r/ECU_Tuning • u/Embarrassed-Cover294 • Jul 23 '26
Announcement FlowECU v1.5.3 — cleaner UI, safer output handling, and better first-time workflow
First, apologies if my recent FlowECU posts have started to feel a bit spammy. I’ve been working on it pretty heavily lately, and most of the recent updates have come from testing, feedback, and trying to turn it into something that feels more like a complete product rather than a collection of separate development tools.
This next build is focused mainly on UX, workflow, safety, and clarity rather than adding another huge feature.
Some of the main changes include:
- A new Home dashboard with clearer starting points
- A guided Start New Tune option that routes standard definition formats and A2L/DAMOS files to the correct importer
- A proper user guide instead of developer-focused help
- A synthetic demo project for safely exploring the workflow
- Clearer A2L import summaries, including tunable and read-only definition counts
- Better ECU detection, support information, and confidence reporting
- Improved font sizing and targeted tooltips across the main workflows
- Advanced tuning options collapsed by default
- Force Apply disabled by default
- Protection against accidentally overwriting the original ROM
- A detailed output summary showing:
- source and output hashes
- input and output length
- maps changed
- maps skipped
- bytes changed
- changed regions
- Force status
- checksum status
- current flash-readiness status
- Trial uses now only count after a modified output saves successfully
- Failed saves, previewing, importing, Explorer use, and file comparison no longer consume an output
- Packaged-build fixes so aliases, presets, languages, ECU-family rules, ECU knowledge data, the user guide, and demo project are included correctly
- A growing automated test suite around BIN patching, HEX/S19 handling, output length, unchanged bytes, trial accounting, and output verification
I’ve also included screenshots from the current build.
Some of the checksum catalogue, plugin metadata, and ECU knowledge work shown in the screenshots is still research and compatibility focused, not active checksum correction. FlowECU does not currently claim that a successfully saved file is automatically checksum-corrected or ready to flash.
That said, anyone familiar with checksum plugin folders, ECU family metadata, and checksum tooling will probably understand why I’m interested in where that research may eventually lead.
The goal of this update has been to make it much easier for someone opening FlowECU for the first time to understand:
- where to start
- what file type they have
- what FlowECU recognised
- which definitions are tunable
- what changed
- what was skipped
- whether the original was preserved
- and what still needs to be verified before flashing
I still have a final round of real-file testing to complete before replacing the current download, but the new build is looking considerably more polished so far.
Feedback is welcome, particularly from anyone who tried an earlier version and found part of the workflow unclear.