Tige TouchPad Upgrade Project Thread

[Thegerman618]

If you need testing help I will be on the water in 2 weeks?!?!?


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[BurnMac42]

Update: UPS was supposed to deliver the prototype printed circuit boards today. They were "on vehicle for delivery" but instead I received an email saying "unexpected weather or emergency conditions have delayed delivery". Yeah, right... it was 70F+ here today with crystal clear skies and zero wind. A simply perfect Spring day. I think the delay was because the weather was unexpectedly AWESOME. The PCB shop fabbed the boards in three days; it's literally taking longer for them to get here from Colorado than it took to make them from scratch!

Anyway, hoping for boards tomorrow. I'll post a photo once they arrive. We're building them up in-house so it will be a few days before we can apply power and begin testing. All of the components are already here, just waiting on the boards.

Thanks!

The last time UPS updated a shipping status to that for me was when they lost my switch panel completely......never recovered that thing...

[IDBoating]

Yep, it's looking fishy. I was absolutely promised it was on the truck and would be delivered yesterday. 6pm rolled around and I got ANOTHER message like the first one. Can't be weather, guys... I accept an "emergency situation" one day (flat tire, truck wreck, who knows) but two days in a row is enemy action. So I called again, and have filed a formal complaint. Supposedly I'm to receive a call from a supervisor in the local facility to explain precisely what they mean by a multi-day "emergency situation" during the best weather so far this year.

Update: UPS called the house phone (despite my specifically telling them to call my cell) and left a message. We are remodeling our house, and apparently the driver felt he could not turn around when the carpet truck was here. Get this: He got all the way to the house, but had to back out. OK, I get that, but - why not drop off the package once you got to the house?!?

Current status is that the driver is supposed to call my cell and "make arrangements".

[IDBoating]

Finally got the prototype PCB's from UPS. Here's a quick photo of the snapdome side. Hoping to get the first one built up and into testing in the next few days. We'll keep you posted!
TigeProtoPCB.jpg

[Thegerman618]

Nice awesome work ID boating, did I read somewhere you were going to put an LED indicator on these?


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[Timmy!]

Yes! Keep up the great work!

[IDBoating]

Nice awesome work ID boating, did I read somewhere you were going to put an LED indicator on these?

The factory original has six white LED's and two red LED's. The white are for backlighting; they are marked as D1-D6 in the white silkscreening in the image above. The red are to indicate when cruise control is active; they are marked as D7 and D8 (above the center snapdome). Each set of LED's is controlled by a separate wire coming off the connector, so presumably the Medallion electronics selectively turns them on. We are duplicating that functionality, so the LED's will come on whenever they would have come on with the factory unit.

[Dandy]

Any thought on changing the red LEDs to green. As in "all things are a go" regarding the speedset being active. The red seems as if it would be telling the user it isn't working. I realize this isn't the OEM way, just my 2 cents.

[Timmy!]

I've never seen lights on the one in my boat ever.

[IDBoating]

Any thought on changing the red LEDs to green. As in "all things are a go" regarding the speedset being active. The red seems as if it would be telling the user it isn't working. I realize this isn't the OEM way, just my 2 cents.

In another thread on this subject, I made the very same comment. I was surprised at the use of red, given its WARNING implication, and would think green (or perhaps blue) would be a better choice. But we are trying to keep this as a straight OEM replacement unit so red it will be. And no, please don't ask for "custom" colors, it's just too much of a headache.

I've never seen lights on the one in my boat ever.

Despite living on a lake, my family doesn't boat much after dark so I don't know if the LED's ever light up on our unit. Based on your comment I suspect they don't, which is weird since the support (and expense) for them is obviously there. If they weren't going to use them, they could have saved a lot of money; the LED's are cheap but the number of conductors on the flex circuit would have dropped, and (especially) the number of pins on that expensive 12-pin Deutsch harness connector could have dropped too. You can get those Deutsch DTP connectors in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 pin versions, and this board uses 7, forcing the use of the most expensive (12 pin) version. If those LED's aren't ever used, they'd have 5 active pins instead of 7 and could have used the 6 pin version, saving cost and PCB real estate.

We will provide a wiring diagram so you can use the backlights even if the factory wiring doesn't take advantage of them. The white backlights require a pin to be connected to ground. By now, you may not be completely surprised to learn that this is the exact opposite of the red cruise LED's which require their pin to be connected to +12V! You'd think the designer would have used a consistent wiring plan, but Noooooo. Just another of the many oddball design decisions (like the connector choice discussed above) that Tige's supplier made on this panel - and that we are forced to duplicate to maintain OEM compatibility.

As for the red "Cruise is On" LED's, those would have to be driven by some signal coming from the Medallion box. The only other possibility is a signal coming from the ECU, IF what's really happening is that Medallion is just acting as a front end for the ECU's internal cruise software. The ECU's definitely have cruise built in, but I don't personally know if Medallion is using it or not. If they are, then the ECU should be emitting a signal that could possibly drive the red LED's. Maybe someday we'll dig into that and report what we find; the signals are on the ECU bus so we could build a breakout harness and put a scope on it while the boat is driving down the lake. Not the first time we'd have an array of instruments in our floating development lab!

[jmitchell]

This is great stuff! Like I said before I'll be a customer for sure. Looks like you'll make some happy customers this summer! Great work!

[Thegerman618]

I am glad you are tackling this and super excited for the release


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[IDBoating]

Latest update: We've populated the power supply components on the first prototype and tested its performance. People often scoff at power supplies - they seem so low-tech, unimportant - but I can't tell you the hours I've wasted chasing down weird system problems that turned out to be a noisy supply, or poor ground references, or other things related to the power supply. So even on a board like this we take the time to examine and characterize the power supply so we know we're working with clean, solid supply rails.

On this unit we want to operate from alternator voltage (14+ VDC), down to just battery voltage (~13.8 VDC), down to as low as practical within cost constraints since boat batteries often get deeply discharged. Our power supply rail on this circuit is 5VDC, and testing shows we are getting that from over 14VDC all the way down to 6.55VDC. Suffice to say, this circuit will be working well below any voltage you can expect the Medallion box to be awake!

More updates soon. Thanks!

TigeProtoPSTest_small.jpg

[Timmy!]

Are you going to be building each and every one of these things yourself?

[IDBoating]

Are you going to be building each and every one of these things yourself?

OMG, absolutely not! These are prototypes, proof-of-concept units. The production PCB is separate, actually already designed, and has many differences (standard thickness instead of 2X, has a swaged standoff for strain relief, relies on backing plate for dash mounting strength, etc.). Once we prove out the design with these boards, we'll update the production PCB with any changes we want and then find out how many people want in on this season's production run. Then our production facility will do all assembly and test. It's nowhere near practical to hand-assemble surface mount components in any kind of volume at all.

Speaking of production: Our present plan is to probably do a single run of these boards at the start of each season. We're not interested in tying up a bunch of capital in units just sitting around, and based on the threads that pop up here people seem to start thinking about replacing them as a new season starts. We'll probably keep a very small number on hand for emergencies but basically folks will want to get in on a given season's order.

Thanks!