ed_crouch
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| posted on 2/12/03 at 04:54 PM |
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Digital Dash
Going to have a go at developing a digital dash. 7 segment displays for speed, bar graphs for other indicators.
What will the man from SVA want to see in terms of a mileometer???
Ed
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PioneerX
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| posted on 2/12/03 at 06:09 PM |
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Ed,
I was looking at doing that myself. Planned to use a PIC as the processor directly off electronic sensors, this allows very find tuning of read out as
it is computer processed. Makes SVA speed test easy to pass 
What do you think?
Simon
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ned
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| posted on 3/12/03 at 09:50 AM |
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guys,
try a search on the electrics setcion, there have been threads on this before. there is currently a thread on using the vx astra digidash. might not
be what you're after but could be some helpful links.
Ned.
beware, I've got yellow skin
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scutter
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| posted on 3/12/03 at 07:37 PM |
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Ed, I think the SVA man needs odometer at the minimum, also the speedo needs to be back lit for night driving.
Dan.
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TheGecko
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| posted on 4/12/03 at 02:23 AM |
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I've been thinking along the lines of making my own instruments as well but I'm aiming at an analog speedo and tacho with a dot matrix VFD
(Vacuum Flourescent Display) for everything else eg odometer, trip meter/s, fuel, temp etc.
The VFD is one of these, specifically the CU20025ECPB-W1J, which is 2
lines of 20 characters, each about 5mm high. The advantage of the VFD over an LCD (which would be a lot cheaper) is the viewability(?) in variable
lighting conditions eg direct sunlight etc. For the analog dials, I'm going to use radio control model servos with a simple dial cord and
pulley connection to get sufficent travel (most servos are less than 180 degrees travel from end to end).
Driving all this will be either a couple of PIC's or an ATMEL AVR processor board - probably the ATMEL as a) I already have it  and b) it has
enough inputs, outputs and horsepower to do the job. The processor also has FLASH memory which can be used to store odo values and any other
persistent settings. An interface to a removable memory stick of some sort could provide basic data-logging too, which would be nice.
The servos are easy to drive with a single PWM output and the VFD uses a parallel interface very similar to the common HD47780 LCD one. Biggest
problem is probably the usual one of signal conditioning and so on, particularly in an electrically noisy and vibrating automotive environment.
Most of this is pie-in-the-sky at present although the VFD is on order and should be here by Xmas and, as above, I already have the processor board.
More details as it happens although I can't imagine I'll be doing anything on this (other than basic experiments) until late next year.
Always happy to discuss ideas of course.
Dominic
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