Fuel Economy and Smoothness without Compromise

[dcarver]

Way good stuff UselessPickles. It IS nice to know code, huh?

 

[UselessPickles]

Looks to me as if you have made a significant find and may find others, who knows.

I sure hope I don't find any more bugs in my code. I'm ready for this thing to just be working properly.

After fixing these problems, I dropped my RPM threshold a bit and went for a nice 90 mile ride. It behaved as desired almost all the time. It still jumped out of cruising mode a few time when I would not want it to, but I could actually track it down to legitimately exceeding the RPM threshold each time. Time to increase the number of RPM pulses that are used to calculate the RPM (decrease noise), increase the threshold just a touch, and try it again. I'm getting close to where I want to be with this.

It IS nice to know code, huh?

It's a good skill to have, especially when it comes to earning a paycheck. I've been programming for about 14 years now, but I finally just recently feel like I can do something useful with it in my personal life now that I've been introduced to microcontrollers. I'm already trying to figure out my next project. I'm thinking of using a gyroscope and/or accelerometer to implement self-canceling turn signals

 

[Donal]

This thread and the one by JoeBiodiesel are absolutely fascinating (for me). It provides an insight into something that was just mumbo jumbo (up to now).

I think if I was doing it I would only 'select' cruise when in 5th gear & would probably opt for a steady TPS signal (as that is something I could control).

As for the self cancelling turn signals - have you tried to find what Harley's use?

Keep up the good work :clapping:

Don

 

[UselessPickles]

I think if I was doing it I would only 'select' cruise when in 5th gear & would probably opt for a steady TPS signal (as that is something I could control).

Hmmm... maybe I'll improve mine to take the gear into consideration. It might be nice to prevent cruising mode in 1st and 2nd gear.

Checking for steady RPMs is necessary. You wouldn't want it to jump into cruising mode while you're going full throttle for several seconds in 5th gear. That's an extreme case that could be worked around by only allowing cruising mode for a steady throttle that is below 30%, for example. But that would just be a band-aid fix, because it would still allow significant acceleration/deceleration in 5th gear as long as you hold the throttle steady while doing so. Requiring a steady throttle and steady RPM is a general solution that works in all gears and works only in situations that you would want cruising mode.

As for the self cancelling turn signals - have you tried to find what Harley's use?

A little bit of searching didn't find anything with a lot of confidence. I know some systems are just a timer. Some are based on distance traveled. Some combine the two. There is a patent from 1977 for a gyroscope-based self-cancelling system. I'd have to assume there's systems available now that use a gyroscope. The gyroscope method will be a fun project. Basically, after the turn signal is activated, it would wait for a significant rotation of the motorcycle (leaning) in the direction of the turn, then a rotation in the opposite direction would finally cause the signal to cancel. The idea is simple, but it will take a lot of fine-tuning to ignore noise in the signal from the gyroscope, and to figure out how much of a rotation to require to trigger the cancelling.

Keep up the good work :clapping:

I'll do my best

 

[Bustanut joker]

I've been holding back comment to this point..However, I can't refrain any longer..

Jeff you are going down a bad road here! Don't you realize just how much time manufacturers put into these things? For **** sakes! Next thing you know it's going to be like the car tire and others are going to walk this path..

Are ya sure you can deal with being responsible for others welfare? I mean it's not an "accepted" modification and **** might go wrong..

Ya wanna live with the fact you contributed to someone's balls falling off?

How about if they get maimed due to your experimentation? What the fek If a rim cracks for **** sakes?

I dunno kid.. I think your radical ideas are going to get somebody hurt.

 

[idealistix]

This is a very interesting project. One suggestion that I have is that you should consider having the cruise map limited to 5th gear only (or maybe 4th and 5th gear). This is an "AND" condition in addition to your already existing criteria to enter the cruise map. Do you have the gear information available to you? If not, you can use the vehicle speed and engine rpm to calculate the gear.

 

[UselessPickles]

This is a very interesting project. One suggestion that I have is that you should consider having the cruise map limited to 5th gear only (or maybe 4th and 5th gear). This is an "AND" condition in addition to your already existing criteria to enter the cruise map. Do you have the gear information available to you? If not, you can use the vehicle speed and engine rpm to calculate the gear.

You missed that discussion just a couple of posts back

I was also further convinced yesterday that I should at least avoid cruising mode in 1st and 2nd gear. I got stuck in some slow traffic on the freeway and was staying in 1st/2nd for instant acceleration if needed, and hopefully the noise would help prevent a car next to me from swerving over. I quickly disabled cruising mode with my nifty button because the lean surging that is barely a slight annoyance in 3rd/4th/5th is quite a problem in 1st/2nd.

I currently don't have any speed or gear info. Only RPM and throttle position. I could get gear position by tapping into the bike's gear position sensor wires with a couple resisters and diodes to generate an analog signal that jumps between 6 different values for the 5 gears and neutral. I think that would be easier to get working correctly/quickly than calculating speed from the 42 pulses per rotation of the wheel, especially since I'm pretty sure I only have one timer on the chip that I can use for the built-in capture feature (captures the value of the time when a pin switches from low to high; when a pulse happens). I'm already using that feature for calculating RPM, and I'm resetting the timer after every pulse, so I can't reuse it to also calculate speed.

 

[UselessPickles]

I finally got through a full tank of gas of typical riding (commuting to work, etc.) with my new setup working properly.

Pure smoothness/power map: 37mpg

Automated switching to economy map when cruising: 43mpg

That's an extra 36 miles per tank if I use 6 gallons, which is like getting an extra gallon of gas for free!

The automatic economy mode has been mostly unobtrusive. There seems to be a particular speed in 3rd gear that creates some noticeable surging that is annoying. I'll have to catch that in a data log and see if it's just a particular area of the map that I should richen up a bit. Other than that, cruising mode in 1st or 2nd gear sucks, so I think I'll eventually add a gear position input to prevent cruising mode in those gears. For now, I'll just disable cruising mode manually with my button if I'm going to be stuck in slow stop/go traffic.

 

[carlson_mn]

Sounds like it is working out for you, great. Some pretty cool work overall. However - With a power commander you could lean out the 5 - 10% throttle openings which is what is used when cruising, and have the rest tuned as wanted for when accelerating. I believe that would be a simpler way to accomplish the same 'idea.' Obviously you use your Motty tuner for a reason so I'm not suggesting you go with a PC3. The above is just what I did to solve the same problem. I get 40-41 on a typical tank and 45+ on highway, and if I'm on the gas all the time having fun in some hills I get about 37-38 keeping it in 3-4 gears accelerating a lot. Keep us updated.

 

[UselessPickles]

However - With a power commander you could lean out the 5 - 10% throttle openings which is what is used when cruising, and have the rest tuned as wanted for when accelerating. I believe that would be a simpler way to accomplish the same 'idea.'

Re-read my initial post. That's pretty much exactly the approach I started with, but I used the data logger to target only specific RPM/throttle combinations used while cruising (so it's better than blindly leaning out 5-10% throttle). The problem is that some of these cruising areas are also passed through during light acceleration. Lean it out too much, and you get surging/hesitation while taking off from a light and cornering around an intersection - not fun!

I get 40-41 on a typical tank and 45+ on highway, and if I'm on the gas all the time having fun in some hills I get about 37-38 keeping it in 3-4 gears accelerating a lot. Keep us updated.

My figures were for my typical daily riding only. I recently did a 190 mile day trip on on mostly 40-55mph back roads, a bit of freeway, and some suburban traffic. I averaged 48mpg on that trip.

 

[carlson_mn]

My figures were for my typical daily riding only. I recently did a 190 mile day trip on on mostly 40-55mph back roads, a bit of freeway, and some suburban traffic. I averaged 48mpg on that trip.

Well damn, Mr. Bold, easy buddy, I'll just refrain from commenting from now on since you get so defensive. :lol:

Not blindly leaning anything out either, simply setting the power commander cells to zero (stock FI). Jeesh...

 

[UselessPickles]

I was not getting defensive!

Stupid text-based communication and it's inability to properly communicate tone...

I guess I also didn't fully communicate what I was originally getting at (several distractions while writing the reply). I was intending to say something about comparing gas mileage between different riders is meaningless because of riding styles, types of roads, etc.

And the "blindly" part was referring to you not actually knowing what throttle/RPM combinations you actually use while cruising, so you may have leaned out areas that aren't used for cruising and/or left areas rich that are actually used while cruising. I could share my (yup; bold again) cruising throttle/rpm ranges, but just like MPG, it's dependent on personal riding preferences, altitude, etc.

The green cells in the economy sheet are what I determined to be my cruising area: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoRFAfW0n9qydGRQcWRURkJsVUxnYWNTQUc5UVJwVVE&hl=en_US#gid=0