The RGB dash project

[Ivan141]

This is turning out to be more challenging than I anticipated.
I managed to get the bootloader into the MCU, but nothing much is working.
Probably fried my first USB converter chip already, but I'll try to get something working without it before looking into that. Once I can get my software into the MCU and know it's working I'll have some peace of mind. Right now I'm a bit restless due to things not working earlier today.

Rocky is the road of the over-ambitious man of limited talents.

[Ivan141]

Well, I figured out that the MCU is good, and have got some test code in there finally.





A couple of observations:

-The power draw is quite big, I can see it has a slight dip when the LED's are at full brightness. I haven't even connected all boards yet so I'm going to have to measure how much the voltage drops and make sure it's not too much. I'm curious what's using all the power since all LED's together shouldn't use more than 1A (and the supply is supposedly good up to 3A).

-As a result of the power usage, the power regulator gets quite hot. Will need a heat sink attached to it when installed.

-I'm bummed about the 3 dollar FTDI chip being toasted, because I haven't got any external inputs at my disposal to change settings with while the board is running. The idea was to be able to do this using a USB cable, so I'm hoping I'll get the next one to work better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...ML40qJub9c

[Aram]

Impressed!

[Ivan141]

I found out what was wrong with the power supply. Made myself a high power resistor array with a couple of switches to simulate a load with set increments. At the minimum setting it pulls 225mA, at the maximum setting it pulls about 2.2A, still not the maximum this supply should be able to supply, but enough for my needs.

I found out that with my original setup, the voltage craps out quite fast:
22 ohm: 4.93V
11 ohm: 4.6V
5.5 ohm: 2.9V (!)

Then I put a honking big coil in that should have the correct inductance (hard to believe the little one I was using has the same value, probably doesn't).
22 ohm: 4.91V
11 ohm: 4.91V
5.5 ohm: 4.9V
3.7 ohm: 4.9V
2.2 ohm: 4.89V

That is feckin awesome! Just a shame that this big coil wont fit .
But at least I know what the problem is now, so I should be able to find a suitable replacement so I can get started with linking up the other boards.

[Ivan141]

Got some lighting rigged up for christmas:

A ton of weird issues kept this little project hidden away in a drawer for years but I decided to get angry at it and here is some form of result.
The green looks a little washed out in the vid but that's just due to my camera.

There are lots of things to fix left, most importantly:

-The needle lighting board for the tach cant be addressed properly due to some incompatibility between the bus protocols of the chips I used.. need to move it to the speedo-side PCB if I can make enough space there.
Needle boards also need to be remade because of an error in the footprint I used.

-The USB interface is crap and wont work.. it's also not very practical so I will replace it with a bluetooth interface.

-Work out the software to have lots of configurable options.

-Create some workable mounting tabs to hold the boards in place.

Merry Xmas everybody!

[banpei]

I was wondering about the status of this project a few weeks ago! Good to see you back on it again!

[Ivan141]

Small update:

-Mostly finished revised (v2) PCB designs to fix the problems I have with the current board (addressing issue for needle led).
Made some more changes / additions:
-Bluetooth instead of USB interface.
-More accurate dimensions and LED placement.
-Better quality terminal blocks for wiring attachment
-More sensor options (still need to test this will actually work though):
-Fuel level
-Econ/Pwr switch
-Dash dimmer rheostat (so you can dim the dash with the OEM 'knob')
-Battery voltage (mostly just because I need a reference for the other 12v derived signals).

It's a bit more challenging to piggyback off the dash's gauges, but I hope to get decent enough signals to work with.

Firmware is coming along as well. Did a lot of testing and research over the holidays, mostly found out what
wont work, but that's useful too.
It's going to be configurable in 7 'zones'(tach, speedo, fuel, pressure, temp, tach needle, speedo needle).
Each can be assigned any available sensor and have an animation configured.
Animations are a combo of 2 colors and 2 optional setpoints. Cant fit much more due to memory constraints of the microcontroller.
Once firmware is done I'm starting with an Android app to configure the thing from my phone.