Repeated hardware tests and tuning, investing cost and time, are usually required to assure a satisfactory performance of the suspension seat. In this study, an EILS(ECU-in-the-loop) method was proposed to develop a controller for a semi-active suspension seat with a MR(magneto-rheological) damper. EILS system was developed using a real-time seat dynamics model communicating with ECU hardwares under a closed loop environment utilizing Matlab/Simulink and xPC $TargetBox^{TM}$. A sky-hook based control algorithm with optimized damping coefficients was verified to reduce the energy consumption and to improve the vibration response performance.