I allready have a DHP with timing unlocked, even though it is not the exact PCM that came with my car when it was new will I be able to change the parameters, or does DHP encrypt there changes.
Brent
I allready have a DHP with timing unlocked, even though it is not the exact PCM that came with my car when it was new will I be able to change the parameters, or does DHP encrypt there changes.
Brent
Brent, our product is designed to work with unlocked VCM/PCM's that you'll find from factory vehicles.
I am not sure if DHP locks their VCM/PCM's or not. If you can recover it with a tech-2 then our stuff will work. You'll have to ask DHP though if the VCM/PCM you have is locked or not.
We got this guy Not Sure, ...
Ok, I guess I should try it and see if it works if not I just have to get my PCM reflashed by a dealer and then I should have no problems tunning
I don't want to be rude about this, but I will warn you now that any dissassembling of our code is expressely forbidden in the purchase agreement of the unit.
We spent countless time working on our program to make it what it is. If you wish to make your own program, we will be more than happy to reset your pcm so that you may program it. Otherwise, I would probably sell the unit and start with a stock computer for your year.
If you have any questions on this feel free to email me, I think you have my contact info already ?
I don't mean to be rude either so don't take this the wrong way but wouldn't GM feel the same way about what you and DHP have done with their stock code? Or do/did you have express written permission to disassemble and "hack" their code?Originally Posted by beyerch
Not rude at all, allow me to explain.
You buy a car as a whole unit, PCM included. GM does not make performance units for these pcm at all. GM makes money selling cars (as a complete whole) and not PCM's per se. Furthermore, while they have much money tied up into developing their PCM programming, etc, they money is recouped to them when they sell the car. There is no more money for them to make by selling more "stock" pcms except as replacement parts. Therefore if you were to copy your stock computer, etc, you are not really causing GM any harm at this point. Their calculated cost per car for each pcm has been recouped and they have no fear of losing out on that as in order to buy a car, you are paying for the pcm! You can't buy the car without it!
However ....
DHP is in the business of making Performance calibrations for particular cars. We have put in countless hours and money (equipment and dyno time does NOT come cheap). Are only revenue is in the pcm's we sell. While people who are making modifications to their own unit does not bother me personally, the implication that certain devices will let you take all of our code, showing you how we do things, and then allowing you to duplicate that has serious implications for us. ( i.e. We can get undercut with our own product by someone with no investment, etc.... a sad but true fact in a software economy)
Because of that fact, we include the verbage we do in the sales agreement for the pcm's. We WILL actively protect what we have worked to make.
The other sad but true part of this is that if things do get out of hand, we will not be able to continue development on this and other platforms and that will hurt progress rather than help as we won't put more of our own money into R&D if we can't recoup it ......
If someone wants help with THEIR particular setup we are always available to assist with proper tuning....
Hope that helps to explain.
Charles
P.S. Our own editor will be out shortly and it will allow you to SAFELY make changes to our software without compromising it as far as we are concerned.
Ok, so let me get this straight. If I bought a DHP PCM and then proceeded to tweak it's programming using VCM suite you would not have a problem so long as I:
-Did not share your programming with the public
-Did not copy my "tweaked" DHP programming and then shared it with the public
Am I accurately understanding you? Or do you have a problem with anyone "tweaking" DHP's programming?
In case of confusion, here is how I see it; and if you don't agree with me, let me know on what point...
If I bought a DHP PCM, and say I owned it for a period longer than what your "free tuning support" covered, I would have to say that I would feel it was "ok" for me to use the VCM tuning software to make adjustments to that PCM for my application so long as I didn't supply or make available your base or modified programming to the public. At least, that is the way I see it. I can understand your point on not wanting your "tuning secrets" to get out in the public.
You are correct and that is exactly what I am trying to convey.
I'm all for the rightful owners of their code making any changes they need; however, the question becomes, HOW do you make sure that people do not abuse it? Well I have a few solutions ;D
#1 - We make MANY changes to our programs. Many of those changes will not appear in this editor (as far as I can tell) as I doubt they will support the parameters. Many of these are subtle changes. I can use these changes to analyze anything that gets out. In some cases I could narrow it down to the person who bougth the pcm originally.
#2 - Our own product will allow you to make many changes to YOUR pcm while ensuring that it doesn't get leaked out.
#3 - If we have problems with abuse of code, we can easily LOCK all future releases rendering them useless with such editors except our own.
I have no wish/desire for option 3, but It does me no good to spend R&D and time figuring out what works for these vehicles to only have the info stolen.
Besides the fear of people copying and using the info for their own, I also now have another dilemma... product support.
When we did our calibrations we put many months and many $$$'s into the process and have refined it many times and we know that our setup works for the majority of the cars out there with the basic mods.
Obviously it won't support all cars, etc, so i completely understand the need for personal tuning. HOwever, what happens when someone's tweaked dhp fails to perform or damage occurs? Will *I* get support emails and/or flames online about how a DHP pcm blew up their car, or will the person who modified the code come forward and accept responsibility? Furthermore, how do i decide if its a bad tuning issue or a product fault with an editor???
Support may become more of a headache than the fear of getting ripped off, but only time will tell!
Charles
Charles, I understand your point of view and your worries. Unfortuneately, the only thing that I can tell you is that you are always going to have people out there that want to hack your "tuning" no matter how much you try to guard it; and they will succeed. Case-in-point, look at Microsoft.
In my honest opinion, I think there is only one reason why people are motivated to do this. I think they do it because of cost. When Microsoft charges $350+ for an OS that is full of bugs, I can see why people get upset and try to find "less than legal" ways around paying full price for it. I know DHP does not offer OS's full of bugs, but I think you guys need to take a step back and look at the big picture. There are people out there that want stuff done that just can't be done by you without spending a lot of money.
I can tell you that I have 3 close personal friends that own 3800 Series II SC OBDII cars that just don't have, nor want to spend the money that your company wants for a custom PCM. They say it's just too much. Now I know you said that you spend a lot of time and "R&D" in tuning. And I can understand where it is time-intensive in tuning an individual's car and their specific mods. But many people feel that DHP can't justify the cost of an "off the shelf" tuning when the tune is already there on your HDD's. Its one thing when someone comes to you with a 3800 Series II SC application where they added a turbo and you have to spend a lot of time going over something that isn't done very much. But I honestly can't provide any arguement against someone who just wants Pass-Key and the speed limiters removed, as well as perhaps 2 degrees less timing at WOT and doesn't want to pay the amount of money DHP is asking for something like that.
Here, let me put it this way. I have been doing chips for the 3800 Series II SC engines using the 95 Bonneville OBDI PCM for quite a while. I can agree with you that I spent a lot of time on that very first chip, and getting that PCM to work 100% with the series II engine. But since then, I have done countless chips for "customers" using those computers and every chip that gets sent out is basically the same thing, less minor adjustments to taylor it to each specific application. With that being said, I can't justify more than $50 for a custom chip when the program is already there on my HD and I have less than 10min in tuning and buring a chip for someone. Am I worried about people stealing my tuning? Nope. Why? People who are going to steal my tuning will steal it no matter how much I try to guard it. But, to prevent this, I price my custom chips so low that it would not be WORTH IT for someone to steal my tuning.
In other words, I think the reason why you guys have worries about people stealing your code or are worried about backlash when something goes wrong is because you charge too much for "off-the-shelf" programming. I don't worry about people coming after me if something goes very wrong with their engine because A) they agree to the disclaimer when they buy the chip, and B) who is going to complain about a $50 custom chip?
Don't take this the wrong way but you are going to have to deal with the problems your high prices create if you want to keep making that money. If you only charged $100 for an "off the shelf" PCM program I can guarantee you that you would have way more business and less problems like "hacking" and "customer disappointment", simply because it isn't worth their time to worry about it. Sure, you won't be making as much money per PCM, but greed comes with its share of problems.
That is just the way I see it.
I understand where you are coming from, but it depends on the initial investment.
The cost of EACH pcm is dictated by many things including market, intial cost, operating expenses, R&D for new products, cost of support ,etc.
First and foremost, WHY do you use obd-i computers instead of obd-ii? Its real hard to do obd-ii! You have found that its easier to retrofit the computers then it is to discover how these work. That is fine and I myself almost went that route.
Now, before we got anywhere, I had put in almost a year and a half on this stuff. Istarted way back in 99. To get the equipment was almost 40K, that included financing to get what we needed, but that is a real cost.
On top of that we spent many days at the dyno. A day at the dyno runs anywhere from 500 - 800 a day depending on how much they like you.I'd say we at least spent 12 days worth of dyno time tweaking and experimenting. Say $600 a day * 12 = $7200.
We have a real business, so we paid our fees and registerred, say 1K.
We have a website which runs ~100 a month. yes there are cheaper but I'd rather make sure its a stable site, etc. ($1200 a year)
We have an accountant, say $2K.
We have a legal representative on retainer, $2K.
We have INSURANCE so if something does go wrong with one of our units, our clients are not in the cold. $3K.
We then have expenses such as cores, shipping, packing materials, etc. Which I can't even guess but we'll just say $2K.
Then we have to save money for R&D for new products. Once again, we have to prove the new stuff. We ALMOST went out and bought an 04 GTP to ensure we had enough time; however, we couldn't find a way to afford it. I'd say this is around 10 - 20K a year at least currnetly that is what it pans out to.
Then, we need to get SOMETHING for our efforts. We cannot afford to have a real staff so we do this in our nights and weekends.....
Oh and one more thing, the RETAIL price is $299. What does that mean? The retailer sells for $299. We DO NOT get $299. retailers get usually between 20% - 30% of retail price... So do the math we see more like $240 or so if we're lucky. approx.
Now lets add this up ofr a second.... basically we're looking at for the FIRST year 75,000 to pay for. WOW! Did we charge $75K for one pcm to someone, nope! (btw, 75,000 / 240 = 312.5 units *hrmmmmm*)
We took that number, did the math and decided what would break us even in a REASONABLE amount of time and that is where the price came from.
Of course you can charge $50 a unit for your stuff but that is because #1 your cost of entry was significantly lower due to market demand, competition, and availability of the tools and knowledge. (we do obd-i stuff as well so there is no kidding me there.). #2 Secondly, as you have already done those long enough you can easily do the obd-i / obd-ii swap much more economically OTHERWISE you wouldn't be doing it that way now would you ?
I can completely understand how that price is misconstrued and that people get the impression that we are sitting around doing nothing and just reaping in money; however, those are anything but justified thoughts.
The reality is that we put almost all of our cash back into R&D for new product. We have 12 new product releases (NON PCM) slated for 2004. Also, we are going to do our best to dedicate REAL human resources to this project to keep that going.
The cycle for our company is such as ....
Initial Investment --> Design Product --> Sell Product @ calculated cost --> re-invest product proceeds to pay investment + R&D --> Create New Product --> Sell new Product, etc...
If people wish to bypass the part of paying a fair price based on ALL factors, then we cannot continue to make new product and we will cease to make product.
What you will not find on here is that alot of the informatoin that got out there to get done the pcm projects came from us in one extent or another. If we are gone, or move elsewhere, that would suck. (sorry!) (this board is not where all the excitement is and alot goes on behind closed doors as should be evidenced by the sudden appearance of hptuners)
Lets see where the first 04 / 05 editors appear from. *hint*. (and other mind blowing products).
As far as motives, there are other motives at play here which shall not be brought up but are less than noble but that is for another time when that presents itself.
I can understand that some people will never pay for anything at any price. That is life unfortunately. Other people truly don't understand the amount of effort that goes into the work to do something the right way. Rest assured however, that as time goes on and we recoup investments and other products are released, prices will go down. Furthermore, we offer aggressive upgrade paths on competitor products and updates to our own code.
The bottom line is that we put out a huge amount of captial to get this ball rolling BEFORE ANYONE else had anything. We have no plans on going anywhere and we will continue to be the innovators as far as PCM Technology goes. We will put out the BEST products, period. However cannot and willnot be "starving artists" and we will not allow others to take advantage of our work. In the long run, that does nothing than to undermine the community.
I'm sorry, two more points
#1 - While you may charge $50 for a program, what are the true costs to do an obd-ii to obd-i swap in both equipment for an end user and time? For instance if I were to ask for an obd-i pcm for my 98 gtp tomorrow what is required? How much $$ is required and how much time?
#2 - I take personal exception to implying that we are greedy. Without understanding our business and our costs and plans, that is a rather presumptuous statement. I think my previous post, should help clarify.
#3 - I'm sure you or some people will not believe those #'s but, they're very close. The cost of being the first ones to start a market is far more expensive than it is for those that follow in behind you. As we plan on continuing to be the innovators, we're in for a beating i'm sure. ;D
I'm very sorry, ONE MORE THING and I promise thats it heheeheh
I forgot to mention this and I do not know why .....
Besides from our normal expensives we HEAVILY sponsor our target markets and we donate time, product, and cash whenever possible.
In 2k2 we donated approximately $5,000 to support grand prix, grand am, monte, events. $3,000 cash was given to the grand prix gathering charity event.
In 2k2 we donated approximately $6,00 to support events (both local and national).
If we were greedy as you imply, I hardly doubt we would waste our time with donating !
For 2004 we plan on at least matching what we did in 2k3. Speaking of, if you have an event let us know!
Charles
Sorry... I have to favor beyerch in this one...
M$ makes the program even harder to copy for the people that cannot look into the internet and will not look into the internet for various reasons.. While on years before a family would do an upgrade to 3 posible computers for $99 bucks now they have to pay $300. Instead of buying the software out, they have to have a family meeting to decide which ones to do first and if they can afford it, while Mr bill gates has over 57 BILLION dollars of personal wealth he is just trying to find ways of "suck on you" some more..
You probably charge $50.00 as I did ($100) when I had tunercat and OBDIs.... but when I had to buy edit (locked systems) I was unable to earn anything due to the higher prices of the cables and I found it outrageous to charge $650 for a tune to be able to earn my $100. So I did it for the fun of it and for the love of art... There was a lot of time, and you cant argue that time is $, invested into the few cars I did for a measly $100. In the end tunning a few supercharged cars netted me over 60 hours of tunning on each and I earned the miraculous ammount of $1.66 an hour... im sorry but that is a salary of a kid in Santo Domingo (dominican Republic).
I can understand the point of Mr beyerch, since i have been there a few times, where the time spent is a lot even if the cost where minimal to start with...
I have to tell you that I have invested, between tunning equipment and such things over $4k in cables, scanners, programs and only been able to recoup around $1k in 1.5 years. Maybe it may sound as a bad business plan, but hey, I never did it for a business, I just did it for myself, but then it started to get a bit difficult to do it w/o any profit...
Now I tell you this... you pay 399 for hypertech... why is it so hard for you to pay a little less for a custom tune for YOUR mods? and why is it difficult for you to pay me $500 bucks for a real custom tune for your car?
I have strapped cars in the dyno that had a hypertech and I Have gained over 20rwhp over that tune... Do I or dont I deserve it? I will feel ackward that all that time in learning how an engine works and how to make it cleaner, more efficient, more powerful, and faster will be stolen by someone who doesn't WANT to pay for it...
With all honesty... If you want your car to run you should expect to pay for whatever mods are necesarry... I dont see people complaining for paying 1400 bucks for a set of rods whose cost of manufacture is less than $200.
How about this? Did you know that the cost of a Big Mac with coke, fries, and handwork is less than $1? Yet you pay w/o a hitch the $2.99 or whatever they charge you.. They are in here for the business...
I can surely understand your point that you feel software is reproducible w/o cost and that if it where cheaper you could "afford" it or feel ok by paying a lower ammount of money, but there are a lot more things to it than what you want to pay for something...
The point is that many things have to be guarded and taken care of but sometimes too much guard can make people want even more to copy what you have done.
I forgot to add and this is in favor of subzero...
I find it outrageous that to change some parameters (2 or 3) you would be charged a full blown tune...
I dont know if you (beyerch) offer a saver package of changing 3 or 4 parameters per costumer request and it be a lot cheaper than that... I sure know I do...
When I do simple things as disabling cags, fans speedo and such I charge $150. Which I think its more than fair.
Not to make another crap about this.. but put it this way and I mean no bad to anyone in hptuners.. but I believe that one car 499+ another car 399... then if you want to add another its $3000???
Look at carputing.. the cost of the converter from Carputing is $65.00
Did you know that?? they are selling it to you for 550.
A total unlocked copy will run you in the vecinity of 16k... and hp tuners with all the cars (which are quite a few) will run you $33k
I mean 33K!!!!! DAMN!!!! that is a huge ammount of $ if you ask me.. how many cars would you have to tune at $500 a pop? 66 cars... it means 1.27 a week.. which depending on where its not that many... that COULD be a side of income but I dont know that many shops that tune 2 cars a week or so.. maybe if you owned a dyno...
Actually the only people who could probably do more than 2 cars a week is the people from mail order tunning whose targeted audience is 260 million people.. (US).
Here in PR I tune about 4-5 cars a YEAR.. why? because the fun here are jap cars.. and they dont have programable pcms like we do...
Do you think HPtuners will say.. oh well Chris..since you live in PR and we know that your market is a lot less and slower we want to help you out because we are good people and I am going to offer you the complete package for $5k... HELL NO!!! and the difference between the 5K package and the 33k package is just a few bytes more of info... talk about surcharging
Anyways.. if you buy f/y bodies... 7K is your choice from a converter that their cost must be in the vecinity of 60-100 bucks...
No one has right to put price on other peoples knowledge or abilities...
I cant shell out 7k that easily though
I don't want to get involved in this..
But just to add.. $65 is a very low ball figure.
There is MUCH more than just a few bytes change... a LOT more. GM doesn't cookie cutter it as much as you think. And if you think differently spend some more time going through all the code. We've spent enough frustrating hours doing this to find these things out.
Also, fwiw.. figure collectively HP Tuners has put in over 120 hours a week at this for over half a year. We all have day jobs and women that are needy.
We feel our prices are VERY fair.
Current editing software available that VIN locks.. $550..
Scan tool software that does enhanced parameters and bi-directional controls.. $499.. That alone totals over $1K.
We sell a combined package for $499 that isn't VIN locked and we also provide you with a message forum where users of our product can gather and discuss tuning issues and the likes.
We also have contact e-mails, and return phone calls.
With our product you can rewrite your calibration in just 30 seconds.. You can read the entire PCM in just 2 minutes.. Think of all the time you are saving.
We support MANY vehicles and yes, if you do add up the list it is quite expensive, but do you really need to tune that many vehicles? I doubt many will ever do all of those vehicles. The scenario with the entire 30K package and tuning 1.2 cars a week is flawed. If you are tuning so few vehicles a week then there is no need for the entire package.
There are a lot more expenses to selling something publicly then just interface hardware parts and assembly.
We got this guy Not Sure, ...
$65 is NOT a lowball figure really... when you calc it out the converter alone is worth that and assembled...
Now... why is the 1.2 car view FLAWED? The more cars you CAN tune the more cars you will be able to tune in the end... a specialist doctor will not see as many patients as a generalist... That is something you must keep in mind... In the end an SPS system costs $800. A bit different system though...
But...
The example of a byte change is how you pay for hours of work that are "software" and not hardware.. it takes as much time and $ to do each...
The other thing.. No one is who to put a price on anybody elses work, the market does that... But... Because efilive is worth $200 the cable is worth 200 and the Carputing is worth 550 it doesn't mean that yours because it has all is while worth $1000. why? because since there is a MONOPOLY people charge whatever they want... BUt that is not the point...
The point to all this is that time spent is $ and you have the right to charge as part of your product...
no doubt all this stuff is hard work with lots of, ??? and
The difference between having backyard software that does cool stuff to something that is saleable, we have learnt, is calculated after many mornings at 3am with your eyeballs hanging out of your head... there is a serious amount of time involved here. Even though we don't offer "packaged tunes" you would be surprised at the amount of dyno time we have put in on getting the software right... my own personal car has done more miles on the dyno than on the street lately
We think we have an open, flexible product that is very reasonably priced and above all open for improvement and ridicule. If you want something changed or included in a future release great!! Lets hear it and get it on the roadmap...
i for one am overwhelmed by the response so far and can't wait for the real feedback to begin. When we get the time we will continue getting the stuff we have learned during this experience out on the forum (some of it is pretty funny... ever heard of a guy taking his racecar out in the snow to test something??? - LOL)
Chris...
I count sheep in hex...
that's why our product is less than half that combined price and is not VIN locked, has unencrypted bins and is very flexible when it comes to recovering from flashing errors. Seriously, we had well over 2 weeks worth of debate on packaging and pricing. We think we have got a reasonable starting point that is easy to understand and meets the needs/expectations of just about everyone we've asked...
We've even had people say the STD version is too cheap!!
I count sheep in hex...
If only the people on your board knew how IRONIC of a statement this is from you. ;D This is absolutely correct statement and the flash cable has pricing based on what its going to take to make back R&D, time, and to further fund the project. So do our pcm's....
Undercutting our software "off the shelf units" would be like us undercutting the cable by putting out a hack to bypass the little security there is. (for example only!) Its just not right, period.
Oh one more thing about the Series I guy, one of our partners is the guy who basically setup the major Series I tuners with their gear
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