Poor-sha

I originally posted this as a reply in the C7 Z06 section but thought folks over here might find it interesting as well.

I had some time yesterday so I decided to drop by TPC Racing and had the opportunity to talk to Mike Levitas for a bit about the DSC Sport software. Mike was very generous with his time and I continue to be amazed with his knowledge of suspensions in general and his ability to explain how things work.

I wanted to try and share what I learned from Mike with the Corvette community because I think it will help folks understand what the DSC Sport controller is capable of and help answer some of the lingering questions. An important thing to remember is that unlike traditional suspension changes the DSC Sport controller is dynamic so you don't need to fine tune the calibration to every other suspension change like spring rates or sway bars. The system adapts to how the car is responding so that same calibration should work as well on a C7 Z51, GS, Z06, and Z07 even though the other suspension hardware is different.

I know Mike is working on actual documentation for the software and I've done my best to accurately reflect what I heard but hopefully he can chime in if I misstate something. I'm also not going to cover every settings in the UI but rather those that will help you understand the capabilities.

What I'm showing here is the DSC Sport tuning software with the calibration pulled directly from their web site for a C7 Corvette with the Tractive DDA dampers. This happens to be exactly what is on my car.




Here you will see on the left where you can select which of the 3 calibrations to edit for Tour, Sport, and Track mode. This is also where you can zero out the suspension travel sensors which you will want to do on a perfectly flat surface for the best results.

Next we'll look at the actual shock calibration.



I guess you could think of this like the shock curve but you can totally tailor it. Each percentage has an accompanying voltage that gets sent to the shock and on the Tractive shocks full soft is 2000 ma and full stiff is 0 ma. "Calibrated at:" shows you and allows you to edit the value for the selected cell.

The grayscale illustrates the values in each cell and you might notice that the rear shocks are set a little bit softer than the fronts all the way across the spectrum. You don't need to fill in each cell and can just set an upper and lower value and then use the "Fill Empty" button to have the software smoothly fill in the area in between.

Now we're going to look at how the shock responds to external forces starting with the G table.




As you can see, in the G table you can program how each shock responds based on both the lateral and longitudinal G that the sensors detect. In the screen shot I'm showing the car is pulling a total of 1.4G while braking for a right hand turn. You can see where we are in the shock curve by looking at the settings panel on the right.

At the bottom you also see the "G Comfort Parameters". This is a patch to smooth out the ride in steady state driving. This doesn't matter too much in track mode but it is there and customizable in each mode. "G Rate Max = 20.0" means that at anything below 0.2 G of force on the car just let the shocks go full soft (0% on the shock table). The minute you put more than 0.2G of input in any direction the G table kicks in.

However, the values in the G table are just a start and can be modified in real time by things like brake pressure, smacking the accelerator, vehicle speed, PTM Mode, and shock travel.

Now let's start looking at the other inputs to the controller, starting with brake pressure.




This table is mainly designed to catch that initial hard push on the brakes before the car actually starts decelerating and the G table can kick in. What you see in the Threshold box is that this table doesn't take effect until you hit at least 30 bar of brake pressure and you have to be travelling at least 5 MPH. At that point the values in the grayscale to the left kick in based on how hard you hit the brakes. The decay value means that as soon as the table takes effect it decays away within 1000 ms because by then the car should have started decelerating and the G table kicks in.

In the settings panel you can see where I have selected the 40 bar cell. The percentages you see are cumulative with what is in the G table so the effective cell active from the shock table is a result of adding the G table percentage and the brake cell percentage.

Now let's look at the accelerator table.



The first thing to understand here is that the scale on the left is the throttle position where 1.0 = 100%. Like with braking, this table is only active when a threshold is met and in my example the car needs to be going at least 60 MPH and you need to quickly add 25% or more throttle. It also has a decay because it is designed to catch that transient condition when you smack the gas pedal.

One difference here to the brake table is the way the percentages are used to calculate the effective shock table cell to choose. In this case the cells are what I'll call "base 50%". In other words if the cell is at 50% then the G table value is unchanged. If you change the accel table to 70% then you add 20% to the G table. If you set the accel table to 30% then you will subtract 20% from the G table value. Keep this "base 50%" definition in mind as we'll see it again in the PTM table.



You will only see options in the PTM table if you are in the Track mode in the software. From here you can further stiffen or soften the shocks based on which PTM mode you're in. Like the accel table this is "base 50%" so in the case of my example I am leaving the shock values unchanged in PTM Race but I am softening them slightly in PTM Wet (the UI says Rain).

Next we'll talk about the final two tables - velocity and speed.

The speed table is what I like to refer to as the Autobahn table. It's designed to catch a situation where you are steady state at a high rate of speed but don't want the car to feel floaty because with a lack of G inputs the stocks will normally go soft. In any race track condition this should never kick in because you should be accelerating, braking, or turning enough to at least get in to the G table.



At the top you see the speed and in the settings panel you see the amount of shock to add to the G table (which is likely 0). The threshold box shows the max G force in each direction at which you want this table no longer have any effect. So in the screen shot shown if I am travelling at 130 MPH and don't have at least 0.3 G of input in any direction then the system will add 31% of the shock table in.

Finally, we'll talk about the velocity table. This table uses the sensors on the MR equipped cars that measure suspension travel and speed to further modify how the shocks respond.



Here you see we have cells defined for low/med/high compression and rebound as interpreted from the suspension position sensor. You can fill in those cells to add or remove from the effective shock value and unlike the PTM and Accel tables this is 0% based. In my example here you can see that for my front wheels in low rebound I am actually removing 10% from the effective shock value.

I hope folks have found this useful. I have no relationship with DSC Sport other than being a fan and being very grateful for assistance that Mike has given me at the track.

AmmoVet

From The 1st thread, first slide, Poor-Sha states that: "This is also where you can zero out the suspension travel sensors which you will want to do on a perfectly flat surface for the best results."

Is this to be done prior to downloading the required software or after. I assume that because the unit comes pre-loaded it doesn't matter when?

Will this account for us wide bodies (heavy people)? With this thought in mind, does the unit account for weight of the driver to any extent?

VERBOTEN

subscribed

0Rodney@ridetech

Good info!

Poor-sha

Definitely can be done at any time. Short answer on your second question is that's its not really an issue except maybe when you align the car. Will try to elaborate later when at a keyboard.

BEZ06

Wide body or not, the driver should be in the car when you zero the suspension travel.

It will be easier when the wifi is able to be used and you can sit in the driver's seat with your laptop and tap the button to zero the suspension, but it's still easy enough if you have a long USB or a helper to tap your computer to zero it.

.

Foosh

DSC Sport both aligned my car and installed the controller. Wi-fi is working now. While sitting level on the DSC alignment rack, Mike used it to zero out my suspension travel while sitting in the driver's seat.

AmmoVet

How do we work wi-fi, any details? Is it just a matter of installing the unit in the car and opening some software on a nearby wi-fi capable laptop? Please explain.

Foosh

I'm haven't experimented with it, but once you install it, go to the Bluetooth settings on your phone, and you'll see it. You can then pair with it as you would any other BT device.

The tutorial should be on the DSC website, if not now, then soon. Mike did tell me that all the latest units shipped are set up for wi-fi, so that a USB cable is no longer necessary to do changes to the settings.

Higgs Boson

Last I heard none of them work until Mike finishes testing wifi security. I have not seen an update since.

Foosh

That's probably true and Mike said something about that when I was at his shop on 1/13. He did use it wi-fi to zero out the suspension travel on my car, and I also saw the set-up page on my iPhone.

He's been pretty busy with Daytona last week, and Sebring coming up. I'm also pleased with the way it came set-up, so haven't attempted to go back in and try to reconnect.

c5racr1

For us tuner challenged. Is there a installed default that works well without the end user (me) having to tune it. I'm good at certain things, but this is outside my operating performance. I would like to get the controller, have a few preset tunes that I could just choose from. I tried tuning coilovers and got quite frustrated and went to a coilover with no adjustment that actually worked real good in all the areas, and not great.

Higgs Boson

yeah you just download the latest predone tune from the website and load it. you easily never have to change anything and it will be amazing.

c5racr1

So do I need different sway bars, or as is?

Higgs Boson

you don't "need" to do anything to install the computer....

spearfish25

Poor-sha, thanks for the tutorial. The base 50% understanding is especially helpful.

spearfish25

I found this very helpful for seeing how the reading and writing works. To globally write all the settings for all three modes, you use "Write All" in the top menu drop down. Otherwise the 'write' buttons throughout the tabs only write the information for the tab you're on. It will write that info only to the chassis mode you have selected in the Settings tab. Took me a bit to grasp the concept.

The one thing I feel the software is missing is a true offline editing mode. For example, you can't copy the Gtable from Sport into Track within the software and without the controller connected. A copy/paste between chassis modes within the software (and without reading/writing to the DSC) would be great.

cheapthrills

So do we know if wifi is enabled yet on these? I just ordered one on Friday.

Bullet Tooth

OK. I am from Oklahoma so you guys are going to need to..... talk...... slowly.

I am not a techy guy and I must say that the software configuration ability has my head swimming. I can see that, if you had that aptitude, the ability to change the software parameters could be unbelievably satisfying. But, because I am not so inclined, I have a couple of questions:

1. Do I need to "mess" with the stock software setting, or will I see benefits from the installation of the V2 in base form. (I only track 2-3 times per year)

2. Is the unit now configured so that, if I decide to change the parameters, I can use wifi to do so?

3. I assume this will void the warranty on the mag shocks? That is not a huge concern for me, but I would like to know an educated guess on this issue.

To be honest, this thing is really cheap based upon the unbelievable reviews. I am simply terrified that I will screw up the settings or software. I have the reverse Midas touch concerning electronics - everything I touch turns to ****.

Thanks to any that will make me feel better.

cheapthrills

You DO NOT need to do any of these adjustments in the software, the maps they give you are awesome and have been fine tuned by the pros, the only reason you need to attach to software is to do one minute thing called zero travel, takes like 10 seconds and all you need to do is say yes to 2 or 3 prompts.

Mike tells me the wifi will be available next week and you will be able to do this via wifi, right now you need a USB cable and a laptop as the controller needs to be in the car for this to happen. The wifi will make that painless.

Also once you know how to install this you can swap back to the OEM at anytime, I could do it in less then 20 minutes now that I know how it all sits.

You should see this thread for more info

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...ervations.html