Morning all,
Quickie question - i am about to start building my own digital fuel gauge, and i been trying to think of a nice way of mounting the LED bar graph to
the dashboard (similar to whats below)
Does anyone know of ether a metal or plastic enclosure that i can fit this into and then bolt to the dashboard ?. Or even better, does anyone know of
a 10bar LED surface mount display ?
Cheers
Tris
It's blooming tricky! I'd be tempted to use some slightly smoked perspex and glue it to the back of that, then french that into the
dashboard.
You can get panel-fit LED bar graphs with bezelled edges so they'll fit into a dashboard but they still look pretty industrial.
Are you going to be making up the Circuit from Mez.co.uk?
I built this circuit for use on my VortX.. it works really well. i pondered on using one of those led bars, but in the end i used 8x separate
led's. i just drill the holes in the dash, and used an led bezel clip to hold them in place. Dont think i have a picture of it, but i can get one
if your interested?
Forgot to add - this is the page showing what he did to make his gauge. It is near the bottom:
http://www.mez.co.uk/ms13.html
Thats where i first came across the idea, but ive since found out that LM3914 is a better IC for the job (one IC rather than two, and you don't
need all the separate resistors to control the LED brightness.
I love the idea of the LED bar graph though (harks back to the 80's !), its just figuring out a nice way of mounting it. I could mill something
out of ali, but its all on a very small scale.
quote:
Originally posted by Tris
I could mill something out of ali, but its all on a very small scale.
Do not make the mistake I made, by using normal/white or Bluel LED's.
My DIY dash had White then Blue LED's for MPH, but was hard to read in sun light.
Now has High Brightness Red ones now, now clear to see in all conditions.
Yet to change the others.
My Fuel guage is 8 rectangle Green/Yellow/Green.
Again not good in sun light.
I would also go for as many LED's for the Gauge as possible. I find 8 in not enough.
I have a DIY converted CNC mill/drill for the metal work part.
CNC dash