The goal of out project is to design a controller for an automobile intermal combustion engine, which is also know as Engine-Control-Unit (ECU) in the forst part of the project we designed a card that converts signals from the car environment to the control unit and the other way around
In the old days cars that ran on gasoline engine were designed in a way that the motor would operate solely depending on a mechanical system, the engine would run synchronized with the other parts via mechanical connection , cool itself via mechanical connection and run without any need of external control except the driver controlling the Throttle, but nowadays modern cars that run on gasoline or other kinds of energy sources (diesel or electric) are controlled by microchips , the engine is synchronized by this chip, monitored by this chip, and sometimes even it can fully operate without a driver relying only on the microchip.
Most cars that are available now are dependent on a standard controlling unit called Engine control unit or ECU , this ECU is usually not design for each car individually and most likely not calibrated to each car system individually . because of this, the cars that are equipped with a generic ECU run with disregard to each car’s specific distinctions and disregard to the parameters of the car that change with time , Above that in most cars you cannot control the mode for engine operation .
Our goal is to create an ECU that can be adapted to each car individually, and also have the ability to alter engine operation modes such as sport mode economic mode etc.
We designed an ECU based on an FPGA controller that connects to the car with the PCB that we designed specifically to gather data and communicate with the car system.