So called "speed booster" aka "sprint booster" or similar

[admin]

One of you emailed me about the competing cruise product coming with a new feature that they are marketing as a "speed booster".  This isn't anything revolutionary... there's also stand-alone versions of it, sometimes marketed as a "sprint booster" or similar wording.

The claim is that by removing "lag" in the pedal, you increase performance.

First, I want to say that in reality this type of product is entirely smoke and mirrors.  That doesn't mean there aren't perceived benefits, but it should be know what it is before you shell out hundreds of dollars for extra "performance".

The theory is that since cars that use drive-by-wire throttle systems like the smart do not have a physical linkage that there must be some delay from the time you press the pedal to the time the throttle responds.  It is true that some delay must be introduced in an entirely electronic setup, but that delay occurs AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT.  It is impossible to perceive it.  There is THOUSANDS times more delay at the engine than there is at the pedal so improving the delay at the pedal, which I'd argue is impossible anyway, still will not make a lick of a difference overall. 

So how is it that they can make these claims?  Moreover, how is it that customers say they notice a difference?  Easy... there is a difference, it just isn't what they want you to believe.

These devices do not "speed up" the response of the pedal in any way, shape, or form.  What they do is one of two things:  They either "skip" steps in throttle range (also known as "decreasing the signal resolution") or they amplify the signal (also known as "magnifying the signal").  Both achieve roughly the same thing, and in either case all that is happening is that you put the pedal down less of a distance to achieve any given amount of throttle "signal".

Say for example the throttle has a range of 1 to 100.  Before you had to press the pedal down half way to get to 50, but now you only have to press it say one quarter of the way.  The result is you "feel" like the throttle is more responsive.  In actual fact it is less responsive because it gives you less control over the range.  In a car with 400 HP this would be severely detrimental.  In a smart... it probably does feel more peppy with it installed.

Whether you want it or not is entirely up to you.  But I would say this... don't spend hundreds on it!  If you own an Area 451 cruise control you can achieve the same thing for free.

If there is any significant interest, I can start working on a program to make our cruise double-function as this so-called "speed booster".  But we won't make any claims that it is actually improving performance because it isn't.  Still, it can feel like it is    It can also have the benefit (possibly) of reducing foot fatigue in town since you need less range of motion at the pedal to achieve the same acceleration.  So I don't want to dismiss it as garbage.  If I thought that, I wouldn't consider adding it to our product.  It is what it is, and it isn't what it isn't.

I can even do one better than the competition (besides doing it for free)!  There's really no reason I can't make it programmable.  I should be able to anyway.  This would allow you to effectively choose how much or how little effect you want.  I believe I can make it programmable via a ScanGauge II device, which I know many of you have already anyway (and if you don't, you should consider one!  Handy little things).

So for now, I'm just throwing this out there as a possible addition to the cruise that won't involve any purchase.  Although it would need to be sent back to us for reprogramming.  Let me know if this is something I should bother with.

Art

[mvaldes]

Hi Art,
It's an interesting thought and very probably one you should consider from a marketing/sales standpoint. If you were to offer it, it would be one less thing that would lead the poorly informed into choosing the MDC variant over the superior Area451 product. In fact, offering a programmable version would even make it more obvious that yours is the superior product.
I've read, as you probably have, the paper evaluating the sprint booster and documenting exactly what you described in your post (http://www.peony888.com/VS/SprintBooster.pdf). Having said that, if you could make your version programmable with the scangauge, I'd be interested. I like toys and I think it would be great fun to play with, knowing full well that it's not increasing performance.
Just my 2 cents - Michael

[admin]

Thanks Michael.

No, I hadn't seen that paper but it was an interesting read.  I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that thinks that way.  The author and I seem to be in agreeance that it doesn't really do what they clearly want you to believe it does, but it isn't completely without value either.  As he puts it, it is about "feel" and not about performance.

[fredvon4]

I read with intrest the interesting (kind description) claims of the speed booster add on kit. Not interested even if free

I and wife are well beat up retired soldiers. CC is not a nice feature, it is a serious requirement to commute to and from work or for any 20 mile or greater highway jaunt.

To satisfy our needs, I deliberately seek out and buy full "fly by wire" automobile and trucks because a CC implemented on a electronic throttle is always the most precise and responsive system that can be.

Comparing this Area451 CC to several of my factory near perfect CC systems results in an understanding of how well Art and crew designed, programmed, and implemented an aftermarket adaptation for this underpowered car

Bravo folks.... poo on speed booster, no need, our Area451 CCs are damned near perfect as programed...for my and wife's needs

But more to the point..

Art is willing to expend time and research to add new functionality for customers to enhance their CC experience and add value to the Area451 brand.... astonishing business attitude....and coupled with the pure gentlemanly behavior of Steven Morehouse selling the product

How the hell could you go wrong with this superior product?

[intocoasters]

+1

These guys are amazing.

I am intrigued by this mod to the program.  I may opt in if this comes to fruition.  Could be fun.

[admin]

Aww, thanks guys!   

[John_H]

I don't care for the smoke and mirrors for perceived (not actual) improvements.

If you pursue the project (or try experiments) I'd suggest not only looking at amplifying the signal (Proportional change) but putting in a little PID in the control loop (Proportional, Integral, Differential).

What I would expect from the feature is that when I go from 20% throttle to 60% throttle, I get to the speed (or perhaps acceleration) dictated by that pedal "faster" with the added feature than without.  I'd expect the altered throttle response to initially peak, then return to the pedal position level as the engine has the correct "feel" for the pedal position.

You've performed beautiful control system work with the cruise control.  I'd expect the new experiments to produce the same kind of results.  Being an informed individual, however, I see no reason to play with "perceived" gains that don't have any true technical change to the performance or efficiency of my car.

Referring to an earlier post, one thing missing in the white paper's empirical results was the response to a step-input to 50% throttle position.  That would shine some additional light on the performance.  A step response to full scale and a smooth ramp will both skip important information.

[admin]

You're right.  If we did do this we could probably make it a bit better than a simple multiplier.  You're also right that it still wouldn't have any real performance gain.  That doesn't mean it doesn't have merrit... another way of looking at it is simply to reduce driver fatigue - one of the benefits of cruise in general.  With this feature, a driver in the city (ie not using cruise) could still give their leg somewhat of a rest, or at least a reduced workout, by limiting how much pedal travel is required for the same result.

As I said before... if this were a 400hp car I'd have serious reservations about doing that because a tiny blip of your pedal and you could rocket out into traffic or a wall before you knew it.  But in a smart?  "rocket" just somehow doesn't seem an appropriate description.

[sheureka]

Hi all - I have a question about the "sprint booster". You may remember I'm the one with the leg braces and the very weak right leg. The cruise control, obviously, is an enormous help to me - but in reading about this possible modification I'm wondering if it would help me, especially for times when I can't use the cruise, or if it would just create control problems, given that my right foot doesn't always get the appropriate signals. I can see for an able-bodied person that it would relieve foot/leg fatigue, but with my occasionally spastic, and always weak leg/foot I'm not sure I could control the accelerator.

What do you think? If you're going to program it so it would be variable could it be set up so it would help me? By the way, I do have a ScanGuage if you end up going that way. TIA - sheureka

[admin]

That is a very interesting question.  Thank you Sheureka.

My initial thought is, like many things in life, there would be pros and cons.  On the positive side, it would be easier to press the pedal to achieve any given acceleration rate.  The negative side is, as you noted, that there is less control and minor foot movements will lead to larger acceleration results.  So on the fatigue side I'd say yes it could be a good thing.  On the "spastic" side, I'd worry it could be dangerous to at least some degree.

I do wonder if we could program some compensation.  I envision a scenario where the minor adjustments to the pedal make "significant" adjustments to the acceleration, but at the same time program in a safety that limits how quickly those adjustments can be made.  Sort of "detect" a spastic movement and ignore it.  In this case you would take a performance hit and if you did want sudden acceleration it wouldn't necessarily be available to you immediately.  Even then, I can program an override for that by allowing you to override that check by planting the pedal.  I wonder if I'm going in circles though and rendering one feature pointless by adding another   For example, planting it is difficult for you which is why we reduce the range of the pedal which makes it more susceptible to spastic movements so we program the need to plant it (head spinning yet?).  Sort of a catch-22.

You know your leg best.  So if you had a particular suggestion on what would be ideal for you, we can help determine how to best achieve it.  It would sincerely be my pleasure to do what I can to help you enjoy your smart as much as possible.

Art

[admin]

Just a small update.

We've been working on this off and on over the past several weeks.  Simply amplifying the signal like the "Sprint Booster" sold elsewhere was simple, but I wasn't really interested in doing that.  At the very least I wanted it to be programmable and I'd also want something that felt a bit more dynamic.

As per John's thinking, we tried playing with a moving range so that no matter where you were in the curve, the throttle would always be stable yet more power would be more quickly available (ie less of a push to get the same gain).  We did come up with an algorithm that achieved that, but the math to pull it off turned out to be too much for the cruise control's micro-controller to keep up with reliably.  The signal from the pedal needs to get through the cruise unit and on down to the car's ECU in very rapid fashion otherwise the computer starts to panic and you get a check engine light.  Processing the signal through advanced mathematics slows the signal down to the point it would trip the fault once in awhile which just isn't good enough.  We could try making it more efficient, but in the end I'm not sure we could ever be comfortable that dynamically processed signals will be reliable.


So, we'll ditch the idea of making the math dynamic.  That doesn't mean we're stuck with simple equations like "output = input + 30" or "output = input X 1.3".  Check out the image I attached to this post!  That represents what I like to call the "bat out of hell" curve.  It is possibly a bit too peppy, but what it does is really ramp up the juice at the bottom end of the pedal's range and steadily brings it back to normal as you go to the top of the range.  The thought is that at lower speeds where your pedal spends most of its time in the lower range there is a greater variation in speed typically - such as stopping and starting from street lights, going around corners, etc - whereas on the highway where your pedal spends most of its time in the higher range you're mostly just keeping things steady.  The big advantage of this kind of curve vs. a linear one is that it doesn't peak prematurely.  The disadvantage is that it may be too twitchy in 1st gear and potentially you don't have enough response on the highway (although I doubt that's a problem, testing is needed).

The bottom line is that some people are going to want a curve like our B.O.O.H. and others are going to want a linear "map" of one degree of aggressiveness or another and offering the ability to "program" it (the word is not technically appropriate) as you see fit I think will be appreciated by those that are going to use this feature.  Steven even came up with an "econo-mode" map which lowered the pedal's responsiveness (but increased control.  The two concepts are directly inverse to one another)!  Doing this linearly wouldn't work because it would mean you could never achieve 100% throttle so instead he used a power growth curve equation.  Basically it is the exact opposite of the B.O.O.H. curve in that it starts slow and ends fast.  In the city, you have to press the pedal down further to accelerate at any given level but it catches up to normal as you get to highway speeds.  In preliminary tests, I actually like this one the best.  By stretching out the curve at the lower end you get more control over your acceleration.  Great for anyone that thinks the smart is too touchy out of the gate or need help with the in-town lead-foot syndrome.

I'm going to attach a graph later to illustrate the various curves to help you visualize.

To be perfectly honest, now that I've been testing this in (limited) real world situations I have to admit this kind of thing may be more useful than I originally thought.  Of course, nothing changes the fact that performance isn't actually being modified in anyway so I refuse to market it as such.  Instead of using words like "speed" or "sprint" or "boost", I think we'll call it something like "Pedal Mapping".

Thoughts?

Art

[mvaldes]

Sounds like it will be great fun to play with the different "settings." Thanks for working on new, interesting and fun toys for our Smarts.

[Brabus007]

How about telling us how your going to Mod our 451 Unit... I hear that Step #2 on the MDC Unit takes the Stumble out of the Smart when you step on it... I hear that the LONG Step-in on the Smart is a "ECONO Stroke Pedal" in the Smart... You got to get a Half Stroke on the Pedal of a Smart to get that Babe MOVING...<:-)) Sooooo We going to be able to send our Unit in for a Step MOD...? Give us a choice of say 5 Steps, and let us Choose ONE of them to have you re-program that Step into it for us...<:-))

[admin]

Brabus007, I merged your new topic with this existing one.

I'm glad you asked!  As you can see it has been 2 months minus a day since anyone commented and there really hasn't been much interested expressed at all.  So this hasn't been a priority to release as a standalone feature release.  Instead we decided to include it with our 1.2 software, which has been going a little slower than it should... partially because it isn't really all that necessary (minor tweaks and a few cool features but there's nothing wrong with the 1.1 software that's in use now) and partially because we suffer from TADD (Technology Attention Deficite Disorder) 
 
After our last meeting, some really cool ideas for new projects came up and I admin we perhaps have been putting too much focus on that.  Ideas such as steering wheel mounted controls, a touchscreen interface with cruise speed "presets" plus a whole lot more, and toying with a LIDAR self-adjusting cruise system like the new Prius has - all so far proving to be too expensive (especially the last one!).
 
The pedal mapping feature is actually pretty well done except some decisions have to be made and more testing completed, and I would appreciate more feedback.
 
We've already worked out 12 different maps. 2 complex and 10 simple linear ones.  Really, the linear ones are hard to tell the difference between.  The other two are the Bat out of Hell and the Econo-map ones I mentioned above.  So I'm thinking of replacing the linear ones with more and less aggressive versions of the above and maybe just leave in one or two linear.  Due to memory space limitations we're limited to 5 or 6 maps anyway and there doesn't seem to be any need for more than that.  If anyone has any ideas of a map they'd like to see, let me know!  Draw a line or curve on a graph with actual pedal press on one axis and "perceived" pedal press on the other.  A straight 45 degree line up would represent the pedal as it is now (a 1:1 relationship).  Even if you freehand a curve, we can approximate it with an equation and then generate a map.
 
Does everyone have a ScanGauge II???   This way we can program all the units to have all the maps (as well as no map at all) and you can just pick your map at your leisure with the SGII.  If not, we can dedicate 2 of the on-board dip switches which gives you 3 maps to choose from BUT changing them means taking the lid off the cruise module and physically flipping switches which can be a pain (though not a big deal).  Actually I suppose we could dedicate 3 switches (max 7 maps) however if there are other options/settings that users want to adjust manually in the future then that extra switch may become unavailable in future upgrades.  Basically, there are 6 switches on-board for "upgrade-ability" and thus far none of them are used.  We have plans for 2 with our 1.2 software and would like to leave at least 2 more available for future.  Using a ScanGauge to program the device is infinitely more flexible and cool!
 
No matter what change we make or whether you have an SGII or not, keep in mind that you'll have to send us your unit to be reprogrammed to gain the functionality.  I would PREFER to add this functionality to our 1.2 software so that everyone is on the same page going forward.  However, if there are eager beavers that want an interim release then we can do that too.  1.2 is going to correct some LED behavior bugs (that not a single person has brought up so it is very minor and you'll likely never notice), make the unit switchable between US and World so we don't have to maintain two separate versions, allow the user to turn off our "Overshoot Protection" if they'd prefer overshoot instead of a somewhat jerky correction on hills, and certain settings are going to be tweak-able via a SGII as well (increase/decrease acceleration rate is the most significant)

[mvaldes]

It all sounds very cool and lots of fun. The cc in its current version is wonderful, so I can only imagine that the new stuff will make it a fun toy as well as an awesome cruise control. Since I have a Scangauge II, I selfishly vote for that as the way to program rather than digging around in the back, taking off the cover and flipping switches. Since I'm thoroughly addicted to the unit, have you considered a "swap" program where we give you a payment to cover the lender or upgraded unit that you send out. We swap it for the existing one and send ours either for reprogramming or to replace the upgraded one you sent. That way, we don't have to go through cc withdrawal while  our units are being reprogrammed.
BTW, I'm happy to wait for 1.2 and do it all in one step.
Thanks again for such a great product and great customer service.