Main > Driving & Racing Cabinets
Real Instrument Panels
twistedsymphony:
After reading the older posts in this thread i had some thoughs.
1. Can bus stuff is still very new and as a result still very expensive. the benefit here is you can just do everything in software.. you can also do cool stuff like gauge sweep patterns etc.... however using older 90s era clusters will require more hardware work (like an avr) but be way cheaper.
2. I would recommend looking for clusters from foreign cars with a strong tuner community. I'm big into the Nissan s-chassis andiknow a lot of those guys upgrade to japanese clusters meaning that the us market clusters are cheap and easy to find...i've litterally got a pile of clusters for these cars laying around... half of them were just givem to me for free because theyre worth so little peopleoften throw them out.
3. most of these machines have a very small space available for gauges so Perhapse the best thing to do is to figure out the dimensions and find a cluster that will actually fit... this might acrtually end up being more difficult than getting the electronics interfaced.
on that note i know a lot of the 90s era japanese clusters ive worked with are actually modular... meaning you can remove the individual gauges out of the cluster and they're self contained and will run without the main circuitboard... so this does offer some flexibility.
Howard_Casto:
Ok well let me ask you this. In the video you linked to I noticed that only two wires were hooked up. Were you using the existing electronics of the board to achieve that or were you somehow pulsing a 4 wires stepper with only two wires?
Check it out:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=toyota+stepper+motor&_sop=15&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=gm+stepper+motor&_sacat=0
Ebay regularly has steppers for cars for around 5 bucks a pop, which I think is reasonable. You can also generally get a kit of 6 steppers and led bulbs for around 20 bucks, which in all honesty is probably enough to do two cabs for our purposes. I linked to the GM steppers because unlike most manufacturers, the pins are on the back and they have two mounting holes, meaning, in theory at least you could just drill a small hole for the needle pin, screw the stepper to the back of the plastic, and you are good to go, even in limited space situations like a sega control panel.
I just don't know about controlling. I mean simple I/O stuff is easy enough on a avr, I could code a teensy to act like a pac-drive or similar device, but I know steppers are timing dependant. I also saw stepper controllers in ebay, but I think those are more for upping the voltage for a cnc machine.
twistedsymphony:
In that video i had 3 wires hooked up.. 12v, ground, and my fake vss pulse.... they were attached driectly to the gauge.. on those clusters the gauges mount into the cluster via 4 screws... those 4 screws is also how the gauge attaches ekectronically... its really pretty clever... the 4th post is a clean output pulse for the ecm.
Howard_Casto:
I believe you, but that contradicts everything I've learned about stepper motors.
It was my understanding that it was a 4 wire process, alternating the voltages on all 4 wires for precise stepping. Last year somebody actually made a breakout board for switec steppers, which are used in most cars. The guy even made a library for them, but the reason I ignored it was that 4 pins per gauge is pretty damn expensive.
https://www.tindie.com/products/TheRengineer/analog-gauge-stepper-breakout-board/
If you were just doing dials it's not so bad, but if you want an over-rev light, shift position indicator, view and start lamps, ect then you aren't going to have enough pins.
On the other hand, if these can indeed be controlled out of the cluster with one wire (ground and voltage don't count) then it's much more doable. Shoot I bet we could get a decent, rough indicator with a ledwiz.... the brightness settings are just a timed pulse afterall. I think there are only 48 steps though... I'd probably still have to put a avr in there
for the final product.
Something that struck me as odd though was the fact that the needles are really expensive! Your stepper, as I mentioned, is around 5-6 bucks, with free shipping. The needle, even a cheap plastic one, STARTS at 6 bucks and the nicer ones cost even more. So it might still be cheaper to buy a instrument panel and part it out.
twistedsymphony:
Im not controlling the stepper motor direcly.... the gauge has an intergrated pcb that handles the vss conversion to something the stppermotor understands. Thats what i meant by it being a modular unit... the gauge itself contains all of its own electronics without needing anything from the larger cluster to operate.
To give you an example here is the back of a tach from a toyota pickup... you an see the 3 metal screw tabs on the edges... this is how it attaches to the cluster both electronically and physically.
I wouldnt try connecting to a motor directly even if you got the electronics tuned properly youd still need a retun spring and ive never been able to get one installed properly (not for lack of trying).
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