Custom Gauge Project

[ChrisSnow]

So a bit of background, originally my 4 in 1 was having issues, the voltage was wrong, as was fuel. this got annoying! so I tried to fix it but after carefully taking it apart and trying to sort out the needles got fed up and gave in, basically the plastic had split that goes over the shaft meaning it would slip and therefore never be accurate.

Now conveniently my job is an electronics engineer so i set about making a new gauge :-) unfortunately traditional LCD screens and sunlight just don't get along, well that is if you want to be able to read them! after a lot of research I came across a special type of LCD from Sharp that requires no back light and the brighter it is outside the better, its only black and white but the contrast ratio is awesome.

I then soon realised that to make this thing look nice i needed to significantly improve my CAD and CAM skills, conveniently I have access to a small CNC milling machine so other than my time and materials it had little expenditure.

I am using an ARM processor to drive the screen, and have GPS on the board, I'm using the existing senders for the readings and conversion curves i found.

the plastic I used is 20mm PVC and perspex for the lense.

So we all love photos...

CAD work.

2016-06-14 (1).jpg2016-06-14 (2).jpg
2016-06-14 (3).jpg2016-06-14.jpg

[ChrisSnow]

CNC
IMAG0023.jpgIMAG0024.jpgIMAG0027.jpgIMAG0028.jpgIMAG0029.jpgIMAG0031.jpgIMAG0033.jpgIMAG0037.jpgIMAG0040.jpgIMAG0041.jpg

[ChrisSnow]

Assembly
IMAG0049.jpgIMAG0053.jpgIMAG0054.jpgIMAG0055.jpg

[ChrisSnow]

InstalledIMAG0062.jpgIMAG0066.jpgIMAG0067.jpg

[ChrisSnow]

It's a pretty decent resolution for it's size (400x 240) so graphics look pretty good.

Since the tach gauge died last year i'm going to build another and make better use of them but it's early days.

I'm just finishing off the code to talk to the MEFI 4B in order to pull the parameters and display them, including fault codes etc, I have it pulling the data but not displaying on the screen yet(the easy bit!)

I also have integrated NMEA2K which will make some of my future boat electronics projects a bit easier as the data sharing element is sorted.

Having been out a few times with it this year it's working pretty well, really easy to read the info even on the brightest of days.

Plenty of fiddling and improvements to make but I'm pretty happy :-)

[Thegerman618]

DUDE that looks awesome!!!

[TeamAllen]

Incredible!

[PaceWithGrace]

Nice job! (A little optimistic on the speed though?)

[jimidemo]

Wow....Very impressive!!

[NICKYPOO]

Oustanding! Will you build me a stereo remote to replace the Alpine remote of death?

Seriously though, nice work man!

[007]

wow, that is awesome work!

[Captainkurk72]

That AWSOME! Tige forum DIY project of the year. You may be making more those


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ChrisSnow]

Glad to see you lot like it :-)

I'm still working on the screen content, theirs a lot of potential I just haven't had the time to do more than quickly throw some text at it and a boot up logo for fun.

I haven't really thought much about it's future beyond my hobby but if anyone was interested in them I could certainly figure something out.

It's totally customisable and i'm using a really good graphics library so pretty much anything is possible.

I guess it could be of use for those of you that have DIY projects that need a control surface, I'm probably going to use a rotary encoder for a menu system. perhaps mounted where the taps gauge is with a similar styled 50mm gauge.

I need to tidy up the controller a bit, it's just a prototype at the moment so I will make a PCB when i get time. I will probably take the paddle wheel signal in along with my GPS data and then send a more stable signal to the MPH gauge and ECU for speed control.

As the tach gauge also died i'm going to build another one and then I can get much more info on display such as the water and air temp, engine hours from the MEFI etc.

Oustanding! Will you build me a stereo remote to replace the Alpine remote of death?

Seriously though, nice work man!

funny you should say that i had a poke at the comms between clarion head unit's and remotes. that sort of stuff is doable.

[Bryan]

This may be a silly question as I have little understanding about advanced electronic gizmo stuff like this... but with no backlight are you gonna be able to see the display at night?

[NICKYPOO]

^^^ My remote works perfect in every way except for the fact it won't connect through the 2.4ghz transceivers. I have several rc cars that run on 2.4ghz and I've kick around the idea of just switching out the transceivers with some rc stuff but I'm not sure how the software would align with that stuff.