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Here I want to answer the questions of how much circuitry do I need? How much power? How much spark gap do I need? Does combustion chamber design matter? Why does the coil ring? Does the coil need to ring? Is there a cheap off-the shelf design? So how much circuitry do I need for a CDI? Well...

I agree with the starting point, that's how/what I started out at using automotive stuff. I then looked at camera flash circuits for one and Xeon tube flash circuits and neon light stuff even. Most automotive and even small engine coils usually are 1:100 turns ratio, at least the ones I looked...

I started looking into ignitions when I was 13 and racing my dirt bike in school boy class. I out weighed everybody else and was looking for more performance outside the rules. LOL Me, I started my career off as a heavy duty mechanic working on gas and diesel trucks. Later I went to cars mostly...

Sure I can. Nope it has nothing to do with propagation. Since all capacitors and coils(inductors) have resistance either ESR or wire resistance you have RC and RL time constants. It is the time it takes to charge/discharge the capacitor or inductor. If you put a resistor in front of a capacitor...

Well I'll put my 2 cents worth in and it's long winded. First Don I'd like to commend you on your research, it's nice to see. The only real problem I have is that your results are more to do with the ignition coils than the actual CDI units. I have been researching ignition/s, combustion, and...

Just a bit of an update on what I have been doing. To start with I haven't given up on the programmable ignition, it's right in front of me but, I have been helping out a fellow member (Mark Hamilton) get a more reliable CDI ignition for his 120 year old (I believe) horizontal engine. At the...

I'm sorry guys that I haven't done much on the programmable ignition lately but the wife has laid down the law with me after I bought 2 snowmobiles. They weren't running but I worked a little magic on them and they fire now but, all the fuel lines need replacing and carbs need to be cleaned...

All that was needed was to use a bearing with a flat stainless steel seal that is used quite commonly now in all sorts of things, like high temperature and food processing environments. Ray

Yah there are different names for it. But they all basically did the same thing which was to tell pilots the direction to the airport and most did the range and station ID. Don't forget there is also the marine version also. Here is a quark for TACAN; they are vacuum tube based for the reason...

LOL, been there done that, unfortunately too many times. My most gratifying time was when I was still a private and found the problem with the rotary joint on the ASR RADAR, a $100,000 part (back in 1983) was changed out and modified on my suggestion. The lubrication ( organic grease) was...

I use to work with a fellow named Joe Mazelli, bless his soul (RIP), said to me once "that's the way we have been doing it for 20 years". I said to Joe "did you ever think you were doing it wrong for 20 years?", he went silent. Necessity or money is the mother of invention. We either figure it...

The RADARs I worked on were all ground based, ASR, IFF/SSR, PAR, Airport Ground/ASR, ILS, TACAN, and man portable. All of it was military except the ILS which was a Philips system. The TACAN is the military version of what the civilians call VDF or direction finder. Obviously I can't get into...

Thanks guys. I have to admit if it wasn't for working on RADARs I probably wouldn't have thought of it. But, like anything else, "You won't know until you try".

Well this project here is using a 18 MHz mcu and it can fire an LS1/2 (Inductive) coil up to 12,000 cam rpm so that would be 24,000 crank rpm. I know of racers that are using this as a single coil to 7,500 V8 rpm. The spark is actually quite descent up to 12,000 sparks per minute level but...

Yup I know what a 356 is. I used to work with a german fellow that had one, we used to call it a 356 spider, not sure if it actually was one. As CDI ignitions there are a ton of different designs out there. Here is something very few people know is that the first example and working one was...

Well I got bugs, surprise, surprise, not. Did a little testing and found bugs in both programs and now I have to debug. I also have a bunch of other things I have to do this week so progress is going to slow down for a little while. Cheers Ray

Just an update; Well I believe I have both the PC & Arduino code Ready for testing. I'm sure that like any software I either forgot something or I didn't write something correctly and will need to be corrected. Hopefully it will just be minor things. The 4 stroke engine using wasted spark still...

I'm going to be rewriting the Nano code using the time between pulses for getting the RPM and angular velocity. I'll then make that and the PC code available to anyone who wishes to use it for personal use. cheers Ray

Below is the attached PDF "Help" file for the PC program. I'm looking for feedback from anyone who wishes to express their ideas, thoughts, and questions on it, thanks. Thanks Ray

I just wanted to say that after some consultation that I will be patenting my code for converting the pulse width to RPM. Ray