Main > Driving & Racing Cabinets
Real Instrument Panels
BadMouth:
At one point in time, most gauges were just 12v voltmeters and the sensors were just variable resistors that reacted to heat or pressure.
If you could find a cheap source of 5v voltmeters, you could toss them behind one of the overlays they sell on ebay or print your own.
I would think you'd be able to adjust them by pulsing the voltage. Analog adjustment of voltage from a PC is a PITA as far as I've been able to tell.
I think the app RamjetR linked to looks pretty sweet.
Fursphere:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on March 15, 2013, 02:13:20 am ---I think you are confused as to what I was asking.
You linked to gauges with digital DISPLAYS. I mean a gauge with a digital INTERFACE (the gauge display can still be analog or you can go with digital, your choice).
--- End quote ---
I knew what you meant - I guess I was just putting a higher dollar amount on the project than you were. :) I've got ~$1,000 into my driving cabinet already, another $100 wouldn't be horrible. (same for my standup cabinet actually).
So are you just doing memory scans to identify the variable for the speed (and other things), then translating that to the gauge (system) basically? Or do some of the simulators have that information output (in some format) already?
deathrow:
This is all way over my head but its looks awesome!
well worth the expenditure. its got to increase the value of the cab?
Howard_Casto:
Fair enough fursphere. The way I look at it is if the device is useful, spend as much as needed. On the other hand if it's useless (like this decidedly is) spend next to nothing and save your money for the important stuff.
BadMouth: I looked into the app RamJet linked to and it's entirely possible that I'm missing something, but there are multiple versions of it for each sim engine, around 6 in total. Each one is 7-8 bucks as well. So by the time that you buy all of them you might as well look into real gauges as you are entering their price range. I do like the concept, but perhaps that particular app isn't the best one.
Also on the client end of things I'm going to have to write something possibly for the model 2 stuff and most definitely for outrun 2006. X-sim looks like the ideal solution software-wise, but I'm not sure if it can handle all the hackery I do to get things working. I"ll have to look into it, but regardless we can probably make whatever physical interface x-sim compatable as well so you can use it for my software and x-sim.
5v voltmeters might work I'll look into it, but I think they are decidedly analog. Something that expects a digital signal (in the case of speedos a square wave pulse) is easy to calibrate... not sure about something that doesn't.
Howard_Casto:
Ok in the realm of vu meters I checked my favorite "crappy Chinese product" website they've got a variety of vu meters.
I liked this one myself
http://dx.com/p/as-current-flow-vu-meter-500ua-7057
2.84 shipped... you rally can't get much cheaper than that... this seems even too cheap for me. ;) They are typically odd shaped or small. You'd just about have to rip it apart, put a bigger needle on it and make a new face.
If a VU meter is used though, it might be necessary to stick to a serial port as opposed to the parallel port when means you can only have one dial per port without the need for a avr. It has to do with the timing really.
With a serial connection I can set the baud rate and I have a rock solid timer regardless of the pc you are running it on. I can modify the pulse rate by just sending different patterns of data
Example:
sending 0x0x0x0x0x1x1x1x1x1 would be a rather slow pulse... it's off for a while then on for a while
sending 0x1x0x1 would be a rapid pulse, it's constantly toggling between 0 and 1
With a parallel interface I don't really have that functionality. I can do a timer on the software end, but I don't know if a pc is up to the task of pulsing things with that level of accuracy.
There are gpio boards floating around the net (think usb parallel port) which might do the trick, but they start at 10 bucks and don't have a lot of pins, so an avr might be better.
We could pick a very cheap avr and I could write some code for it. I know you can get a teensy for under 20 and I've had pretty good luck with those. 16 I/o pins as well.
The other option of course is one of the existing hobby avrs. The ledwiz has power level settings for the leds which would work for a vu meter. There are only 48 degrees of change though, so it wouldn't be terribly accurate.
I should also mention that if you are just wanting to do a secondary pc monitor mamehooker can handle that right now. I've got a display file for turbo and it tracks the speed really well. So long as you are willing to make enough image files you can lay that out however you want.
Any more ideas on the subject?
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