Spark

Advanced Hardware

The open source ECU is a fully programmable control prototyping system based on the latest National Instruments System On Module (SOM) sbRIO-9651.

The Xilinx Zynq™, with its: Dual Core ARM® Processor, Artix-7 FPGA on top and 512MB RAM, provides outstanding flexibility, efficiency and accuracy, enabling complex control algorithms and signal processing to be performed.

Our team has further enhanced the advanced capabilities of National Instruments hardware with in-house hardware developed by Alma Automotive, creating an integrated engine and vehicle management system suitable for any motorsport application.

The ECU software, both Real-Time and FPGA, will be completely accessible and open source: allowing to read, edit or even replace any function to meet the customer’s requirements.

A ready-to-use and fully accessible ECU will be provided, containing every single control strategy that has already been developed and successfully implemented both on the UniBo Formula SAE car or on other motorsport applications.

Gasoline engines (both GDI and PFI) and diesel common rail engines up to 8 cylinders can be controlled, with measurement and calibration operations supported via the XCP protocol over CAN or Ethernet, thanks to compatibility with all commercially available calibration tools (ETAS INCA®, Vector CANape®, ATI Vision®, etc.).