car gauges

ampy549 · 05-12-2006, 02:06 AM

do you guys of any company that makes a device that gets info from car, like temp, oil temp, volt meter, etc. my car is to old, it doesnt have OBD-II

k_oss_mrld · 05-12-2006, 02:12 AM

You're setting yourself up to be flamed on this one, but it's 2am so I'll let it slide

Uh Uh Uh, You didn't say the magic word !

. Maybe you should be more specific; what kind of car do you drive, year and trim level? I mean, if it's new enough that the computer throws warning codes, then you may be in luck.

ampy549 · 05-12-2006, 02:21 AM

its a 88 volkswagon, and I'm not talking about somthing that plugs into my ecu, I was looking more for electrical gauges,(temp, oil, voltmeter), but instead of having gauges, the signal would be sent to the computer

DarquePervert · 05-12-2006, 07:49 AM

Your car is 1988. OBD-II wasn't required on vehicles until 1996. Prior to 1996, some manufacturers put OBD-I accessibility in vehicles, but not all. 1988 is early in the development of this, so I expect that there's no OBD in your '88 VW.

WarDriver · 05-12-2006, 08:36 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by ampy549

do you guys of any company that makes a device that gets info from car, like temp, oil temp, volt meter, etc. my car is to old, it doesnt have OBD-II

Not trying to be rude here...but are you asking for a mechanical or electrical "device" If you just want to be able to see your temp, oil pressure, amps...ect. Just pick up a three gauge cluster at you local elcheapo autoparts. If you are trying to go electrical in order to watch from you PC....That would involve things that are probably worth more than the car itself.

lez · 05-12-2006, 12:43 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by WarDriver

That would involve things that are probably worth more than the car itself.

emm, so is car is worth less than a few pic chips........

If you want to get oil pressure and liquid temps to the pc, $50 would cover it.

All he needs is an oil pressure sender, scrapyard will have one, few serial temp chips, look at the DS range, and a pic to convert analog to serial, I fancy this myself...........

If I can be arsed I'll build this one next now that I finished the serial-pic-relays thing.

WarDriver · 05-13-2006, 12:52 AM

True...if you go the PIC route you can do it. If you're looking for a pre-packaged deal...it will cost you.

ampy549 · 05-13-2006, 03:14 AM

ok, thanks for the info

lez · 05-13-2006, 06:36 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by WarDriver

True...if you go the PIC route you can do it. If you're looking for a pre-packaged deal...it will cost you.

Ha, pre-packed, the path of the rich and stupid.

Its because of those kinds of people we get 2nd rate everything in this world, because they buy whats dangled carrot style in front of them by big corporations who want our money for things we could do ourselves if not so damn lazy to learn how.

MalcolmG · 07-05-2006, 07:54 PM

please excuse the minor resurrection here, but this is something I'm very interested in too. I've been thinking about doing the carputer thing, mostly for playing mp3s, but thought that I'd really like to use the LCD screen to display other useful information while the music plays in the background. My car is mostly performance-oriented but I don't really want to have gauges all over the place, especially when the types of things I'd like to monitor often can't all be displayed on a series of gauges that all nicely match each other (system voltage, intercooler in/out temperatures, ic water i/o temp, and probably more).

Anyway, lez - did you happen to have a go at doing this? I'm willing to learn all I need to in order to develop the parts and the software to run a system like this, I have a bit of past experience with electronics and programming but would love it if you could point me to any good resources that'll help me along the way

lez · 07-06-2006, 03:22 AM

well I had lots of ideas and working designs in my head, but so far have found none of the time needed..........

unclemat · 08-06-2006, 09:44 PM

Hey, I'd be all over a gizmo that would allow me to read oil pressure and oil temperature on my future carputer project!

PLEASE DO IT!!!! There would be lots of people who would not buy gauges if they could read that data on their carputers.

I drive a Subaru Legacy Turbo and the car has almost everyhing available via ECU - but not oil pressure and oil temperature, two very important things to monitor in a performance car, IMHO.

FC3S · 08-07-2006, 11:01 AM

temperature would be faily simple, just get a temp phidget, put the probe into the oil pan or wherever

pressure tho, dont know how you'd go about that really

lez · 08-07-2006, 11:34 AM

get a pressure sender from a car that has a pressure gauge, moder ones are electric and have an analog output voltage swing that varies with pressure, ie 0-12v, 0-6v etc.

you can buy them new as spares from dealers, raid a scrapyard, undo someones in the middle of the night, oh sorry forget the last one........

ShawJohn · 08-07-2006, 11:39 AM

You can buy electrical gauges from the likes of AutoMeter to do what you need!

You will likely not be able to get this info from the car, but will need gauges and sender units fitting.

HTH

John