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I noticing more push towards crap(cobb) V opensource


phish27134

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Yet again...

Fast

Cheap

Good

 

You can not have all three you have to pick, at best you get two, sometimes you barely get one... Does Cobb have the market cornered, yes as far as subarus go. Are there other companies that do engine management, yup, AEM, Holley, Bully dog, etc. I am sure they have all looked at the market, and have conducted some research on the cost of competing with Cobb, and for their own reasons have not jumped in the ring.

 

We the community would greatly benefit from having competition, but that has not really happened yet.

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Actually Cobb has been become a defacto solution because ppl shop on price only. Getting a good open source tune is expensive in money and time. A Cobb AP tune can be had for minimal cost especially if you buy a used AP. Good enough is a 90% solution.

 

I had a lead on a new Motec for half-price. The programming cost would have been double the purchase price. If I planned on racing the wagon, I would have bought it. A used dyno was in the 50-60k range which is a requirement for the Cobb system as well as having an actual storefront, neither of which I was interested in spending tuning dollars on.

 

My 9yo open source tune probably needs a touch up but finding a tuner willing to touch has been difficult. I would like to run something other than 96+ octane though. Keeping the large area under the curve is also a limiting factor. Sgt.Gator's experience with Surgeline in Portland (cobb tuner) have created caution about going to the AP (3 engines failed within hours or on the dyno).

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Man this ones getting more and more interesting seeing who’s coming back around...I know I don’t have a lot of posts but I’ve read a hell of a lot on here. Sometimes it kinda sucks coming into the game so late cause a lot has been missed out on but such is life. Interesting to read about all the Cobb stuff, I’ve been wanting to get one just to get off the stock tune. It’s a lot easier for me (two kids + work + life+ other projects= Little to no time for legacy gt love) to just hook it up, flash a tune and go. Plus I’m a one and done type, I don’t need to fool around with things I know very little about and blow up my car, esp since it’s my daily. Cobb made it work and made it work well...looking forward to see what happens with this.
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  • 2 months later...

Seems like possibly Cobb/ Industry moving away from opensource, understandably, as Colby(I believe and others?) who wrote rom raider works for cobb so I understand the project halted.

 

"Open source" tuning has four major components:

 

* Reflashing: the Tactrix OpenPort and EcuFlash

* Editing: EcuFlash and RomRaider

* Data logging: RomRaider

* ECU Definitions: included with the editing apps, and downloadable separately

 

Colby is the Tactrix guy. Tactrix is still selling OpenPort hardware and giving away EcuFlash software to use with the OpenPort. Nothing has changed there.

 

The guy who did the majority of the reverse-engineering of Subaru firmware went by "Merchgod" on the forums, and that's the guy Cobb hired. Can't blame either of them - he got a job doing something he enjoyed, and Cobb got a talented employee.

 

Merchgod was cranking out definitions for new Subarus, almost as quickly as they hit the market - and that takes a lot of work. After he left the open source community, other people have created definitions here and there, but not at the same pace. As a result, there are a lot of newer Subarus that are not supported by RomRaider / EcuFlash.

 

It's a shame, but creating definitions takes a lot of work, so it's not too surprising that volunteers haven't done that work. What's surprising is that Merchgod managed to do so much quality work, mostly by himself, back in the day. :)

 

RomRaider has had some updates since Merchgod left the project. Not many, because it's a pretty mature project.... but Merchgod wasn't working on RomRaider itself, so his departure didn't affect RomRaider itself. But the lack of support for newer cars did reduce enthusiasm for "open source" tuning in general.

 

Those of us who were lucky enough to buy Subarus made during Merchgod's heyday have a nice set of tools for tuning our cars. People who bought Subarus afterward... some have definitions for their cars, some don't.

 

IMO, what the open source world should be doing is setting up crowdfunding / bounty campaigns where a few owners of a particular model-and-year each put up a hundred bucks for whoever steps up to create a definition for that firmware. That might be motivating enough to get new definitions created.

Edited by NSFW
where did all of those line breaks come from?
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I've learned all this information maybe 3 months ago, got a hold of IDA. the plugins, other decompilers, I a Computer Science Major, bit machine code , is decades old? before basic and focused on Object Oriented Programming, which I can follow the algorithms but the code? There ahs been much talk about 32-bit density, but its N/a for my 08 Spec B. I've rad all the guides on tuning, mafscaling, the spreadsheets and understanding the concepts, interpreting the logged date is tedious and IMHO a steep learning curve. I just got a WBO2, but I was cheap on the down pipe, I think it has rust its nota month old, but I'm un employedd, parts for the 2007 spec have to start going.

 

And I just removed a complete OEM 2008 Spec B Full Suspension with 131k on the struts and OEM springs. No major damage, some surface rust

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Its' funny when I bought the car it came with a cobb V-2 I believe, the older model. The unit was so fragile. The screen maybe 4-6inx6-8in and when a button was pressed the lcd would be impacted by the normal pressing. Worst was the availability of "maps", I think there were 3 that were "useable for me " ples a stock? and failsafe?, irregardless it was sadly limited. I instantly foun dout about the tuning program but $150 to tell me what I know GTFO. THe car had a sad SPT catback, and the cobb, no other mods. I ran a regular little bit of aggressive tune on a 70F day, overboost, wtf is this, ny 2007 with a VF-52 and stock exhaust and open source tune never overboosted. I talked to cobb read all about overboost, change to a "Low(er) wastegate map, OVERBOOST.... I swapped the VF52 off my 2007, my Invidia catback and cobb intake, copied the ecu. Its not the same monster but I'm trying to get it close.
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I've learned all this information maybe 3 months ago, got a hold of IDA. the plugins, other decompilers, I a Computer Science Major, bit machine code , is decades old? before basic and focused on Object Oriented Programming, which I can follow the algorithms but the code? There ahs been much talk about 32-bit density, but its N/a for my 08 Spec B. I've rad all the guides on tuning, mafscaling, the spreadsheets and understanding the concepts, interpreting the logged date is tedious and IMHO a steep learning curve. I just got a WBO2, but I was cheap on the down pipe, I think it has rust its nota month old, but I'm un employedd, parts for the 2007 spec have to start going.

 

As you're starting to see, that there are two different skillsets needed here... you can be good at programming, but that doesn't mean you are good at tuning, which I would say is more of a technical Art.

 

 

cobb has the subaru market in a choke hold.....

 

Be the change you want to see, we are in a free market, create a competitor OR contribute your skills to the open source market.

 

I've been trying to get into Java personally, so that I could contribute to open source more, but it's tedious and my mind doesn't like Java at all.

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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Be the change you want to see, we are in a free market, create a competitor OR contribute your skills to the open source market.

 

I've been trying to get into Java personally, so that I could contribute to open source more, but it's tedious and my mind doesn't like Java at all.

 

 

If anyone's interested... I started a Python/wxPython-based "replacement" for RomRaider last winter. Once the spring came around and the pandemic has started to subside, the project's fallen to the backburner. I got a first-pass at live tuning working with a newer version of MerpMod, but still haven't had time to give it a full real test. I left-off after starting the monumental task of creating a unified ECU/Logger definition format (the RomRaider "everything-in-one-XML-file" and lack of multiple inheritance makes definition management an absolute nightmare). I have an idea in my head of how I want it to work, but no time to work through it all and debug... most of the work is on the UI side anyhow.

 

The repository is here: https://github.com/Shamtam/PyRRhic Called PyRRhic because everything related to open source tuning, even if it works, is a thankless task and honestly.. if you don't enjoy the tinkering, it is almost objectively not worth it. I have immense amounts of respect for the OG opensource guys. Major goals with this project is to have a modern, cross-platform UI that has a reasonable and modular codebase. Also... not Java. Ugh.

 

For what it's worth, here's my updates to MerpMod. My short-term goals of setting up continuous integration to build patches on commits to the repository are mostly done. Eventual goals are to completely remove Merp's original dependence on SharpTune to generate definitions and patch ROMs.. could be easily set up to generate standalone definitions and auto-built patches with no manual effort (this is why I want to make a sensible unified definition format): https://github.com/Shamtam/MerpMod

 

And for anyone tinkering on their own... I also wrote the only documented and complete Python-based J2534 library. Haven't written in Linux support yet, but that should not be very difficult: https://github.com/Shamtam/PyJ2534

Edited by solidxsnake
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2007 with a VF-52 and stock exhaust and open source tune never overboosted. I talked to cobb read all about overboost, change to a "Low(er) wastegate map, OVERBOOST.... I swapped the VF52 off my 2007, my Invidia catback and cobb intake, copied the ecu. Its not the same monster but I'm trying to get it close.

 

As you found out, your 2008 has different intake/exhaust mods than your 2007 and the tune doesn't work as well. Good tuning is not copy and pasting, it might get you started but you need to tune the engine for what it wants. This is why Cobb only ever released the most basic OTS tunes. The amount of work to develop good tunes when considering all the different mods on the aftermarket becomes overwhelming.

 

Tuning is a big learning curve, I would put my effort to learn how to tune your car with the current open source definition.

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