Designing my own digital dash, help me come up with ideas..

[Berman]

Well the stock digital dash is crap, provides no info. I'm an electrical engineer and am going to design my own digital dash. It's actually extremely simple to do, and the parts are very cheap. I'm shocked that Dakota and Cyberdyne get away with charging $700 for a digital dash. You can get all the parts to make a dash like the ones they sell for street rods for about $50.

One thing I want to do that will take time and cost $$$ is use some really nice color lcd's for speedo/tachometer. I'm going to set it up so you can press buttons and completely change the style of the info displayed in the lcd's. Simple things that I always want displayed, like oil pressure, water temp, and gas level, I will just use 7-segment displays (the type of displays that are used on the stock digital dash). I think I will put the odometer and however many trip odometers I decide on on the same lcd as either the tach or speedo.

There's all kinds of things I could do. Make little animations that play when the car is started. Have the dash display your 0-60 and 0-100 times. Put audible warnings on things like oil pressure and water temp. Or make the speedo and tach disappear and display a huge error message if the car is overheating / has insufficient oil pressure.

Any ideas? Basically, most any neat trick or thing you can think of I can do.

 

[salvageV6]

Built in real time, well ALDL time, KR gauge.

Oil temp., tranny temp., intercooler temp.

Alky. level.

Tire pressures.

 

[Berman]

Originally posted by salvageV6
Built in real time, well ALDL time, KR gauge.

Oil temp., tranny temp., intercooler temp.

Alky. level.

Tire pressures.

I like those three, didn't think of those. Might as well. Maybe I should just use 3 LCD's? I could make the center one have all info like oil temp, tranny temp, intercooler temp, water temp, oil pressure, etc. Make knock a led bar-graph maybe.

Tire pressure is actually hard. How do the vettes do it, I wonder? Sensior built in to the rim?

Alky level isn't too hard, I'd just have to figure out how to measure it. Maybe a float setup like gas tanks use.

I could obviously make the dash log data, but that's just adding complexity and is pointless because I'm going to use turbo-link.

Hmm.. any company make an electric fuel pressure sending unit?

More towards the end of the summer I'm actually going to do this, after I get the motor/tranny done. Once done I'll post some pics and stuff of it. Hell if anybody likes it, it will be easy to reproduce..

 

[salvageV6]

I think Autometer has electrical fuel pressure gauges, but there is another thread around about a recall on them.

j/k on the tire pressures.

 

[bruce]

At WOT, all that is displayed is Boost and RPM.
In that mode would flash red if any sensor went out of bounds.

At less then 1.5V TPS the panel would be Alpha- Numeric, or bar graph, containing:
oil temp
water temp
tranny temp
MAT Temp
oil pressure
tranny line pressure
fuel pressure
MAP
Baro
TPS
Inj DC
MPG
MPH
Tack
WB O2 / NB O2

Maybe do it Indy Car/IRL, F1 style and put it all in the steering wheel, as an option?.

 

[PRSRIZD_V6]

Dunno if this is possible but...... trouble codes?

Autometer makes two types of fuel pressure sending units. The full sweep (higher resolution gauge, probably wider full scale) and the short sweep which is on recall)

The tire pressure sensors are on a band inside the wheel and communicate via radio.

I also suggest, if you have a MAT temp, also do a EGT, and a compressor outlet temp. Could use all K-type thermocouples (except actual MAF correction MAT) and one switchable display for them, as well as a ambient air temp.

With Baro as bruce suggested, your car would have a built in weather station.

 

[Red Regal T]

Sounds like a great project. Wish I could do such a thing. Put me down for one when you get it made up.........LED dancing girls???

 

[Cheez Wiz]

How about just fitting a laptop display in there and using TurboLink?

 

[BLU-T]

if you come up with something that would be indy car telemetry-like or anything else count me in....

 

[Ormand]

Lap Top Display?

I've thought about the display like Cheez Wiz mentioned, and wondered why nobody has ever done it. A lap top type display, that would fill the stock "window" and could be programmed to display analog or digital, and to have a diagnostic mode. I know the prices on the LCDs have just started to go up, after coming down for years, but this display would be pretty small, compared to some of the more expensive laptops, and the logic to make it work would be cheap, compared to the guts of a PC. Anybody know if this is possible? Should fit Monte Carlos, too, and maybe Firebirds--

 

[JayLashua]

design and they will come!!

Alright heres what i liked

I had a 1990 Regal GS.. the dash was AWESOME.

it had very very pretty gauges for everything

Fuel gauge, which when down to 1/4 tank, the scale changed so it utilized the full display again

the oil psi was accurate
the water temp

those were all bar style gauges with segment lcds for the indicating numbers, with a bright red outline if they became "dangerous"

the RPM and MPH gauges were like, well they had the colorised bargraph as well as the segment display for the numbers

Hm, hard to find pics of it, but here is a pretty nice looking digital dash, though the car is a RICER!! lol

http://www.ae92gts.com/ae92gts_friends_pics2.html

 

[Roger]

Everything bruce listed Plus EGT & battery voltage.

I also would like distance left in tank with amount of fuel left, & ambient Temperature.

Compas & GPS would also be nice.

Master Caution would flash anytime any measurement exceeded certain parameters.

Would also be nice to have recall on O2, KR, EGT, Boost.