Pedal Commander: does it work?

This is on the Sprint booster, but same thing:

 

For those who cant see the full text:

Actual Benefits
The benefit of a sprint booster is that you do not have to push the accelerator pedal as far to achieve the acceleration you desire. You are saving some foot effort. There is no difference between installing a sprint booster to changing your driving style to operate the throttle in a more jerky fashion, for example flooring it violently when taking off. The only improvement in throttle response is the time it takes to push the accelerator pedal harder. This is not reaction time of the driver. It is not the time it takes to decide to floor it. It’s the extra time required to move the pedal a bit more, given you are already moving it. I estimate for example it may take an extra 1/10 of a second or 100ms for the throttle to travel from 50% to 100% if you are already moving the throttle from 0% to 50%. So in a typical scenario where you want to accelerate hard, you’ll be better off by something in the order of 1/10 of a second with the sprint booster installed. Unless you accidentally break traction due to the reduced throttle precision, in which case you’ll be faster without the sprint booster. So if possibly saving 1/10 of a second is important to you, or saving the effort of moving your foot is important for you, then a sprint booster may be a good idea.

Disadvantages
Installing a sprint booster means the available travel in the accelerator pedal is not fully utilized. There is a large dead zone where the voltage sent to the engine management is 100%. This means you’ve lost precision in throttle control. You’ve lost resolution. Your ability to make small adjustments to throttle has been degraded.

Using more throttle and having a more jerky driving style will cost you more fuel, wear out your car more and increase your chances of having an accident. It also encourages poor driving habits – for example accelerating hard then braking hard in stop / start traffic rather than just driving at a steady speed.

Offroad, a sprint booster makes it difficult to control your vehicle. Movement of your foot caused by vibration or bumps translates to much larger accidental changes to throttle then what would occur with a standard setup. Your ability to make small changes to throttle is compromised, yielding an amateur like driving style over rough terrain. Many sprint booster users will de-activate their sprint booster when offroading. Actually some vehicles automatically do the exact opposite of a sprint booster when low range is engaged in order to improve precise vehicle control. The disadvantages of sprint boosters whilst offroading are also present when on the road, but the effect is more pronounced offroad due to the rough terrain and the requirement to precisely control speed and torque whilst offroad.

Throttle Filtering
A sprint booster cannot circumvent the filtering performed in the ECU. Whether people describe a sprint booster as a “proportional controller” or talk about “digital setpoints” or “controller gain” or “ramp up” or “tuning” is irrelevant.

The accelerator pedal transducer is a potentiometer with a voltage across it. It is not an intelligent device. There are no time delays or filtering performed within the accelerator pedal transducer. The filtering is done in the ECU. Why? Why would the vehicle manufacturer add complexity, expense and points of failure within the accelerator pedal transducer when that capability is already there in the ECU? Add a few lines of code and it’s done in the ECU without any extra hardware, cost or potential points of failure. Also, filtering removes information. You want to remove information only at the point where there is no disadvantage to removing it. In the case of the throttle position, the sensor usually consists of two potentiometers which both report directly to the ECU. This means the ECU is able to detect problems which otherwise could pose a safety risk. High frequency noise, step changes in signal or transient discrepancies between the two signals can be used to rapidly detect problems. Filtering at the throttle transducer would mask these issues. Diagnostic ability would be lost. Instead, the raw data is read from the device and interpreted and manipulated as required using software within the ECU. The raw voltage signals from the transducer go to the ECU where diagnostics are be performed. After that the signal is filtered and processed within the throttle controller.

So filtering occurs within the ECU, not within the accelerator pedal transducer. This means it’s physically impossible for a sprint booster to circumvent the ECU filtering. The filtering is occurring within the ECU, after the sprint booster. The sprint booster is not changing the ECU’s software.

What does the ECU filtering do and how does it impact the performance of a sprint booster? Engine management may filter the incoming voltage signal to make the throttle control smoother. It’s called a low pass filter. Fast changes are filtered out. High frequencies are filtered out. This manifests as a maximum rate of change that the throttle can respond to. So even if the voltage signal from the accelerator pedal instantaneously jumps from 0 to 100%, the actual throttle will be limited in how fast it can react so that it takes some minimum amount of time to open fully. As an example, lets pick a value – say 0.2 seconds. This means that no matter how quickly you change the voltage signal, if you change it at a rate faster than the rate equivalent to 0 to 100% in 0.2 seconds, it makes no difference to the actual throttle response. So engine management filtering actually masks the response of a sprint booster. Some people argue that the sprint booster will help overcome the engine management filtering. This is impossible. The filtering is occurring after the sprint booster. The engine management does not know whether the voltage signal is coming from a sprint booster or directly from the accelerator pedal. It will always limit the rate of change in throttle the same way. It is incorrect to suggest that the engine management’s filtering somehow enhances the response from a sprint booster. It will always dampen the response. So the time saving of 0.1s from having to move your foot less will always result in less than 0.1s improvement to throttle opening time. Part of the increase in speed from the sprint booster is filtered out. Faster signals get filtered more. If you are already at the limit without the sprint booster then adding a sprint booster would make no difference at all. So, for example, if you can already move the accelerator pedal from 0 to 100% in 0.2s which corresponds to the maximum rate of the throttle filter, then adding a sprint booster and reducing the time it takes for the throttle position to reach 100% by 0.1s will have absolutely no impact to the actual throttle opening time. The filter is already saturated before adding the sprint booster.

 

Turkey is better than China...IMHO.

 

I mean.....especially today......