New registrations on the forum have been locked down as we were receiving several hundred new spam accounts per week and I simply could not keep up with it on my own.  If you would like to register please contact me directly at jay at subiesmart dot com.

Forum wise I would really like to have a couple of people step up to be moderators so we can open registration back up.

I am hoping to purchase another Subaru sometime this year and will hopefully become more involved in the community once again.

The reality is that the large company that I had been trying to work with has let us fall through the cracks and apparently isn’t going to do anything.  Where does that leave the product that I’ve been trying to bring to you all?  Well today I spent a fair amount of time looking for new companies to do the same tasks and I think I might have found just the one.

I’m waiting on a response from them regarding some questions I have on their products and services and we’ll see where it goes from there.  With any luck I might have something to show you all very soon, keep your fingers crossed.

We thank you for your patience and I would especially like to thank our forum members for getting the community going and keeping it going.  Hopefully the product that I’m trying to bring to you all will increase the size and productivity of our community to get us all closer to our goals.

That being said, it’s finally starting to warm up here which means that I will be more active in getting things done, including testing some of the things that I’ve been working on over the past few months.

However, I still don’t want to reveal the big project I’ve been working on because if it does fall through I don’t want to disappoint anyone.

We’ve had a ton of activity on the forums lately and a bunch of new people signing up. The forum community is coming together nicely and only makes me more excited for the better weather so I can really start tearing into my car.

Thanks for your patience,

Jay

I’m hoping that my contact will finally be able to get some information from one of our vendors about producing a product for you guys that will hopefully expand this community of ECU junkies and make everything a little more accessible. We’ve been working on this product for a while now but sadly when you have to rely on a big vendor and you’re just a small fish in the pond…well you know, not much gets done until they have time for you.

I’d like to once again apologize for any spam that has made it on to the forums. Those people are damn persistent. However, we have had some good stuff going on there, Phil and Alexander aka b3lha and seport have been having a very interesting discussion hacking seport’s ECU and mapping out the parameters. You can check it out here.

Jay

Thanks for your patience,

Jay

I hope to have some more progress to report by the end of the week.

Thanks again for your patience,

Jay

This week we acquired two new items.  The first is the ECU out of a 5speed 2000 RS (thanks to Supers587 for this) to add to our test bench.   We are still in need of the harness connector for this ECU and our 1998 WRX ECU.  If you can help with the connectors or if you have another ECU you would be willing to donate or sell to us, please contact either Oldhat or myself.

The other item we acquired is a special OBD2 test cable that will allow us to really begin the process of everything that we want to do.

Stay tuned, big things are coming soon.

Jay

You’ll also notice that we seem to be somewhat lacking on “Subaru” specific content. The reason for this is that the new site is designed to be more generic so that we can branch out to other manufacturers in the future. The JECS ECU’s that Subaru used were also used in Nissan’s, so the products we are working on and the new layout will work for both Subaru and Nissan. This is hardly surprising as many of the electrical parts in our Subaru’s were sourced from Nissan. However, this does NOT mean that we are moving away from Subaru’s at all. We will be working in stages, with the 1998 – 2001 Subaru Impreza first on our list.

So again, thanks for your patience, I hope you can see that it is starting to pay off.

Jay

I’m in the process of setting up an ECU test bench and am gathering all sorts of ECU’s so that we can start to better understand the variations in Subaru ECU’s. We are going to be starting with 1998 – 2001 OBD2 ECU’s but we will expand that in the future, likely by years end.

We also have a related side project in the works that will be available for Christmas if all goes well. We just need to do a little more testing and then move into production.

So please stick with us, I realize that it might seem like this project is dead but I assure you it is far from it. We are still looking for a couple of people to help out with managing some of the resources that we have available to us, so if you’re interested please contact Oldhat or myself.

Thanks,
Jay

Dear SubieSMART team members and associates,

I told Jay (a.k.a. Kochiro) on instant messenger last week, it seemed like all it took for this project to take off was for one of us to say something. It could have been anyone. The response has been absolutely stunning. I mean, just look at this!

http://www.rs25.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87231

Over 200 responses, plus hundreds of emails and IMs flying everywhere. Remarkable! We’re about 10 days into this project and we already have over 25 people from, as near as I can tell, three continents (possibly four). We come from a huge variety of backgrounds: IT, mechanics, graphic design, web design, mechanical engineering, computer engineering and shadetree mechanics with nothing more than insatiable curiosity about their cars. We already have a piece of in-house software from Prodrive (yes, that Prodrive!) to work off of and learn from. We have leads galore on Jecs chips, plus the trails already blazed by the SVX ECU team led by Phil Skuse, as well as the Nissan Skyline and Silvia ECU community, which is fully on-board with us.

And this is only the beginning. If we all put our heads together and work as a team, I am 100% confident this project can be a roaring success, i.e. world famous in tuning circles. A project with the long term goal of this one (mastering as many Subie ECUs as possible) is unprecendented in the Subaru world, as far as I know. Each of us can reinforce others’ weaknesses and compliment each others’ strong suits. All it will take is determination and cooperation.

The sky is the limit with SubieSMART. We can do basically anything once we crack the ECU open and understand what makes it tick. You want to improve the already impressive torque on your RS? Or do you want to tune for more horsepower in the high end? Do you want to bump up the rev limiter? What about doing that on the fly? Do you want launch control? Do you want to tune for hotter cams and get it tuned just right instead of just close enough? Further down the line, on turbo applications, do you want anti-lag? Or do you just want to tune rich and make your car breathe fire out of the exhaust? If you can dream of it and the ECU controls it, there is no practical reason why we can’t do it. Let’s go into uncharted territory with our cars and squeeze the most performance and enjoyment out of them possible. After all, why not us? Why not now?

It seems like the consensus is we should start by cracking the OBDII (On-Board Diagnostic II) 2.5 RS ECU, for two reasons. First, there is a big demand among us for some kind of tuning option without a piggyback or mere reflash for this motor and secondly it is relatively simple to start with — since it’s naturally aspirated, we won’t have to worry about tuning with a turbo. But this once we master this ECU, I am confident other Subaru ECUs will be relatively easy to master as well. But if you have a case to make for starting with another ECU, let’s hear it on the SubieSMART forum.

But first things first. We need a great looking website. We need to get a list of everyone’s contact information, skills and experience and languages spoken (we especially need a fluent Japanese speaker who can understand technical terminology). We need to agree on a way to share and disseminate the information that we discover. And we need a project mascot to guide us and give us good luck!

We are the set of enthusiasts who choose to push the boundaries. We take the initiative instead of waiting for someone else to show how it’s done. We don’t take “no” or “you can’t do that” for answer.

So get excited. This is the first step towards something truly remarkable!

Sincerely,
Noah and Jay

P.S. Please email me and let me know if you want in. Hit me with your contact information, skills (especially web development at this early stage of the project) and any languages you speak. We’re forever making lists!

Noah