EFILive from HPTuners

[Chisleu]

Hello! First post!

I've been building and tuning f/i cars for 15 years. I'm a computer scientist by trade, working in machine learning. My tuning background is mostly piggyback (SAFC) and standalone (Megasquirt).

After a couple of weeks trying to get HPTuners to let me increase boost, I turned to efilive which seems to have several important tables defined which HPTuners doesn't support. HPTuners support was rude and disregarded this ("we don't provide support for tuning"). :(

I'm currently tuning a Vanderhall Carmel GT with upgraded turbo, billet piston driven waste gate actuator, and billet piston driven recirculation valve.

The Vanderhall comes with a GM Small Gas Engine 1.5 turbo. I'm unsure of the exact variant. I would love it if anyone knows how to identify that. They claim 193 hp/208 ft lb but the stock tune dyno indicates that is BS. It also has pretty extreme cold start fueling issues from the factory.

It has an E80A/T76.

TL;DR

Any tips on the software itself? I've already discovered the hotkeys and the favorites list, which is nice. I think the favorites list is limited though. :(

[Blacky]

Hi Chislue,

Welcome to the forum.

You may also see the "we don't provide tuning support" from EFILive support. For a whole lot of reasons (mostly legal reasons) we cannot provide tuning support, it's not because we don't want to.
However, if there's any part of the software or hardware that you need help with or just questions about the software, ask them in this thread. Now that I've replied I'll get prompted when you post a question.
Hopefully I can answer them

Regards
Paul

[Chisleu]

What's up man! I've seen a ton of your posts.

I fully appreciate the tightrope you guys walk. The issue was that it was a blanket response ignoring my request to investigate the missing and misdefined tables on the e80.

I've been tuning for ~15 years. I'm no expert, just a hobbyest, but I built a megasquirt from scratch and tuned it from scratch on an unsupported/unpopular platform (b15 sentra). I went through every single configuration option and.nothing made sense because the spark vs airflow vs knock table was misdefined and I couldn't see that my boost levels were bouncing off of the 0 degree cylinder air mass limit. :(

I really appreciate your attention to these forums. I think we are good to go now that we discovered the issue. We hit 20.5PSI and held 18 PSI to redline last night. It's going to take a few hours but I only had an hour to play with the toy yesterday and most of my time was spent trying to get the unit to work with parallels/mac.

TLDR: Here is a question for you
EFILive's hardware doesn't recognize under Mac so doesn't get passed through to the VM. I get why. That's understandable.

I have a GPD Pocket 3 netbook with windows that I'm going to use instead with an 13" e-ink display. In an open top and the Carolina sun, contrast is at a premium.

Here's the question: The software states you need a color monitor. Is there a way to eliminate the color from the equation? For instance, is there a way to disable the color shading in the tables so the text is supremely readable in direct sunlight?

[Blacky]

It is unfortunate that the USB device is not recognized on MacOS - we ahve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. The best I can come up with is that the device uses a Microsoft specific "ID String" so that the drivers load automatically on Windows (as a WinUSB device) and that somehow MacOS is "detecting" that and purposefully ignoring the device. Maybe it's an oversight by Apple, maybe it's deliberate - I don't know.

All the settings are available in the Edit->Properties window.

The 2D chart's line colors are automatic, you can't change them.

You can change the 3D surface maps' colors here:


Regards
Paul


Regards
Paul

[Chisleu]

Yes, I thought I understood that from one of the linux threads mentioning mac.

It doesn't surprise me, but thank you so much for the help!!

[Chisleu]

It seems like it is possible to record data logs and flash tune files from the device w/ a USB thumb drive.

Is that true? Where are the instructions for that?

[ScarabEpic22]

Not with a thumb drive, with the FlashScan V2/V3 hardware and an SD/microSD card inserted. Use V8, look at BBX and you can define it all in there.

[gmh308]

It is unfortunate that the USB device is not recognized on MacOS - we ahve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. The best I can come up with is that the device uses a Microsoft specific "ID String" so that the drivers load automatically on Windows (as a WinUSB device) and that somehow MacOS is "detecting" that and purposefully ignoring the device. Maybe it's an oversight by Apple, maybe it's deliberate - I don't know.

All the settings are available in the Edit->Properties window.

The 2D chart's line colors are automatic, you can't change them.

You can change the 3D surface maps' colors here:


Regards
Paul


Regards
Paul

FYI ... EFLive in VM on MacOS AOK here for years with a V2 and 7.5 as well as 8.

[Chisleu]

FYI ... EFLive in VM on MacOS AOK here for years with a V2 and 7.5 as well as 8.

Yes sir. I have a V3 and they changed the hardware to send windows specific usb IDs so they get automatic driver installation. This doesn't work with newer mac books / mac osx anymore. Mac doesn't even recognize the usb device so parallels doesn't pass it through. It might work with VMware or some other virtualization, but not my setup.

It's fine though. I have a dedicated windows laptop that I use for tuning in the car.

I've found a table that is incorrectly defined in efi live as well as hp tuners. One table doesn't have all the values (additional rows of tunable map) where HPTuners does. HP tuners has the wrong table for spark vs rpm vs airmass and thus you can't tune >18psi without having both efilive and hptuners which is a pretty bad place to be in. (me IRL)

I'm going to create a support desk ticket to see if they will correct it.

On the plus side for EFILive, you can edit the colors of the editor which works great for my black and white e-ink monitor. For an open top, it's kind of a necessity. I'm going to switch to using EFILive instead of HPTuners for editing.

I still prefer the datalogger in hptuners for now, but I grant you that it's because I'm familiar with it already and haven't learned efilive. I'm a huge fan of the user defined math features of hptuners and would need to replicate that in order to use efilive. It's just too nice to create histograms and chart data without having to extrapolate myself (think: boost pressure = manifold pressure - baro for instance)

The other thing I don't like is there is the potential for a ground loop (I'm guessing) when using efilive and powering the laptop from the car battery. It would suck to have to bring a battery brick for the laptop while tuning, but that's not insurmountable. I don't think there is the same issue with hptuners. At least, I haven't blown up my hptuners or laptop yet.