MegaMeet West Coast - Oct 29-30th 2011

[Bruce Bowling]

For all those in the Pacific Northwest, we will be hosting a MegaMeet in Portland, Oregon. The meet will be on Oct.29 and Oct.30, 2011. This meeting will be held in conjunction with the Chump Car event at Portland International Raceway (http://www.chumpcar.com/about.php).

We have changed the schedule a bit from previous years so that the technical sessions are on Sunday rather than Saturday. Hopefully this will mean that people traveling can stay just one night, if they prefer.

The tentative schedule is:

Saturday, Oct 29:
12:00 noon to 1:00pm: Gather at the hotel before heading to track
2:00pm to 5:00pm: Informal get-together at Portland International Raceway (½ mile away) for the Chump Car event (the racing starts at 9:00am and goes to 9:00pm) - http://www.chumpcar.com/event_pdfs/PIR2 ... pRules.pdf
7:00pm to midnight+: Bench racing sessions at Stanford's Restaurant and Bar - Jantzen Beach

Sunday, Oct.30:
10:30am to 11:45am: MegaSquirt Product Updates - A summary of code and hardware and tuning software philosophy, functions, and status.
11:45am to 12:15pm: Break for coffee and mingling
12:15pm to 1:45pm: Introduction to Engine Controls
1:45pm to 2:00pm: GPIO/MShift Update
2:00pm: Meeting ends, people traveling can get away, others can reconvene at Chump Car (racing 9:00am to 3:00pm) or Stanford's Restaurant and Bar - Jantzen Beach.

Hotel:
The official hotel hotel for the meeting is the Best Western Inn at the Meadows, which is 0.50 miles from Portland International Raceway where the Chump Car event is, and 8 miles from Portland International Airport . The technical sessions will be held in the 'Kentucky/Belmont' room at the hotel.

We have been promised special room rates of of $80.00 plus tax for a single King, and $85.00 plus tax for a double queen; just mention that you are coming for the 'MegaMeet' to get these rates.

Best Western Inn at the Meadows
1215 N Hayden Meadows Drive, Portland, Oregon, 97217-7559, US
Phone: 503/286-9600 Fax: 503/286-8020
Toll Free Reservations: 855-286-9600
(For those with GPS, the coordinates are N45º35.650' W122º40.841')


The hotel website is (http://book.bestwestern.com/bestwestern ... Code=38106).

Social:
The tentative location for the after hours social 'bench racing' session is:

Stanford's Restaurant and Bar - Jantzen Beach
1440 N Jantzen Beach Ctr, Portland, OR 97217
Phone: 503-285-2005
(GPS: N45º36.698' W122º40.877')

This is about 2¼ miles away (1¼ miles as the crow files) on Hayden Island. However, if any locals have suggestions for a better location (maybe not Roosters though ;-), please let us know by posting to this thread.

Hope to see you there!

- Bruce

[siggy_freud]

Excellent. I live in Portland and have been thinking about using MS for my LS1/4L60E swap, so this should work out great

[dc]

Made my reservations I'll see you there

[Hahns5.2]

Awesome, I'm just across the river

[rb70383]

Yay! I definite will try to be there. Depends on co-workers though.

[rb70383]

Noob question, how does the lecture go? I can normally remember a lot of things, until I sleep that night. So anything for notes or do people normally bring a notebook? Wow I sound like a nerd.

Got the reservations too.

[Mario]

Good to hear!

[Bernard Fife]

rb70383,

The discussions are pretty informal. We typically have slides to show, and a plan to present them, but this is flexible, and we invite people to interject with questions and comments as appropriate. This works especially well at the west coast meets, which tend to be smaller and less formal.

Generally, we make all the slides available on the forums shortly after the meet, so note-taking is entirely optional. The slides only capture what we planned to say, though, not what actually gets said. There is usually a good discussion of some of technical points at the social events in the evening too (along with a fair bit of 'bench racing').

Lance.

[Joe]

Will there be any news on the B&G PWC?? Been afraid to ask but I'm looking for another wide band and would prefer to wait for the PWC if there is any hope of a release in the future.

Thanks,

Joe-

[RacnJsn95]

Awww man, I wish I would have seen this earlier... I would love to be there for the info, check out some rides with MS, and pick some brains... Unfortunately I've already made reservations and bought tickets to Vegas on the 30th to go to the SEMA show.

[grippo]

Bruce just found out that he can't make it to the Meeting because of new work commitments. I can tell you he was not happy about this and let everyone involved know it. I had made plans around his giving the model based presentation on Sunday, so I am planning on leaving Sunday first thing. But I will be available for discussions/ questions all day and night on Saturday. And anything I can't answer, Bruce is a phone call away.

Lance has graciously agreed to give all the presentations on Sunday and Bruce is supplying the slides for his portion. Lance has been working on model-based transmission and suspension controls for a while now and fully understands the concepts from both practical and engineering/ physics viewpoints. He has been involved in testing on the engine side also and can relate his experiences with this.

[ForumAdminTeam]

All, Just a note that there has been a change in venue for the evening social events in Portland. These will be held in Elmer's lounge, 9848 N Whitaker Rd. Portland (503) 289-9848. This has the advantage of being within 'staggering distance' of the hotel! See you there!

[Hahns5.2]

Disappointed that you guys canceled the lecture, 4 of us showed up to hear what you guys had to say

[Bernard Fife]

Hahns,

Yeah, we were disappointed not to have it too. We only saw two users lobby before the races, no-one at the races, and we didn't see anyone Saturday night while we were at Elmer's. Bruce had work commitments (but the snow on the east code ended up cancelling his flight out anyhow), Al was already gone early Sunday morning. I likely would have stayed if I had know anyone was certain to appear, though - especially if anyone had traveled from out-of town.

I held out as long as I could, but was getting sicker and sicker Saturday, and had to make a run for home before I was too sick to make the 9 hour drive. I did check the lobby and meeting room before I left, and didn't see anybody, so I left a note at the front desk.

We will post the presentations we had planned in this thread before too long. I will do mine shortly.

Lance.

[Bernard Fife]

Attached is my planned presentation from the aborted Portland meet.

Another planned announcement was a USB/bluetooth Dongle (Bruce): "We are finishing up an isolated USB to serial dongle that should help with people having issues with ground loops with laptops. This board uses an isolated RS232 chip and FTDI. The board also has a Roving Networks Bluetooth module on it as well, so it can be used either with USB or with Bluetooth mode - it self-switches to USB mode if there is a USB cable attached, if unplugged then it is a Bluetooth transceiver. We are using the same 2mm jack like used on the GPIO and uS so a simple cable plugs it in. Phil Tobin and others are working on Android Phone/Tablet apps for bluetooth for tuning and dashboard monitoring, so this should give them the connectivity for uS, GPIO, and the trans controller. We hope to have prototypes in a month or so."

[pascal]

Lance,

Thanks a lot for posting your presentation.

I am experiencing problems though opening it. What kind of file format is this? Or is there a PDF maybe?

Again, thanks for sharing!

Pascal

[Bernard Fife]

Pascal,

I can't recall if it was a zipped PowerPoint (.ppt) or a zipped office drawing.

I will post an unzipped power point file here:

MM2011.ppt

There is a free power point file viewer here: http://www.tucows.com/preview/206534
or user can use the free OpenOffice software: http://www.openoffice.org

Lance.

[pascal]

This worked, thank you!