Big project, Is it doable?

[MrMcGoogan]

Hi everyone, firstly this is my first post to the site so a quick introduction.
My name is Matt, i'm 26 from Adelaide Australia, I have 4 kids and love cake.

My friend and I are in the midst of rebuilding a car, at the moment the body is still in the bodywork stage so am currently in the proccess of planning the interior, this is where you guys come in.

What we are planning to do a complete custom dash and having the drivers cluster on a touch screen tab (hopefully). We have figured out if we connect all the sensors up to a bluetooth relay that should send the message through the obd2 port to the tab, the next issue we have is finding a way to have the instruments then displayed in a way that is user friendly along with having a touch button on the screen for the engine start.

The next part we would like to have the electrics (windows, locks, boot release, air conditioner) all put into a similar setup on different screens.

Are we completely barking up the wrong tree altogether?

Any help/insight anyone can give will be greatly appreciated.

 

[davenn]

hi there,
welcome to the forums

its all do-able but what really counts is what electronics skills do you and your mate have ??
it is a pretty major undertaking you have in mind and would require some serious design and construction skills

cheers
Dave

 

[MrMcGoogan]

Hi Davernn, thanks for the reply.

My friend is an engineer so the build and construction side won't be an issue, and I have been working with electronics for about 15 years, but never anything this involved.

 

[AlenZGB]

The touch interface sounds interesting,in what car do you plan to install it ?

 

[MrMcGoogan]

The car we are currently building is a holden TX Gemini, we may not be able to do it for this car as the engine we planned on using doesn't have the sensors needed, but are looking into just getting a different engine that does

 

[AlenZGB]

Old school, i like it. And an idea is also good. Mixing old school with technology
This one dont have many sensors but then again,engine temp sensor, oil presure sensor, you can maybe instal RPM sensor somewhere
on flywheel side. you planing to make another instrument panel or use old one ?

 

[MrMcGoogan]

Hoping to go completely custom, 1 of a kind

 

[AlenZGB]

Sounds like a big project, hard work and lots of effort to make it run smoothly
Looking forward to see what project progress

 

[Gryd3]

OBD can be a fickle thing. Many newer cars have two buses, one for engine control and high speed communications, and one for slower speed communications that usually takes care of multi-media and lighting.
Do you plan to make your own software on the tablet or use existing software?
Torque works well with Android and a Bluetooth OBD reader... but will only read from the OBD line, it will not write to it.

Alternatively, the Raspberry Pi, and Beaglebone Black have been showing up in a lot of projects lately. They have a great deal of General Purpose IOs and support various serial communication protocols and have a video output that you can patch into a small LCD TouchScreen. There are a large number of tutorials that will allow you to develop your own UI for it and would probably be easier to interface with the car.

You could also look into programming your own microcontroller which would probably live a lot longer than an Android/Windows tablet, Pi or Beaglebone.

*Edit: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/0...ket-head-unit-piday-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/