[RonH]

Hello,
Great project you have going. Lot of information and research done. Sorry I am a non Opel owner. I have 1970's international Scout's all with distributors with bad vacuum advance and missing centrifugal advance springs. Tried modifying a vacuum advance unit but ended up not aligning with cap contact pins. Being of this vintage parts are no longer available or very expensive. Researched Fitech, Holley Snipper, Speedrino which are more than I need or want to spend. Arduino Nano-based electronic ignition projects use existing ECM which were not available in the 70's. Your design is simple compact and is something that should work or be modified for my low speed application (3300rpm). Would appreciate any information or advice you have to offer.
Thank you

 

[Justion337]

If anyone is looking for an off the shelf super cheap Arduino based full standalone ECU or just programmable ignition, look at Speeduino. You can get a 4ch ignition and injection ECU for under $200 and if you just want a distributor based electronic ignition or wasted spark, you can get an "NO2C" 2 channel kit for around $100 including the Arduino. They can operate both fuel and ignition or either by itself. Speeduino is an open source project and the tuning is done with the popular tuner studio software, like megasquirt.

 

[RonH]

My Google search didn't bring up the NO2C. Just what I was looking for.
Thank You!

 

[Justion337]

My Google search didn't bring up the NO2C. Just what I was looking for.
Thank You!

The NO2C is a kit that you have to solder together and figure out a case. I've bought stuff from wtmtronics before, they're a good seller. If you want an assembled unit, diy-efi in the UK sells their C2C (compact 2 channel) for $200 that's the size of a deck of cards.

 

[RonH]

Ordered a kit from Wtmtronics. Looks fairly simple and straight forward. Been awhile since I put a Heathkit together. Code looks intimidating for such a small unit. Hoping Tunerstudio simplifies this project for ignition only use. Off to Speeduino now that I have settled onto the NO2C.
Thanks for all you and your community's help and information.

 

[GoinManta]

Well.. its kind of nice to be travelling down a path already taken. I will admit I have not read the whole tread yet.. but know its a great place to start. As most know I have the EFI project, and with it a distributor I have made ( that MAY Solve some of the issues raised here ) that uses a 12-1 shutter. Other than this and the fact I may simply the ignition cycle by running wasted spark. This is about exactly what I was thinking of doing.

That said I have zero experience programming an arduino or doing this kind of thing..

Well I did learn Basic in High School in 1985, and took some basic electrical engineering courses in 1998 in college, sold and rewired more than a number of cars and have written a lot of HTML over the years so .. how tricky could it be ?

My parameters will be a little different than yours but will be basically trying to do the same thing. ( I do like the potentiometer idea.. for "dialing it in")

Anyway my specs are this :

• Arduino Uno ( w/ Bluetooth built in )
• MAP Sensor built onto the board.
• Temp Sensor - 0280130126
• Wasted Spark Coil
• IGM - 0277100299
• Bosch Hall Sensor - 0237520050 Distributor

I also would like a GUI ( or maybe an excel spreadsheet that kicks out a CSV file ? )

Maybe even somehow reverse engineer the 123ignition software ?

Anyway.. get the Nano today.. and the Map sensor and will play with that. If anyone here wants one of the distributor kits once they are ready and has experience in this sort of thing.. PM Me. I could work out something I am sure. IN the meantime need to read up on all the posts and see where I am.

 

[GoinManta]

Ordered a kit from Wtmtronics. Looks fairly simple and straight forward. Been awhile since I put a Heathkit together. Code looks intimidating for such a small unit. Hoping Tunerstudio simplifies this project for ignition only use. Off to Speeduino now that I have settled onto the NO2C.
Thanks for all you and your community's help and information.

I looked at doing turner studio.. and while others have made it run standalone for ignition. Speeduino firmware wont work on the Nano. So thats led me to finding this post.

 

[GoinManta]

Check out Speeduino NO2C. Speeduino uses the tunerstudio app for tuning.

3rd_party

Speeduino needs a larger unit than the Nano, and Tunerstudio while it will run ignition only is a bit heavy for what is needed here.

Why I am looking at Nano, is simply to make this controller so small I can hide it under the coil. I plan on designing a mount that houses the coil and the Nano in a compact way and that can mount to the Opel GT mounting spot.

 

[GoinManta]

If anyone is looking for an off the shelf super cheap Arduino based full standalone ECU or just programmable ignition, look at Speeduino. You can get a 4ch ignition and injection ECU for under $200 and if you just want a distributor based electronic ignition or wasted spark, you can get an "NO2C" 2 channel kit for around $100 including the Arduino. They can operate both fuel and ignition or either by itself. Speeduino is an open source project and the tuning is done with the popular tuner studio software, like megasquirt.

Just wanted to point out that this conversation is different than this option. Also as noted.. for this project, we are not looking at a full EFI.. just ignition.

Tuner Studio from all I have read glitchy when being run as ignition only, also to get it to run ignition only requires a lot of other sensors (TPS, etc..).

Will it work stripped down ? Sure.. probably.. and I plan on using it for the GoinEFI but that is overkill for this particular use case or should be.

Also a Nano Uno (with bluetooth) costs under $20 not $200, the MAP sensor an extra $5. Issue is that the Speeduino firmware is not compatible with the smaller arduino boards.

FWIW 123ignition they have an entire ECU and such for this Distibutors with Bluetooth built in, stashed inside the distributor housing and their own software ( see screenshot above). I am attempting to replicate that to a point. Maybe just a simple CSV table in excel that will be based on most MSQ tables I have for ignition. But still this is all a new rabbit hole I am going down.

 

[GoinManta]

This all said like to fine a way to make it run both single or wasted spark config..

 

[First opel 1981]

I may have run the numbers wrong, before, but with common electronic components and an Arduino board, there just wasn't enough time between firing points to set up on Arduino. You could idle a car but 7,000 RPM was an unattainable number.
You will have more options with wasted spark since the system will only have to calculate every half rotation. At 7,000 RPM the Arduino would have to run all the way through the code 14,000 times per minute or once every .0043 seconds. If it's single spark then it's every .00215 seconds.

 

[GoinManta]

(24) From Arduino UNO to Wemos D1 R32 ESP32 - YouTube

I am not using a Nano. or a basic Uno.

This is a 32 bit ( vs 8bit ) and had 4MB of Ram.. the damn thing is bascially a 486 the original Arduino Uno was a 286.. basically. So should be easily able to handle the ignition of a car.

Also not using a simple 4 position pertronix, but a Hall sensor with a pull up resistor and a 12-1 shutter. So a lot more resolution on the signal there.

In short.. I should probably jsut start a whole new thread.. Technology changes so fast.

 

[72Rallye]

I may have run the numbers wrong, before, but with common electronic components and an Arduino board, there just wasn't enough time between firing points to set up on Arduino. You could idle a car but 7,000 RPM was an unattainable number.
You will have more options with wasted spark since the system will only have to calculate every half rotation. At 7,000 RPM the Arduino would have to run all the way through the code 14,000 times per minute or once every .0043 seconds. If it's single spark then it's every .00215 seconds.

This is a very odd statement, given that I have already proven that the Arduino ignition runs at 6500rpm in my car. The 6500 limit is due to the engine, not the ignition. I haven't even tried to speed up the code, like using long int calculations instead of float, because there was no need for it. There are also cheap nanos available now that run at twice the speed (32MHz).
You brought up the same point before and I'll just refer to my response back then in post #15 and leave it at that.
Thomas

 

[First opel 1981]

This is a very odd statement, given that I have already proven that the Arduino ignition runs at 6500rpm in my car. The 6500 limit is due to the engine, not the ignition. I haven't even tried to speed up the code, like using long int calculations instead of float, because there was no need for it. There are also cheap nanos available now that run at twice the speed (32MHz).
You brought up the same point before and I'll just refer to my response back then in post #15 and leave it at that.
Thomas

All good.
I should have read back. I knew I'd brought up this concern before.

 

[V6Opel]

Charles, great stuff as well as all the original leg work done by 72Rallye! Yes technology is changing fast! Like I said in the other post I think you could easily go full 4 channel ignition control with either of these board options. Lots of examples in the Speeduino forums but suffice it to say the new 32-bit board is cheaper because of more readily available supply chin I'd guess and ample number of inputs and outputs:

"The WeMos D1 R32 is a micro-controller board based on the WROOM ESP32 and has the Arduino Uno form factor. It has 14 digital I/O pins, 6 analog inputs, a 160MHz dual-core 32bit processor. This board can be programmed with the popular Arduino IDE making it quite versatile for a wide range of projects."

Let's make this work!