The history of Reference Dynos goes back to 1996 where an old HH chassis dynometer roller bed with water-brakes was purchased.
The plan at that time was to build some basic controls for running-in modified Cosworth YBG engines in various old Ford Escort Mk2’s. The building of the software never materialized back in the nineties, but the idea about creating dynometer controls wasn’t forgotten….
In 2007 the first C++ version dynometer controls was ready (still on the old HH chassis dynometer roller bed, but now without the water-brakes). The control was made using a Microchip © PIC16C745. The measurement principles were to count pulses from the roller bed and 25 times a second sending these counts via USB to the computer for graphical presentation. It however proved that counting pulses from the roller bed is requiring way too much (!) averaging in order to overcome “jitter” so measurements would be repeatable. The averaging had to be so great that not even gear-shifts during acceleration could be seen on the graphs! – Being much wiser, this 2007 version dynometer controls was abandoned….!
In the summer of 2012 the development of the dynometer controls solution as presented on this home page commenced. The development of the controls solution, including a fully fletched OBD interface was completed in the summer of 2018. Since 2018 the dynometer controls solution has been extensively tested and “burned-in” on all Windows © platforms not announced EOL (meaning Win 8.n and onwards).
Development is ongoing and the next version DAQ / dynometer software will be able to control one (or more) Telma brake(s), along with some additional functions and features available via the OBD interface.