Hello everybody, I'm brand new to all things electrical and stumbled upon Arduino while randomly browsing ebay earlier and became intrigued. Now, first things first I am an avid sim racing guy and am currently working on a PS3 friendly 'button box' so I can adjust various ingame settings while driving. So, when I stumbled upon the Arduino dot matrix setups I immediately went about researching to see if what I want to do is possible. Due to my noviceness in this aspect of life I got the impression it could be done but had a lot of trouble deciphering througj the tech talk to be able to say for sure.
So, the plan is to take apart my G25 shifter and run wires from each gear position detector, then, using these wires through some sort of arduino magic make the gear number (either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or R) show each time I shift gears and stay until I change again.
That's it for a start and basically, all I want to know is...
A) is this possible to do?
B) do I need a computer hooked up to the arduino magic box for this to work?
C) what do I need to buy to make this work?
D) is this what you would recommend for me to do, or is there a quicker/easier/more cost effective way for me to get the desired effect.
E) would it be possible (way down the track as I gain experience) to set up a sound-activated shift light through this very clever tech?
Thankyou for taking the time to help out a complete noob with this and I look forwad to seeing what you guys think!