Category Archives: Crackdays & Racing

05/11/13

New SV650 ECU Decoder Firmware

So I’ve been spending my time working on the firmware running on the Teensy board which does all the ECU decoding. I’ve added support for displaying water temp and ECU error codes on the four digit LED display as you can see here:

As you can see from the video, I’m decoding the temp in Fahrenheit, but adding Celsius support would be really easy. All of the SV650 error codes; including the TPS adjustment indicator is supported. Right now the only real difference between my decoder and the stock dash is that you don’t need to short the two wires to read the error codes when there is an error- I automatically switch to displaying the codes when there is an error condition. It would be easy to support the default behavior of just turning on the EFI warning light and only showing the codes when in “dealer mode”.

All buttoned up in it’s enclosure:

Front

Rear

I hope to be able to take video of the box on my race bike next week!

04/8/13

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 5: They’re here!

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
Part 4 is here.

So I got the new boards back from OSH Park:
Front of Board

Back of Board

The boards look really good. I’m waiting on some parts to show up from Mouser, but was able to mostly populate the board with all the parts. The nylon standoff under the LED display really provides a lot of strength and stability, only issue being that it’s just a millimeter or so too long, but nothing that my grinder can’t easily fix.

Front of Populated Board

Back of Populated Board

Really looking forward to testing on Saturday in the shop and then hopefully on Monday for my first track day of the season at Thunderhill!

03/25/13

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 4: Third time is the charm?

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.

So my v2.0 boards were a complete dud.  Turns out some how I messed up the design and ended up wiring up the connector to the wiring harness backwards so nothing works.  Wasn’t a complete disaster- I was going to have to do another revision of the board either way, but it does slow things down. Continue reading →

03/21/13

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 3: New boards just arrived!

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

So I got the v2.0 boards back today from OSH Park and they looked really good:

Front side of the v2.0 PCB

Front side of the v2.0 PCB

Back side of the v2.0 PCB

Back side of the v2.0 PCB

The back side of the PCB has solder holes for both the stock dash connector as well as a 5 screw terminal block in case you’ve already modified your wiring harness. As you can see, no problems mounting the connector for the wiring harness or LED display:

Front of PCB with all components mounted.

Front of PCB with all components mounted.

Back of v2.0 PCB board showing all components mounted

Back of v2.0 PCB board showing all components mounted

Side view of the PCB with all components mounted.

Side view of the PCB with all components mounted.

As you can see from the side view, I’ve “floated” the LED display off of the PCB. This was to make the LED closer to flush with the case once mounted and thus easier to read. The down side is that now the display is only supported by the 5 wires which isn’t very strong. So I’m probably going to have to add some holes to the PCB for some standoffs to support the LED display.

Front of case showing 3 warning lights and 4 digit display for error codes & water temp

Front of case showing 3 warning lights and 4 digit display for error codes & water temp

As you can see, I’ve gotten pretty good with drilling the holes out for the indicator lights, but cutting that hole for the LED display was really painful. I used a sharp utility knife to cut the hole rather then a dremel to be more precise, but I just ended up getting a blister from working so hard. :(

Back of case showing connector for SV650 dash wiring harness

Back of case showing connector for SV650 dash wiring harness

Here you can see the hole I cut with a dremel for the wiring harness connector. It’s serviceable but not that professional looking IMHO. One thing I haven’t done is cut a hole in the side of the case for the USB connector. Since I’ll be able to view the ECU error codes on the display, there’s no longer a need to plug in a computer to read the codes, so no hole. If I have to reprogram the Teensy board for any reason, it’s just two screws to remove the board from the case.

So I plan on testing the board on Saturday. Feel pretty confident that it should work. I do plan on doing another revision of the board to include:

1. Standoffs to support the LED display
2. A 5mm LED for low fuel light

The good news is that I’ve aslo mapped the ECU values to temperature so the 4 digit LED display can now have a secondary purpose: showing the water temperature when there isn’t an EFI error code. So basically, this little board will have everything you’ll need to remove the 2nd gen SV dash and run a GPX Pro, Starlane, AIM or other aftermarket dash unit.

But assuming the board works on Saturday, there’s no reason I can’t sell one of the other v2 prototype boards (will have everything except the low fuel light). The one thing I haven’t figured out is how I can accurately and easily cut the holes for the LED display and wiring harness connector. If I can’t come up with a better solution, I’ll probably end up including the case, but it’s up to the end user to cut the holes. I’m not really happy with that idea, but I can’t spend an hour on each unit trying to cut square holes with an exacto knife in ABS plastic.

02/11/13

SV650 ECU EFI warning decoder/dash replacement

So I finally finished the design of my very first PCB and placed an order with OSH Park to get some samples. The basic premise is I needed a way to decode the data stream from my 2nd gen SV650 ECU to know when there is a problem with the fuel injection system with the race bike. Also, ideally, I needed a way to know what the specific error codes are.

Normally you do this with the stock dash, but I wanted to use my GPX Pro dash and didn’t want two dashes on my race bike. Unfortunately, the PCB on the dash is just one large unit (including the tachometer) and so there wasn’t an easy way to just use the parts I needed (a red idiot light and the LCD which displays the error code).
Continue reading →

12/17/12

XT Racing GPX Pro Review

Note, this is a review of the first generation GPX Pro, not the current GPX Pro4/8 units- however, much of this review should apply to both units.

Overall, I’m in love with the GPX Pro- it’s a great cost effective solution for capturing and analyzing data while you are driving or riding (all my tests were done on my SV650 race bike). The unit is easy to install, use and surprisingly easy to read, even in strong sunlight- probably due to it’s use of a grey-scale LCD display rather then a color display that is used on laptops and iPads. The software “GPX Studio”, is also easy to use and has tons of great information, but unfortunately Windows only (no plans on a OSX or Linux port, but it works great under VMWare/Parallels). I really learn a lot by looking at my brake markers and corner speed.
Continue reading →

10/23/12

2012 Season in Review

It’s been a few weeks now so I’ve had time to digest the 2012 AFM season.

Things definitely started on the wrong foot with the first race of the season being cancelled due to weather conditions. That left six races for the season- four at Thunderhill and two at Sonoma Raceway (aka Infineon, aka Sears Point). I had worked a fair bit on my fitness and mental preparation in the offseason and it definitely showed in my riding- I was much more consistent and my practice times were finally only a second or two off of my race times which really helped me with bike setup and consistency and confidence in my races.
Continue reading →

07/3/12

2012 AFM Round 4

I don’t really have the time to write up a full race report, but I really wanted to send out a few thank you’s to everyone who helped me out at the last AFM round:

Dave, Jim and Nickie at Catalyst Reaction for completely redoing my suspension and working with me over the three days to dial in my suspension and geometry. After struggling with setup at the last Thill round where I felt we were just chasing our tail in circles trying to find something that worked, I was both worried and excited coming to Sears for the first time in nearly a year with a completely different setup. Turns out I was right to be excited- we made an amazing amount of progress in a relatively short period of time out on track and I went faster in practice then I ever had before and then faster again still in my races.

K.C. Gager of BRG Racing for helping me wrench on my bike, talk strategy and mentoring me at and away from the track. I can’t really begin to say how lucky and honored I am to have a sponsor like you who invests so much time and effort into my race program.

Matt Lai for bringing me a rear axle Saturday morning after mine decided it had lived a good life and no longer wanted to be apart of my race program. Thanks Matt!

Frank Shermon for letting me strip the radiator off his bike Saturday evening after my bike started overheating.

Ernie Montague for bringing me yet another radiator Sunday when Frank’s turned out to have problems of it’s own.

Chris Maguire and crew at Pirelli…. actually I didn’t buy tires from Chris this round or anything like that that. I ended up just using the same tires I raced on last round for Friday’s trackday, Saturday practice and my three races on Sunday. Put my personal best lap time at Sears on the last lap of the last race on tires with 4 days on them. :teeth