[pheno]

Thought that I could share my latest project...

So I've been working on this real-time data display for some time now on my spare time. Being a family man real you have duties but you have to have some project for yourself, right ? . The main motivation has been to learn something about electronics. So please don't laught at the components... That combined with interest of BMW diagnostic is why this project was born. We have been balling this idea around with 'racediesel' and now that I know something about BMW CAN bus this is possible.

The main idea is that the display starts fast and contains the most important parameters. I've made a program to configure what you see in the display. There's hundreds of parameters you can choose from.

This is attached to OBD2 and uses CAN bus for communications but it is not limited to OBD2 as it uses BMW's own protocol. The cover is taken from TomTom and I've put my own stuff into it. 3D printed adapter for the custom display. Being a hobby project a custom board is not an option for now so I've used what you can find from ebay, etc.

The microprocessor is STM32F103C8 and I'm using MCP2515 for CAN communications. Comments are welcome.

Video:

[dmanb2b]

Very cool!

[OmahaDZL]

Love it!

Would love to see more if you documented stuff along the way.

[335dsleeper]

Neat stuff!

[TDIwyse]

Thumbs up.

[tryingtobebest]

Hi, nice project you have going on here! Can you please let us know
#1 How much you spend on the hardware roughly?
#2 In case of permanent installation of something like this onto the car, can you hardwired all (how many all together wires?) connections to the back side of the OBD (Edited, sorry about this, OBD and NOT USB) , NOT simply plug it in in the front?
#3 If you do hardwired it in the OBD harness, you mention that it uses "CAN bus for communications" will the Blue tooth adapter (ELM327) still be able to read/communicate with the car in parallel?

Suggestions here would be:
A) Reduce amount of parameters to gain larger (more readable) numbers ( I would leave 4 main ones - RPM,PSI,EGT and coolant or oil temp)
B) For easiness of reading (more places to mount) do a visual representation like bar graph or a full sweep digital gauge


I know its a hobby of yours but you never mention what you do for living, maybe your are a software developer or something, here i would really ask you to have a look into this thread where some of us trying to use MPG gauge as a TEMP gauge on the cluster maybe you'll throw in an idea that might work - Activating oil temp gauge in tool32..

[pheno]

Originally Posted by tryingtobebest

Hi, nice project you have going on here! Can you please let us know
#1 How much you spend on the hardware roughly?
#2 In case of permanent installation of something like this onto the car, can you hardwired all (how many?) connections to the back side of the USB, NOT simply plug it in in the front?
#3 If you do hardwired it in the OBD harness, you mention that it uses "CAN bus for communications" will the Blue tooth adapter (ELM327) still be able to read/communicate with the car in parallel?

Suggestions here would be:
A) Reduce amount of parameters to gain larger (more readable) numbers ( I would leave 4 main ones - RPM,PSI,EGT and coolant or oil temp)
B) For easiness of reading (more places to mount) do a visual representation like bar graph or a full sweep digital gauge


I know its a hobby of yours but you never mention what you do for living, maybe your are a software developer or something, here i would really ask you to have a look into this thread where some of us trying to use MPG gauge as a TEMP gauge on the cluster maybe you'll throw in an idea that might work - Activating oil temp gauge in tool32..

Thanks for the comments.

#1 Actually not much, getting these from ebay is nowadays quite inexpensive. I paid a bit more as I bought some of these a year or two ago. I've bricked some of these so it's hard to say exact numbers. You can get the needed components for under ~$10 I guess if you order from china and can wait for 6-8 weeks.. But let's see what is my next project. I'd like to create/design a custom board to get the size of the board as small as possible with only necessary components. But that costs $$$$. As this is done with microcontroller it starts up instantly

#2 and #3: not exactly sure what you mean by "back side of the USB, NOT simply plug it in in the front?". This is hardwired into OBD2 connector and this does not need any other interface like K+DCAN to work. Basically you could install this anywhere, you need CAN High/Low, +12V and Ground. ELM327 and this won't work together at the same time. The USB is only needed for the configuration program.

Good suggestions. Display has touch interface so I could easily come up with a solution for multiple screens. What do you think that could be the most cool feature you could think of in this kind of display ?

I'll take a look at that MPG/TEMP gauge thread.