cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Does anyone know of a scangauge type display for MS? DIY has the too large touch screen, then the little scrolling screen thingy. It would be nice to have something inbetween. Anything like this out there yet? Just get a Palm?

Jeff_Ciesielski

iTrader: (10)

Not that I know of. I could probably whip something up though, communication with the MS is insanely easy.....

ArtieParty

iTrader: (1)

Subscribing here. I've been wanting to hook something up to the ms to display some stuff. I have the 94/95 mspnp and was told one of those viewer things wouldnt display the right temps. I was actually contemplating getting a FIT pc and a motorized single DIN display.

Jeff_Ciesielski

iTrader: (10)

You see the problem is, the megasquirt doesn't actually store the variables in a human-readable format, so what you see in your logs and on megatune is actually the result of pulling them off of the megasquirt and converting it using the msns-extra.ini definitions. It will be different for every setup.

ScottFW

iTrader: (4)

The Palm would work. In PalmLog you enter your specific coefficients so it displays temps properly for your car. Granted, the form factor might not be as pretty or convenient as a Scangauge but a used Palm is only ~$15.

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

The Palm looks like the affordable but fugly solution. How do you mount a Palm in the car and not have it look like ***?!?

This...



Vs. this...

ScottFW

iTrader: (4)

Good question LOL. Someone on this board used to have a Palm mounted just to the right of the gauge cluster, in fact it was his avitar/sig pic, I forget who it was though. Not the best looking setup IMO, but I'm sure it was functional.

Since MS has been mentioned, what exactly are y'all trying to monitor? I mean, I get that it's baller as **** to have all kinds of data displayed, but what's the real added functionality that you want? Most critical engine info (temperatures, WBO2, etc) can be monitored more easily and more visibly using aftermarket gauges with their own sender(s) that leave MS alone. I think the only data you can't monitor without interfacing with MS would be things like pulse width and ignition timing, but do you really need to see those all the time? At some point you have to trust that MS is doing what you've told/tuned it to do.

Although the Palm can display all sorts of stuff, I really only use it for capturing datalogs when it's inconvenient to have the laptop in the car. If I wanted to display a whole bunch of stuff I'd do a car PC with in-dash flip-up touchscreen. It would be more legible than a Palm or Scangauge and you could also use it to control Tunerstudio.

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Really didn't want to cut stuff up to fit in EGT and oil temp gauges. Figured it would be nice to have a real water temp, oil temp, and EGT readings in an easily seen but removeable format.

curly

iTrader: (25)

8am conference call ftl.

There's some creative and relatively asethetically pleasing methods to mounting palms/phone/etc in a car. You won't and shouldn't be using it on the track, so just remove it for that.

If it were me, I'd superglue a piece of aluminum strip to the back of the palm, bend it at roughly 90*, and bolt it with some spacers and slightly longer bolts to the passenger side lower dash bar mount. Two bolts out, two bolts in, and clipping in a plastic cover would be all that's necessary to take it out, and it should put it in a fairly readable location, assuming you bent the aluminum wisely.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Disassemble the unit. It might take two or three tries to get it right, but I'd bet that you can remove the lower section (the writing pad and such) leaving only the active display. Fab a case to put the cut-down screen into. Profit.

(Also, I have proof that Tom has had sex with farm animals.)

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Come on Mom. What's wrong with projectiles in the car? Hell, I've done laps with my laptop laying loose on the passenger foot well!

JustinHoMi

I made one using a 4x20 display and the controls from a broken audio receiver. You just turn a **** to cycle through settings. I've been meaning to package it up into something nice, but haven't really had time. If I can find the code and parts, I'll take some pics.

FieldEffectDave

this is my MX5 megaview adaptation:

http://mx5cartalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=41019

Display comes from these guys:

http://www.4dsystems.com.au/

ArtieParty

iTrader: (1)

I want it!

Seriously, do you have a write up of what's involved or parts that you need?

FieldEffectDave

There is really not much to it, these guys make screens with an integrated microcontroller, you program it in a simple abstracted langauge like an arduino - add an automotive suitable 5V reg circuit and a 3.3V rs232 tranceiver and thats pretty much it. As previously mentioned in this thread, the interface to the megasquirt is very well documented.

elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

That is seriously badass, but I call major BS on 'nothing much to it.'

There might not be much to building the controller for it, but the programming involved is another story...

As stated the Megasquirt just stores data into whats basically a spreadsheet in raw format, MLV is what translates it to 'english' for lack of better term. The programming in the controller would have to basically do the same thing to dispaly..

I really like the idea, and would REALLY love to have an extra gauge in there. He did a fantastic job matching it with the gauge cluster.

FieldEffectDave

That would be me

Other's implementations maybe, but unfortunatly i cant take much technical merit for this one:

You program the embedded controller in an abstracted BASIC like langauge, it comes with its own graphics library for drawing lines / circles etc.. so anything that would normally be hard about it (bitbashing port pins to drive the display controller, making / storing your own fonts, doing the background refresh etc...) is already done for you.

The IDE came with an example for an analoge clock, i just adapted it to turn it into a gauge.

Over rs232 you send the megasquirt an "R" in ascii and it sends you back 39 (or 37 cant remember) bytes of data. In the megatune .ini files (and also the freely available source code to the origional megaview) is how to convert it to real life values - i used formulas for some, arrays / lookup tables for others.

Fitting it in the cluster involved a dremel and a big mess, luckily the silk screen on the IP hides the abortion that lies underneith.

Its woth a squiz at the 4d website if your into that sort of thing.

What i wanted to do was add a basic graph function, so if your driving down the road and felt a surge or a cutout, without the laptop you could (whilst taking due care on the road) flick through some history of key parameters which might help fault find an issue.

But i ran out of RAM on the display embedded uC (only 400 bytes) so ill probably add a second microcontroller somwhere down the track.

MX5RACER

That would be something more than a few people would be interested in if you were to sell the units all setup to wired into the MS.

FieldEffectDave

What concerns me as a sellable product is the mechanical fitment of the display in the cluster, regardless of any sort of bracket or tooling you made, the end user would still have to pull apart their cluster carve a substantial chunk out of its "guts" and shove the display in, its all a tight fit.

Id be keen to support some sort of open source concept like the origional MegaView:

The scope of what you could do with the display is limitless, more brains are always better than one.

elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

Wanna draw up your schematic and make a writeup for us non-techie people?