software development for tuning (12/1/2020)

In today's modern economy everything we touch unless it's a pull or push door is run of software and hardware. And modern-day vehicles are no different, we have come along way from the typical car having an engine crank. Instead, now we have a push to start a feature where within seconds your car will start up and this is all run off of computers. These computers take crank and camshaft singles from seniors in order to start the car. In laments terms, they need computer hardware and software in order to make this happen. What we will be diving into is taking these stock parameters that the vehicle was given from the factory and we will be trying to alter them to either A increase fuel economy, B increase power, or C even be able to increase longevity for the vehicle itself. The possibility is endless when it comes to vehicles and the ability to alter and make little or big changes to see a maximum gain. Many might wonder how does tuning works how is it even possible. Now tuning is not easy by no stretch of the imagination, you must know precisely what you're doing or you will fry the computer in your vehicle. In a sense think of it as you are changing parameters in your OS system. Instead of it being like the Linux OS which is open-source and you allowed to make as many changes as you would please without needing keys to access the OS. A vehicle Operating system is locked more in the sense of a window or MAC OS system where you need to have certain keys or software to unlock the computer or even be able to read it when servicing the vehicle. This is where a tuner comes in or in other words a software developer who goes into the parameters of the vehicle and will make changes. For example, we will go into something that is ignition timing. What this is, is the amount of time before the piston reaches the top dead center.  TDC is when the top of the piston reaches the top of the cylinder. What a tuner can do is go into the computer and advance this so instead of it being 0 degrees before TDC we can change it to 12 degrees so when the camshaft is at 12 degrees of rotation which translates actually to 88 degrees of rotation. This allows us to see the performance of the engine which will optimize how the fuel gets burnt in the combustion chambers. With tuning, you're also allowed to go into different modules like the transmission modules which will let you write a code that allows the shift solenoids to open up much later to hold the RPM band higher and give you more efficiency, and lets you have better cooling opportunities. Another parameter that you're allowed to access is the body module which controls everything inside the interior of the vehicle. Know you must be careful with this and it is one of the main reasons why these computers are closed source is because it makes it more secure  and much harder to hack