july_favre

Im just learning about all this stuff and its very interesting.
My question is how do I set up my car to see all the guages on an LCD screen? It would be for a very old car (which has minimal guages to begin with so it serves a practical purpose not just coolness) so im guessing it would take alot of work.

Confused

I am thinking of doing this in my Ford Anglia (with Mk2 Escort running gear). The speedo comes in via a cable from the gearbox, so I'm thinking of attaching that up to the remnants of an old fan with RPM monitoring. The rev counter uses from what I can tell electric pulses, maybe again I can hook that up to a fan counter. Fuel and temperature again are just electrical signals that tell the gauges how far to move, so just need an input from those.

If I can find a nice DOS (or small-footprint Linux) application that I can read these and display them on the screen, then I have a spare Epia 800 and 6.4" LCD which I could use to boot quickly when I turn the key to display all these details.

I was trying to set up a 2nd display on my Epia M10000, however my Xenarc VGA display wanted to take over the TV-Out bit and display that too, so no dual-monitors with that, unless I add a second display card (but needs to be a low-profile one...any ideas). If not, then I'll just set up a pair of Epia's in the car!

What "very old car" will you be putting it in?


Garry

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cproaudio

Too bad you dont have OBD-II or else you could do something like this

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NEW complete and updated My project with 100+ pics on 7-4-03
If you have a Shuttle FV24 motherboard in perfect working condition for sale, please PM me.

-B-e-N-

what is OBDII

Confused

Dayum...that's pretty sweet! *cries*

ODBII is a standard in all modern cars (after 96 IIRC) that allows you to get diagnostic data, and all the other information from the engine, such as you see there, RPM, speed etc. That's why all the new cars you see have digital odometers, rather than the old style roll-round ones.


Oh well, back to the old drawing board to do it my slightly more low-tech way!


Garry

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MikeHunt79

Surely if you had GPS you could have some sort of speed gauge, without OBDII.

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My Setup

Confused

Yeah, you would, however, it's much slower at updating (once a second or once every couple of seconds) and it won't show acceleration very well. Having a constantly moving dial/figure can show you the acceleration and speed much more accurately.

I was considering doing that until I went out with my laptop with GPS hooked up, and saw just how long it took to stabalise to a certain speed


Garry

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MikeHunt79

Thats a shame... I've never tried it myself, but I thought it would be a good option.

BTW, I've heard that some people have actually retrofitted OBDII style sensors to thier car, so they can have gauges on screen. Might be another possibilty?

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My Setup

Confused

You got any more information on that...might be a good idea!


Garry

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MikeHunt79

I remember someone on here mentioning it ages ago, It sounded pretty complex (it involved using parts from other cars i think), but I tried searching for the original post post and came up with nothing. I'm sure there's some info out there, just have a dig.

You might be able to achive something similar, however, without ever involving OBDII. I'm sure you'd be able to program a PIC microcontroller to convert the values from various sensors in your car (speed, oil temp, boost pressure etc.) into digital form that is understandable by your PC. This would be easier than trying to emulate OBDII IMO.

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My Setup

july_favre

I can program microcontrollers and know a lbit about electronics. I dont know the car end however and thats the info Im looking for.

chut

I'd like to know what sofware and hardware Cproaudio is using to generate those images.....

tejesh83

Chut:

I too am interested.

Try searching for OBD II. It pulls up a few good previous posts on the topic.