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  • Author Author: Former Member
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Automotive gauge cluster

Former Member

Hey not sure where to post this but o well. I have a project car im building and im looking to covert my cluster into a digital touch screen cluster.  I was going to use a tablet at first but single boards caught my eye. I have built a few desktop computers but never a single board. Their are a few people using the pi but im looking to go a diff route. I want something that is quadcore, has built in gps, has a way to connect rs232 and can run Android operating system. Any suggestions? And what all would i need? Power supply, cable, a good touch screen. And where do i get all these things lol

  • in reply to ib1yysguy

    You would certainly be out on a limb using Linux on an engine management system.  (Just for information, it is not common to run Linux on a Cortex M4  - (although I'm sure someone will have attempted it), the Cortex M4 is usually programmed in C, occasionally in C++ and rarely in anything else.

     

    Typically engine management systems require very fast real time responses to manage injector and spark timing - I'm assuming you won't be doing this on a TR6.

     

    It would be interesting to know what you plan in terms of measuring and control. It's a long time since I had any direct involvement in engine management systems - and at that time the Intel 8096 and a similar Ford custom processor also made by Intel were typical. Current legislation and performance demands, along with less efficient ways of coding , seem to require 32 bit processors and a certain amount of offload to dedicated hardware like complex timers with missing tooth detection.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Data logging is done modularly.

     

    It's the universal I2C boards I can hook to the thing, that don't require me to use Arduino script or Python. Plenty of inputs and outputs. When all you need a chip to do is iterate through values, store them in memory and read them back or make small changes to my carb mixture, it'll do a fine job. I want the look and feel of embedding it all as well, so I don't see how a Linux chip would help.

  • in reply to ib1yysguy

    The Particle Electron seems a really odd device to pick to be the core of an engine monitoring system. Its intended as a an interface to cellular networks - so not really very suitable for continuous data transfers. It uses a UBLOX cellular modem which is fine but with as ST STMF2xx Cortex M3 processor - and odd choice because the STMF2xx are rather superseded by the much more powerful STM32F4xx series.

     

    Is there something I'm missing that's driving your choice here ?

     

    MK

  • I have a very similar problem with my TR6 rebuild. It's 41 years old, so all the engine monitoring I'm building myself. The chip I've landed on is a Particle Electron because it runs reliable off of C++. I'm making my own gauges and will be patenting them. There will be three or four small readouts for engine-critical data, some lights, electronic voice (speaker-dependent) recognition to recognize only my voice and allow me to start the car with a button. I can even configure it to use a couple of Photons as slave devices to run the gauges independently.

  • in reply to Former Member

    I think that for this application your best bet is to buy a tablet  - there are loads of cheap Android ones around, if you are feeling bold buy one from Aliexpress and  get it direct form China.

     

    MK