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The original Sniper system was nothing short of a revolution in the EFI conversion game, packaging a fully fleshed-out throttle body injection design into a carb-like form factor that simplified the process of retrofitting carbureted engines with a modern EFI system.
The second-generation design of the system, called Sniper 2, is built on the core concepts of the original Sniper, but with key technological updates throughout – many of which were brought into the fold based on customer feedback. Now, a Bluetooth companion module has been introduced for it, further expanding the power of this potent system. We sat down with Holley software development engineer Ryan Witte to get details about this addition to the Sniper 2 ecosystem.
“Although Sniper 2 and the Bluetooth module are separate devices, we had this type of functionality in mind for Sniper 2 right from the start,” Witte says. “When it comes down to it, the main reason that Bluetooth functionality wasn’t integrated into Sniper 2 natively was simply because it would have added too much cost to the system. Developing these two devices in isolation from one another allows people to choose whether or not they want to add that functionality to their system.”
The Bluetooth module plugs into the same data cable used by the Sniper 2’s 3.5-inch handheld display and is accessed via an app for iOS and Android mobile devices. “And that essentially turns that device into a wireless tuning interface,” notes Witte. “For me, the number one advantage of this interface is that you’re able to do this on your phone by pulling up an app like you would to check your email or send a text. The convenience of that cannot be overstated. The module sits there plugged into the Sniper 2 system, and any time I want to, I can pull out my phone and fire up the app to read gauges or adjust the tune.”
The app initially features seven different digital gauge screens with up to nine gauges displayed on each. Six of these screens are user-customizable, allowing you to pick and choose real-time readouts covering everything from the current engine RPMs to air-fuel ratio and boost pressure.
“It has all of the same data channels that are available from Sniper 2,” says Witte. “The gauges are customizable, too – you can change which channel they are, and you can add warnings as well. By setting low and high thresholds for the information that it’s monitoring, it can change the color of those readouts to yellow or red in order to provide a visual warning if you’re going outside of those established parameters.”
See the Sniper 2 Bluetooth module now
And of course, you also get a full tuning interface in the app. “That allows you to tune virtually all of the parameters that are available on the Sniper 2 – fuel, spark, fan parameters, rev limits, idle speed, and a whole lot more,” he says. “Almost everything available in the PC software is available in the app.” That said, one of the few omissions on the mobile app are tuning tables for creating your own custom fuel map. But as Witte explains, there’s a good reason for that.
“We’ve included a ‘simple’ mode in the app that lets you adjust three different ranges of the fuel table – you can adjust idle AFR, cruise AFR, and wide-open-throttle AFR independently of one another. It essentially mimics what you can do with the 3.5-inch handheld in that regard. At the end of the day, the amount of people who need to really dig into the fuel tables with a Sniper system is pretty low. And in most of those situations, a mobile device just isn’t an ideal interface to do that kind of work. Trying to manipulate a 31x31-cell table on something the size of a phone is going to be inherently difficult to do with any kind of accuracy. And the power users who will be using those functions will likely prefer to do that kind of work on a PC interface anyway.”
Adding this functionality to an existing Sniper 2 install is a simple process that will likely be familiar to anyone who has ever paired a Bluetooth speaker to their smartphone. “This uses the same data cable as the 3.5-inch handheld,” Witte points out. “So you literally just screw the cable’s M8 connector into the Bluetooth module in the same way you would when connecting the handheld. The module is also powered by that data cable, so there’s no other physical connections required. Once that cable is hooked up, you just press the button on the module to put it in pairing mode.”
From there you fire up the mobile app, which walks you through a brief overview of the features and interface before prompting you to pair your device with the Sniper 2 Bluetooth module. “If you choose to cancel out of that, it will drop back into a ‘demo’ mode, which lets you view everything that the app can do without it actually being connected to a Bluetooth module or Sniper 2 ECU,” he says.
“The pairing process is also very straightforward – you just follow a few prompts to establish the connection. Once the module and mobile device are successfully paired, you’re good to go. The module will automatically re-establish a connection with the mobile device with every key cycle after that, and there’s also a button in the header of the app that you can press at any time to manually reconnect.”
The Sniper 2 Bluetooth module can be ordered now at Holley.com, and the mobile application can be downloaded from either the Apple App Store or the Google Play store. While the app initially offers a wide range of features, Witte tells us that development is ongoing, and many more features will be rolled out through software updates.
“That includes things like digital ‘dashboards’ for the gauges, data logging, importing tunes, and saving tunes. At the moment, you can use the Tune Wizard to create brand-new tunes by answering a few simple questions and making any adjustments you want to make – it’s the same process that’s used when you first install the Sniper 2 system. That allows you to create a tune and customize it after the fact, and the data monitoring in digital gauge screens allows you to look at the data to evaluate any changes you’ve made. You have the ability to create a tune and send it to the Sniper 2 system, but right now you can’t take that tune back out of the Sniper 2 system and save it to your phone. That capability will be added to the application later. It will allow you to save tunes to your device and even share them with your friends. A data logging feature will be part of that as well.”
He adds that the ambitious development roadmap for the Sniper 2 Bluetooth module may ultimately make this the preferred interface for many users. “Once those features roll out, the app will effectively be a complete replacement for the 3.5-inch handheld – you could leave it at home at that point because the app will be able to do everything the handheld can do, and more.” The 3.5-inch handheld display is currently included with every Sniper 2 system while the Bluetooth module is available separately, but that may change down the line.
“We would love to eventually package the Bluetooth module with the Sniper 2 system and offer that as our main kit,” Witte says. “There will, of course, always be a place for the 3.5-inch handheld – not everyone wants to use their phone with their EFI system. But our expectation is that this app is going to become so far advanced beyond the handheld’s capabilities, everyone will want to use it.”
