MegaStart

With the arrival of my fuel injection controller kit (Megasquirt), I have turned my attention to my soldering iron. The first task is to build the 'stimulator' which is a unit that replicates the engine signals allowing you to test the Megasquirt ECU during and after its construction. There are two readily available options - the Megastim from the people who designed the ECU, and the one I opted for - the JimStim v1.5. The advantages for me are that the JimStim includes a chip that simulates the trigger wheel output I will be using (36-1 teeth) as well as a breakout block to allow the real sensors and signals to be wired into the system. This means I can test the ECU purely on the Simulator and then introduce the real engine hardware one piece at a time. Fault finding should be a little easier (I hope!). Before all that can happen, though I needed to turn this:

With a flurry of flux smoke and singed fingers, into this:

Now if only there were some kind of device I could use to test the stimulator, all would be well!