There are absolutely other ways of doing it. It's ultimately only if you want to use factory hardware that you end up in the situation where you would need to create your own custom knock module.

And there is the rub- the engine is far from factory- and relatively noisy, so the knock system is not that useful.

As an aside, engine was intended to be 9.5:1 modeled after vortec with AFR head/FIRST TPI, have been trying to tune to 87 octane- I have a few avenues left to try but have audible ping in certain areas. Where do you give up and move up in octane?