ECUMaster USA

When it comes to choosing an ECU for your project card, there's no shortage of choice out there on the market. Normally though we're trading off the price point of the ECU versus the feature set that it offers. Here we're going to be unboxing an ECU Master EMU Black which offers an impressive feature set and a price point of just $1099 USD. So let's open the box and we'll find out what's inside. Once the EMU Black comes shipped in a tidy cardboard box, well then easy to remove out of sheath. Once we've removed that out of sheath, we can open the box and we've got all of the components laid out right in front of us. Inside the box we've got our ECU as well as our two matching connectors for the ECU to allow us to create our own wiring harness. Now in this case ECU Master have chosen to use a Delphi connector and these aren't particularly common in aftermarket ECUs in our experience. However they do positively locate so this just gives you the confidence that once those connectors are fitted to the ECU, they're not going to come loose ensuring we know that we've got a reliable connection. Let's remove the ECU and our connectors here. We'll see that these were located in a nicely molded plastic tray and this just ensures that none of those components are going to move around in transport, making sure that when you receive your ECU it is in perfect condition. Let's remove that plastic tray though and we'll see what else we've got in the box. With our plastic tray out of the way, we've got a USB cable that's going to be used to program the ECU, this is going to be the interface between the ECU and our laptop. We've also got a range of terminals in order for us to be able to construct our wiring harness. Now these terminals are actually also included in two different sizes to suit different gauge of wire so we can use a larger gauge of wire for some of the higher current draw outputs, particularly if we are using the EMU black to control a drive wire throttle which may draw significant current. Lastly we've also got a nicely laminated pin out for the ECU with some basic wiring information that we're going to need to know. Now if you've followed any of our other unboxing videos, you'll know that Zach is a big fan of printed instructions being supplied with any product. Most often we find these days that manufacturers simply provide this information online and while that's a great resource, I do have to agree with Zach, it is nice to have a physical piece of doc This is also laminated so it's un Now if you're out of the box, let's j One of the first things that strikes you with the EMU black is just how physically small this ECU is, it is a tiny package. Now don't let that put you off though, ECU master have still managed to pack a surprising now the casing on it is CNC machined al Now if we turn the ECU over, we can see we have our two matching connectors. We've also got a vacu So again this brings the cost or price point of the ECU down and this you're planning on running in excess of 3 bar of positive boost pressure, the onboard map sensor is going to be more than adequate. We've also got the USB connection port so this is where we're going to be connecting the USB cable up so we can communicate to our laptop. Now attractive packaging and a CNC machined enclosure are all well and good but obviously what we're most interested in is what can the EMU black do? We'll start with the fuel and ignition control and here we've got eight injector drives and six ignition drives. So with the ECU can control piston engines up to 12 cylinders or also control rotary engines, the n For example here if we have a six cylinder engine, this will allow us full sequential control of the fuel injectors as well as direct spark coil on plug ignition systems. Once we step above this though, if for example we have an eight cylinder engine, we're still going to be able to provide full sequential injector control but we will be required to run waste spark ignition. In terms of the fuel control, we do also have the ability to run staged injection depending on the application. As our engines are becoming more complex, there's a requirement for us to be able to control more and more aspects of the engine with our ECU and here the EMU black offers six auxiliary outputs which can be used for functions such as radiator fans, boost control solenoids, or continuously variable cam control. There's also a dedicated output for a single drive by wire throttle body. What all this means is that the EMU black is going to be able to control just about any engine that you may want to put it on. The inputs to the ECU are every bit as critical as the outputs and here we've got nine inputs available, these can be used for critical inputs such as our coolant temperature and our inlet air temperature as well as other user inputs such as fuel pressure and oil pressure. There is also a dedicated input for an ethanol content sensor and if you connect one of these, this allows the EMU black to offer full flex fuel capability so you can fuel your car on p Now there are also a couple of inputs that are relatively unique here on the EMU black. This includes two dedicated thermocouple amplifiers so this means that you can add for example two exhaust gas temperature sensors and you're not going to need an external thermocouple amplifier which is going to add cost and complexity to your installation. You can wire those thermocouples directly into the ECU. There is also a built in wideband controller on the EMU black so this allows you to directly wire up either a Bosch LSU 4. 2 or 4. 9 lambda sensor. The ECU can directly control the heater circuit in the lambda sensor and we've got direct onboard lambda readings coming into the ECU. This helps speed up the tuning process but it also allows the ECU to run complete closed loop fuel control if you want. Lastly we can also add up to two knock sensors to the ECU and by doing this it allows us to utilise closed loop knock control. Now this is a feature that I'm a huge fan of and while it's not a substitute for proper tuning, what it does do is provide a nice safeguard that can easily prevent damage to a highly strung performance engine, particularly if we end up somewhere where we're forced to run a subpar tank of fuel. Now the knock control strategy in the ECU provides a huge amount of flexibility to the tuner, we can select the frequency where knock is occurring, as well as the background noise level which should help the ECU more accurately detect blipping of the throttle to match revs on the downshift. Does make it really quick and easy for us to diagnose trigger. The other feature I wanted touch on is the can capability of the ECU and this allows all of the information being up to compatibility with other manufacturer's products. This is perfect for example if you have an ExisU on your dash, this is pretty straightforward to achieve. Right now the can capabilities of the tune the ECU. So let's j It's a nice easy menu structure on the left hand side of the screen which makes the manufacturer's details. Across the top of the page there's a series of tabs and this allows software to be set up here, we can see at the bottom we've got a set of graphs, these are all configurable by the user, allows us to, you want to learn more about EFI tuning and learn how to tune an ECU