As some of you may have read in a few of my other threads, I have had good success with the Racelogic Traction Control system. (see http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showt...ol-for-the-818) It is a great addition to a car like the 818 that uses a factory ECU that doesn’t have built in traction control. Many of the aftermarket standalone ECUs have a built in traction control system, and of course most newer modern cars in the last 3-5 years have some form of traction control built in.

Unfortunately for us in the 818 community, Racelogic decided to discontinue their traction control system. They indicated it was decreasing in sales, and I suspect they had other business opportunities they wanted to pursue.

I think this is a gap that could be filled with an open source solution, thus my proposal. I have been working on a replacement system for a few weeks, and I’m looking for some help. I am looking for a few fellow engineers who would be interested in contributing. There are a lot of potential hardware choices for a project like this, and I chose to start with something I was familiar with. I am using an TI MSP432 as the core processor, as that is an easy to use, fast, and easy to develop processor. It is an ARM Cortex m4 based core with floating point, plus the typical TI MSP family hardware.

Fortunately TI makes a development test boards called the Launchpads (there are actually several different launchpads for different MCUs). They sell this particular board for $13, and that board includes a complete JTAG interface, flasher, and debugger. For my prototype development I put together a simple interface board that allows the Launchpad to piggyback while provide the interfaces, power management, etc.

I’m an Electrical Engineer turned software developer turned CTO, although my specialty was originally microprocessor design. I am fairly comfortable with the firmware development and the traction control algorithms. I could use some assistance with the analog interface designs, as well as some host configuration software. I could roll my own configuration software in .NET, but I would love to involve someone for whom this is their expertise. I built a previous prototype device using this same processor to serve as a data capture device (similar to the very well built Race Capture Pro).

I have no direct idea of what the final cost will be, but we are talking about hardware components that add up to less than $100, perhaps $150 with the PCBs and case. Obviously we will have a better idea as we get farther down the development path, but we are certainly not talking about a $1000 solution.

This will be completely open source, both hardware and software. While the prototype is a mix of thru hole and surface mount, the final version will be entirely surface mount of course.

It would require that the car have ABS wheel speed sensors installed, and at least for this prototype be either a 4 or 6 cylinder. It would not require ABS be installed, but would also not prohibit it. It is not unique to the 818, as it would work on any RWD or FWD car.

So, questions:

(1) Is this interesting to any one?
(2) Does it sound like something you could use?
(3) Any particular features? (obviously ‘working’ would be one!)
(4) Anyone able to help out?

Here is a picture of one of the prototype boards









Jeff