Referring to this sexy beast:



I'm helping in building a chump/lemons car with an MS, and we have a **** ton of autometer gauges available to use. Alternatively, we're considering using said shadow dash, and mounting a tablet plus charging solution into the dash, with just a wideband, giant tach, fuel gauge, and shift light for gauges.

Does anyone have experience using shadow dash on track? Any pros/cons to this setup? Seems much simpler than a spendy autometer setup, and customizable as we change our minds for gauge layout.

 

I'm assuming it's via BT?

I'm worried the refresh rate would be slow.

 

Refresh rate is perfectly fine, bluetooth is fast. I would mostly worry about dropped connections/connection issues. Some days it works great for me, others it doesn't. It would be good for non-crucial/informational gauges, but I don't know if I would trust it for crucial information.

More details on the chump car?

Edit: Read some more and saw that you were still going to have main gauges. I would totally do it. Bluetooth is super cheap and easy to add to MS.

Edit Edit: Also make sure to consider cooling for the tablet. A simple computer fan or something like that would really help. A lot of devices like that have a thermal shutdown mode and constant screen on would not help that. Maybe pair it to a conveniently cheap GPS module and get realtime track data

 

Can you not hardwire it? I don't want to Bluetooth.

 

Not easily with an Android tablet. Its built for bluetooth. Now a windows tablet would be a different story.

 

Fine by me. Can we just run TS with a windows tablet?

 

Yep. Not as pretty as Shadow dash but in fullscreen just as functional.

 

ShadowDash Beta supports USB. Get a Micro-USB OTG Adapter and you can hardwire it.
I have no experience with that though.

I have used Bluetooth/Tunerstudio with my Surface Pro 2 (Windows 8.1), and once it's connected, i've never had it disconnect on me.

 

Good news! I hadn't heard about the OTG support. If that is supported I would go with that, a surface pro isn't something you would rock in a race car, they're not cheap lol. A used nexus 7 will cost you 100-150 on cl.

 

If I can find my OTG cable tomorrow I will give it a test for you tomorrow Curly.

 

This was 4 days ago (Cowboom is owned by BestBuy)

 

Even better deal lol.

 

I have an HP Touchpad running android, which doesn't have the best of specs in this day and age. But I'm thinking for HPDE it will be mounted up to display oil temp and water temp in big bold letters, along with whatever else I decide to include on there. Things response time aren't super critical for.

 

Just tested it out, this **** is the ****. Worked perfectly for Shadow Dash and MSDroid (MSDroid allows for tuning).

 

So dope. Looks like I'll be building a dash with an android, or two...

 

Here's the car, if anyone's interested. Not sure why photos suck so much.

Ignition switch is from the '05 MSM I parted out. Yes, this heap has a switchblade key. You can see it dangling next to the red/white tag.

 

Yeah, all you need is a USB OTG cable, and a USB-RS232 cable that has an FTDI chipset.

See talk about the FTDI chipset here: Megasquirt Support Forum (MSEXTRA) ? Shadowdash and USB (View topic)

 

Looks like a game-changer. Props

 

powered USB hub with charger and should be good to go

 

The car is really built to supermiata specs, but we don't have the series here yet. The plan is to run the car in chump car to get some track time and shake out the bugs. It will run in EC class so no worries on the value.

I think my camera lens was dirty when i took the shots this morning as i rushed to work.

1993 NA chassis. 2003 vvt engine. MSPNP. some other things. Now with brake lights and a running engine!