniature soapbox ... >

As for selling completed versions, we are aren't even close yet to having
something somebody could sell, yet.  The whole goal (at least in my mind) of
the EFI332 project is to make the design of a fairly sophisticated engine
control system with all the source code, schematics and development
environment available for free (note that this isn't necessarily the same
as public domain).   We did this because we felt that the current 
aftermarket systems weren't offering good value and were very closed
systems (ie. you'll never get their source code or run your own
code on their box).  That means it is both expensive and frustrating
to set up an efi system to try something new from some SAE paper or the
other.  Personally, I don't outright object to the idea
of somebody selling assembled EFI332 systems (not everyone wants
to solder) as long as it was done in a fashion that benefitted the
goals of the EFI332 project.

Comments EFI332ers?

--rod.

--
Rod Barman, IRIS ISDE-6 @ Laboratory for Computational Intelligence
University of British Columbia
rodb at cs.ubc.ca