Naw, not huffing. Just explaining.

When I get serial coms going on the 1840 we'll need a program to monitor the engine communication. The way I see it though is that the best way to work with curves and graphs is with a common and power program that's geared to it, like excel.

Having a spreadsheet makes it easy to change the calculations and tweak things. If I dumped all the excel calculations into the source code for a program it would be a total mess. I'd get lost and soon wouldn't be able to make heads nor tails of it. It would also be hard for others to jump in and figure out what's going on. Excel splits up all these calculations and organizes them in a way that people are used to and can understand.

I'm glad Gompy is working on the schematics and hardware. I'm sure John will also help when he gets back. I got an assembled HV board and parts to make another one or two from John, but when I got them and tried it out I was just too impressed and excited to start on the programming, so I haven't even put the other boards together yet.

This is the great thing about open software + open hardware projects, the hardware got me going on the programming and now I'm trying to encourage the hardware guys. I also think that the demand for units will pick up and that will encourage all of us.

I'm hoping that a commercial CDI manufacturer will also see the value in supporting open source and start making their CDI units with the right processor(s) and wiring up the programming header to make it available for easy programming. That would take a lot of the pressure off of the hardware end. People who are in a hurry or don't have electronics skills can buy a similar commercial unit and people that like to tinker can have fun building theirs.


-Jake