Monday, April 30, 2007
The Richmond Megasquirt convention
Usually I don't blog about work, but I'll make an exception here.
This weekend, Jerry, Justin, and I drove up to the Megasquirt convention. Some of the well known people in the Megasquirt world couldn't make it, but many of the distributors, coders, and people who just have provided a lot of support were there. Bruce Bowling and Al Grippo attended, of course, and so did Scott Clark, Scott Hall, Peter Florance, Rodney Sparks, James Murray (all the way from England), Ken Culver, and many other of the well known members of the community. It was great to be able to meet people I'd only seen on the Internet and message boards, and hang out over a few beers. Many of them didn't look the way I imagined at all.
I didn't bring my camera, but the guys from 1320Video.com captured a lot of it in this gallery on their site. You'll see some interesting cars and trucks there, including an Isuzu Amigo with an Eaton blower. If Satan ever took up dentistry, his drill would sound like that SUV's motor.
We had some interesting informal demos and talks on Friday night, including Bruce bringing in the scarriest wheel decoder tester I've seen. He made it out of a circular saw.
Saturday morning, we went over to AED's Mustang chassis dyno. Wes's four banger Mustang won that shootout thanks to a Garret GT32 turbo and a tank full of alchohol. He posted 390 hp. And yes, it's a street car. We picked that time to unveil our Megasquirt PNP plug-in ECU for the Miata. We had driven the Miata all the way from Atlanta on it, making a few last minute changes to the fuel map on the freeway. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable car for the trip.
We then had a few talks on Megasquirt additions that have just come out. James and Ken presented the MS2/Extra code, and Scott was there to present the Spectre eMS-Pro. Other things they covered included MegaTunix, the CANBus (which right now has been unexplored as there are no peripherals that use that; Bruce was hoping to change this), and the next development of Megasquirt, which has been known as the router board or Megasquirt-III. This one is a bit more than just a sequential add-on to Megasquirt; it's pretty much a redesign from scratch.
I'm definitely glad I went.
This weekend, Jerry, Justin, and I drove up to the Megasquirt convention. Some of the well known people in the Megasquirt world couldn't make it, but many of the distributors, coders, and people who just have provided a lot of support were there. Bruce Bowling and Al Grippo attended, of course, and so did Scott Clark, Scott Hall, Peter Florance, Rodney Sparks, James Murray (all the way from England), Ken Culver, and many other of the well known members of the community. It was great to be able to meet people I'd only seen on the Internet and message boards, and hang out over a few beers. Many of them didn't look the way I imagined at all.
I didn't bring my camera, but the guys from 1320Video.com captured a lot of it in this gallery on their site. You'll see some interesting cars and trucks there, including an Isuzu Amigo with an Eaton blower. If Satan ever took up dentistry, his drill would sound like that SUV's motor.
We had some interesting informal demos and talks on Friday night, including Bruce bringing in the scarriest wheel decoder tester I've seen. He made it out of a circular saw.
Saturday morning, we went over to AED's Mustang chassis dyno. Wes's four banger Mustang won that shootout thanks to a Garret GT32 turbo and a tank full of alchohol. He posted 390 hp. And yes, it's a street car. We picked that time to unveil our Megasquirt PNP plug-in ECU for the Miata. We had driven the Miata all the way from Atlanta on it, making a few last minute changes to the fuel map on the freeway. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable car for the trip.
We then had a few talks on Megasquirt additions that have just come out. James and Ken presented the MS2/Extra code, and Scott was there to present the Spectre eMS-Pro. Other things they covered included MegaTunix, the CANBus (which right now has been unexplored as there are no peripherals that use that; Bruce was hoping to change this), and the next development of Megasquirt, which has been known as the router board or Megasquirt-III. This one is a bit more than just a sequential add-on to Megasquirt; it's pretty much a redesign from scratch.
I'm definitely glad I went.
Labels: Megasquirt
