MotorMouth93

iTrader: (1)

Sup guys, I just graduated with my BSEE in computer architecture and integrated circuits and I have some downtime before I start my job in January, so I figured I'd start on something I've been thinking about for a while.

I've always thought gauge pods were tacky and ricey and there really isn't much room in the cluster for anything else, so I had the idea of cutting out the trip counter and replacing it with a small LCD display which would serve as a trip counter as well as a display for anything else I can think of. I've mainly been working on the UI and framework so the values shown are garbage, but you get the idea.







It's a 16-bit color LCD so it can show 65,xxx colors, so enough to match any possible cluster lighting scheme you can come up with, the pictures are set up with amber text on a black background but the camera didn't capture it very well, it's not purple looking IRL at all. Also, I wrote a software tool to make creating additional fonts from regular font files relatively easy so it can display almost anything you want. Any color, any font, it also changes brightness with the **** by the steering wheel and goes to max brightness with white text when the lights are turned off.

The UI as it is now has a main screen with 5 display lines that can be customized to show any combination of data readouts you want, and you can flip through multiple screens that you can configure independently. (such as just a screen with just an oil pressure display and two trip counters for regular driving, and another screen showing boost pressure, oil pressure, coolant temp, a shift indicator, and launch control for spirited driving)

In the pictures I was messing around with various combinations. So far, I'm thinking of boost, coolant temp, oil pressure, battery voltage, speed (for trip counters), RPM, and shift indicator modules (on-screen module as well as an output to connect an LED), as well as an output for a relay to cut the ignition signal for launch control (I'm not a huge fan of launch control myself, but it's trivial to add it so might as well). Is there any other data readouts you'd want? Also, would anyone be interested in me posting source code/instructions for building this or possibly buying pre-built units? I'm making one for myself either way, but if other people can benefit from it that's even better.

I'm planning on putting it in my cluster in the next few days, so I'll post pictures when I get around to that.

The best part? The hardware is about $25, the LCD is $10 and the board is $15, then there will be a few other small parts for reading various engine signals, but those won't amount to much.

Any input is appreciated.

rollinmyda

iTrader: (19)

Very cool! In for updates!

TracerAcer2.2L

That's sick bro! I can't believe parts are so cheap. Good to see your degree coming in handy already.

I just saw the other day, some kind of dash tablet conversion, I think it was science of speed. Pretty expensive though, this could be a cost-effective alternative

wunfstgsr

Cool id like to see a pic of it in the cluster, having a hard time figuring out where and how it would fit it there.

slow_gsr

In for updates, would consider buying one depending on how it looks installed.

Jimmy

iTrader: (5)

This is awesome.. in for more updates

acivichb

This is super cool in for the updates....

dhabell

Sweet. Oil temp and EGT may be helpful too.

MotorMouth93

iTrader: (1)

Since the tachometer reading was the most difficult part, I opted to get that out of the way first. While having a tiny tachometer readout isn't particulary useful, some of the other functions I want to add do require an accurate engine speed reading.

The hard part mainly stemmed from the fact that I don't have an oscilloscope so I was taking shots in the dark before I wrote a small program to just dump analog data out the serial port so I could graph it in Excel. The waveform shown below is after the signal passed through my clamping circuit and extremely crude low pass filter, it's still pretty nasty but it was good enough to have a 100% accurate measurement.


(x-axis is time, I don't know the scale, y-axis is voltage, with 0 being 0V and 256 being 3.3V)

Internally the engine speed is measured in increments of a single RPM but I chose to only display the 100's and 1000's places on the display so it's easier to read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H5i...ature=youtu.be

The prototype should be almost completely finished within the next couple weeks. I opted to not install it in my cluster yet as I'm still fine tuning the hardware and that would make it very difficult.

wunfstgsr

Nice would look cool even mounted somewhere. Or a heads up display would rock!

billabongrob

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, heads up would be awesome. Really, just a matter of mounting and flipping the output, and maybe a small mat on the windshield to catch light.

DieMaster

iTrader: (1)

i would love to see a OBD1 stock, or S300 version of the scangauge, those gauges and trip computers, in a project like this.

wunfstgsr

Wondering if you could modify a obd2a heads up display they sell online to work with a obd2 car with obd1 ecu conversion or a Hondata s300. And or make your display to work with plugging in the obd port.

spAdam

iTrader: (1)

Nice. I've been making small spurts of progress on mine. There's a bug somewhere that causes it to crash. I think it's hardware related though, I can't duplicate on the bench with just the ecu and sim.

What lcd is that? Will it happen to fit in single din?

SSBP-GSR

Its like an apexi vafc with more options but not tuneable.......i only ever used it as a sensor display but props on doing it yourself i always love a DIY

MotorMouth93

iTrader: (1)

Initially I toyed with the idea of just building something that would plug into the OBD port, but that would introduce a lot of lag between when things happen and when they show up on the screen due to the OBD interface in our cars being pretty slow (IIRC you get about 1 update a second, which puts us into the territory of the brutally laggy late model Civic digital speedometers) as well as making the code much more complex.

Modifying a standalone OBD2 heads up display kit to work with non-OBD2 cars would be a massive pain in the *** if you didn't want to tear the entire unit apart, rip out the processor, and tap into the various lights and displays, and this approach would only be feasible on the units containing basic 7 segment displays.

Doing it without tearing the unit apart would essentially require an OBD2 emulator tapped into the sensors like I'm doing now. The problem is that that's a rather involved thing to build, and at that point this isn't really a hobby anymore and is just work that I don't get paid for because I don't see the demand for that being high enough to justify my spending potentially hundreds of hours on something that I won't even use.

The most straightforward way of making a HUD work in non-OBD2 cars IMO would be to just get a bigger display hooked up to what I already have, make the text bigger, and flip the output.

Do you have a build thread? I'm curious what you're building now.

Yeah it's small enough to fit in a single DIN.

spAdam

iTrader: (1)

No build thread, just some scattered discussion here and on d-series.org. It was mostly an exercise for me to learn how to communicate with the Moates Demon/NepTune, but I've put enough work into now that I feel like I might as well see it through into something usable.

The functional goal is to do it all through the Demon's serial port, and to add trip, mpg, eventually some performance data, and to emulate obd2 through a CAN output. I'd like to get it to pass a plug in check, just for giggles

Right now all it physically is is an lcd keypad shield on top of a Chipkit uC32. Your LCD looks like just the form factor I'm after though.

stocker2shocker91

You are to smart for H-T.. Haha jk man that is badass and I hope you see it through. You're already farther most would have went (myself included).

I bet they would sell if produced

tony_2018

i want