It is obvious that the Zf 8Hp is an amazing transmission and will offer a lot of drivability comfort and performance in comparison to old 5 speed manual transmissions.
The negative part that is stopping this huge step forward in the community is the fact that we need to pay 1000+ for just the control unit to put in a $500 car not to mention adapters tuning and the hassle involved over paying the money, and this does not make sense.

Our community is huge, so to assume that we are unable to create an open source Arduino based option is completely insane.

The 8HP is an automatic transmission so I believe most of the solenoids are on/off solenoids except for the clutches that are PWM i believe.

Option 1: Isnt it possible to use the stock tcu and control by injecting the specific can messages
Option 2: do as Damien Maguire did with the 5HP and use previously written code for many other automatic transmissions and modify it to work with the 8Hp A manual only mode is good enough as far as I am concerned...

Please let me know if someone is already working on it...
I know HTG have done it and Turbo lamik, but they charge 1000+ for the controller and if they did it I bet that a collaboration in the community will do it and provide it as an affordable and open source solution for all of us.