Greetings from California

Hey all,

I am a computer security guy who is looking for new fun things to break after 20 years of developing open source security tools. After selling my company I decided to learn how to rebuild a car from scratch, both hardware and software, so I went shopping at mountune for components for my '16 Ford Focus RS.

One of the things they got me is a Syvecs ECU and after a lot of searching hpacademy seemed to be the ideal place to build a good tuning foundation.

A friend of mine had tuned a 2012 BMW Alpina B7 for me and then sent me a nifty little tune for a 2015 Fiat Abarth. Those two experiences sold me on this exciting field.

After the intro I have a quick question that I don't know where to post: although I will be replacing the ECU of my car, I'd love to experiment fiddling with the onboard ECU before I do that. Is there a thread/link recommending the most convenient way to do this? I'd like to download a file to my computer via ODB-2, edit it in a more or less graphical way and re-flash the car in a way that won't brick the car's ECU even if I did something wrong.

I did a quick search and KESS caught my attention, but the company that originally makes it doesn't seem very good at communicating and the first hit on google redirected me to a version of KESS that would be bricked if connected to the internet? I am a tad confused, so: what software kit with hardware interface would you choose to (relatively safely) play with a 2016 Focus RS?

Thanks for having me here and any answers,

Dominique