Re: Feeling dumb about buying Ostrich
Well I have both and to be honest.. They are both great. You can't go wrong with either one.
They both have their pluses and minuses. Here they are as I see them...
Ostrich Pros
- Bank Switching - can upload multiple bins to it and switch between them on the fly without having the vehicle cut out
- Smooth as silk emulation
- Can upload a full bin to the ostrich and your truck won't stall
- Low Price
Ostrich Cons
- Need a burner to make final chip
- Need an ALDL cable to hook up to laptop for real time bubble operation
- Batteries go bad and you lose the tune that is stored on it. Normally this takes 75 years but as we all know, if it gets really cold out, batteries lose their charge.
Autoprom Pros
- Simutaneous ALDL Logging and Emulation in TunerPro when in Autoprom mode.
- Read and Write to and from chips with built in reader/writer so you can pull tunes off a chip for editing and burn final versions of chips to be permanately installed
- 3 Channel A/D converter for hooking up addition inputs and record in ALDL Stream
- ALDL Logging - No need for addition cable to connect to laptop
- Emulation is pretty good
- ALDL Passthru mode so other loggers can be used with the Autoprom. BUT it will only pass the ALDL Data, you can't emulate in the mode and use datamaster to see the results.
- Requires only 1 USB cable to the computer
- BLUETOOTH version - this can all be done wirelessly. Look MA no wires connect to my laptop. I am ten feet away, want to see me change the idle speed of my truck ...
(Logging can occur only in Autoprom mode in Tunerpro wirelessly so you can't use Datamaster to log with the Autoprom in ALDL mode only.)
Autoprom Cons
- Requires a BIN patch for your chip to get the Autoprom mode in Tunerpro to Work(Simutaneous logging and Emulation at the same time i.e. the bubble)
- Only can hold 1 BIN
- Emulation is not nearly as smooth as the Ostrich - I.E can hickup and stall the vehicle when driving. The Autoprom and ECM don't play nice from time to time and cause your vehicle to act strange. Only had this happen to me a couple of times in the 2 years I used it with it installed permanately.
- Uploading of a bin can make the vehicle stall.
- 3 Addition A/D channels can only be logged in Tunerpro.. they will not show up in Datamaster
- 3 A/D Channel Connector is an Extra Cost
- More Expensive than ostrich
- Bluetooth version is $100 more
Either way I would suggest having the WBo2 output connected to the ECM for logging purposes. That way any ALDL logger will log the data and you aren't stuck to having to have the Autoprom in there just to see what AFR you are running.
I use my Ostrich most of the time now. During all the testing of Code59, I could switch to different version of code59 for testing purposes. It really helped me test different code changes we made. If it was acting weird I would just switch to a different bank on the fly and be back to driving normal. With the Autoprom I would have had to upload a differnt bin with a good chance the truck would die. Not good since I was testing this all while driving it in real conditions.
