I really want 9 assist levels, which is as close as I can get to torque sensing without major work or a new bike.
Remember that all of these things are only going to give you on/off control of the chosen assist level, which is not anything like torque sensing or even variable control via the pedals. They work by detecting that you are pedalling, at all, and then turn the motor on at the full amount of whatever that assist level allows. The throttle is the only variable control on the "assist level" types of controllers (other than those that directly support a torque sensor).
If you want to use the pedals to variably control the system, you can "simply" install the Cycle Analyst v3.x from ebikes.ca and use your existing PAS sensor to connect to it as a cadence sensor, and it's throttle output connects to your controller's throttle input in place of the actual throttle. (if you want to also have a throttle, that connects to the CA input for that).
Then you can go thru all the settings in the CA and configure it to operate the way you want it to, per it's manual (don't skip sections you think you won't use because their defaults may not be what you need).
Then leave the controller set to max assist level, and let the CA interpret your pedalling to modulate that the same way you would with the throttle.
I use this to control the heavy heavy-cargo-trike SB Cruiser. This way I have all the power, speed, etc available all the time, and simply pedal faster or slower to control how much of it I am using.
It will probably take some experimentation to get the specific response you are after, and you'll have to make sure to shift gears as needed while pedalling to maintain the cadence required for a given amount of assist, and/or set it up to give you the right amount of assist for whatever gear you're in.
