Hello,

I am new to this car ECU tunning/remapping and have been reading a lot latelly, doing my research beforehand. I am interested in tunning cars ECU for performance gains, and I have a great deal of understanding of embedded systems(I am a Computer Engineer). I just need to know more about the differences between car ecu's, read/write procedure, andd software/hardware for the job.

I have been reading about winols, since it's kind of popular selection, but what limitations does it have? Also, other than this software what would I need? do I need some type of tool to make the maps readable to the car ECU, a flash tool perhaps?

Thanks in advance.

hey
im also new to this so might not be that helpfull

first you need ecu file , and like you said need flasher to get it out from the car or put new in
many works by obd2 and all you need is cheap flasher like mpps and laptop but newer cars might not be so simple
sometimes you need to take out ecu from car and connect it directly

other thing is actual tunning
since you mentioned winols , there is like best win ols guide on yt vagecumap
tons of knowlage and most of all its directed to beginers like us.

hope it helps if you got more questions ill try to answer

hello mate.

I am somewhat in the same boat as you. I'm an automation engineer, though I transferred from computer science after 2 years to automation section, where I did 3 years to the full 5 years of university.

I'm just looking to get into the tuning world. From what I have gathered while researching ( although may not be accurate info), there are countless softwares and hardwares to do modify an ECU with, but from my pov, WinOLS seems to be the best there is to edit ECUs.
As WinOLS is only the software part of the tuning procedure, you need some kind of hardware to read/write the memory of the ECU. Haven't done too much research on the hardware part, but for OBD2 WinOLS recommends SPI-Wizard III, so I guess I will be going with that one when I'll make the purchases. You are right, you also need a software to go with the flasher interface, which SPI has.

If OBD flashing isn't possible, then you need a hardware that can connect directly to the pins of the ecu, or you need to swap out the memory chip ( i think it's called that) which contains the maps.

There is alot to learn, I'm still trying to wrap my head around checksums and why are they important, how are they generated, how to find out which map is which one, etc. We will be learning our whole life:)

Good luck!