Hi I am new to all this so please understand that my knowledge of all of this this is very limited at the moment. I am looking for direction on a project that has been stuck in my head for some years now. First a little background, I have been a sim racer for 7-8 years now and have enjoyed the process of building my equipment most of the projects have been very basic and easy to complete and have wanted to build a gauge cluster for dashboard creation for some years now. I have browsed for hardware I could simply buy and connect but the spec of what I wish to have is not avaliabe to simply buy so I have recently started resurching this as a project and was directed here by a fellow sim racer who has used Arduino to creat a dashboard in a different fasion (using difital displays and LCD's) Now I would like to creat this dashboard using real car gauges (will include tachometer, oil temp, water temp, fuel pressure, oil prussure, and a volt meter.) The biggest question is will this be possible to do using Arduino? Also I am looking for any suggestions as to what types of hardware (eg. types of gauges) I will need to use to make this work. And anyother thoughts anyone has about this project.
Thanks for your input and help in advance. Please be aware that I am still in the early phase of resurching this project and am looking for any thoughts and info I can compile for it so if you have thoughts please share them with every little bit will help me as I really know nothing about this stuff and am trying to learn as much as I can.
If you want modern gauges, I would look at import cars that get tuned frequently. Such as Honda, Subaru, Toyota,etc. The reason would be that you will need to know how to communicate between the Arduino and the gauge set. People may have cracked the codes on the mentioned brands. You may also have an easier time finding a useable set.
Just as a footnote I have no plans to include a speedometer only the tach which if I am not mistaken is driver by an electronic pulse. Also the tachometer is actually avaible to buy as a plug and play option through symprojects a sim hardware design compony so I belive this to be the easiest gauge to get working my concern is the rest of the gauges. I guess the goal is to resurch these gauges to make sure that I am getting ones that are reading simple electronic information? I plan to buy gauges one by one new I am not looking to pull an old dash from a car or anything like that.
willow4500:
Just as a footnote I have no plans to include a speedometer only the tach which if I am not mistaken is driver by an electronic pulse. Also the tachometer is actually avaible to buy as a plug and play option through symprojects a sim hardware design compony so I belive this to be the easiest gauge to get working my concern is the rest of the gauges. I guess the goal is to resurch these gauges to make sure that I am getting ones that are reading simple electronic information? I plan to buy gauges one by one new I am not looking to pull an old dash from a car or anything like that.
to give you a little head start on this, ive got a bit of experience in car gauges from Vauxhall cars (Opel in europe, Holden in auz), ive done repair work & mods on mine plus some friends car dials previously and have had a good bit of time in and out of them doing work.
either way pretty much all the gauges from the 1997 - 2002 model of the vauxhall Vectra are simple coil motors, fuel gauge, temp gauge speedo and rev counter are all driven from a set of normal coil style motor that have coil springs on them to return them to zero when switched off or the power to the motor reduces (i.e. slowing down temperature cooling, fuel going down), the speedo is driven from a notched ring on the passenger front drive shaft, the speed of this ring rotating is detected by a simple hall sensor (also used to monitor the abs system), the rev counter is again run on a similar principal, the flywheel has a mark on it that another hall sensor picks up as it rotates to count the revolutions per minute, the temp and fuel gauges use nothing more than changing voltages, if its 12v the needle reads full or hot depending on the gauge if its 0 or close to then the needles read empty / cold.
the lights on the dash can be lit using 12v and a transistor resistor setup to compliment the voltage and amperage used by the bulb and a pin from the arduino etc.
I hope this helps you in your quest, im by no means an arduino expert so hopefully the people on here can help you get the wiring done, but i do know a little about cars and there wiring
Kris
most cars around this age use the same system to drive the speedo, but if you do end up getting a set that require a specific "protocol" it might be worth getting inside them to see what runs the needles and trying to tap directly into that.
