I found out about the iopener ages ago and was looking into one as a digital picture frame/mp3 server for my front room etc etc.

I have an astra gte digital dash that i was going to fit into my car sitting around doing nothing waiting for me to start sticking magnets onto the propshaft

I've just realised after searching for the iopener again that people have installed them into cars using a dc supply and run sat nav and mp3/multimedia apps on them!

Now roughly this device is a stripped down pc that was intended as a cheap internet appliance in the states - it was cheap because it was subsidised by only being able to log onto the net through the suppliers isp. Needless to say it was promptly hacked!

IOPENER INFO

I had loads of sites saved off in my favourites but have since re installed the os and lost all my links!

As its roughly a 200 mhz pc with colour 10" tft you can add laptop hard drives network usb etc etc. It has a parallel,ps2 and usb port.

You can put what os you see fit onto it.

If you could design the relevant input module to interface between a speed sensor and other engine sensors and the iopener running a piece of software to display all the information you would have one amazing piece of kit - with built in data logging capabilities etc.

Just my thought's and i know there is on going digital dash development going on.

As this was only available in the states a search on ebay.com will bring up whats for sale or complete items - cheap as chip s too!


Cheers


G

and how much would this cost?

Because ive got myself a car mp3 system , that has cost me bugger all. Its a Celeron 600mhz, underclocked to 400 to minimize heat and therefore does not need a CPU fan, and is silent. 8gb notebook drive, again small, and almost silent. A 5" TFT screen originaly made for a PLaystaion, this was the only real cost of the project and cost me $100 australian. GOt schematics for a 12V dc power supply that i am yet to make, but no rush atm seing as i havent got a car to put it in . It will eventually go in the Locost. FOr now the system is installed in my desktop beast. heres a few pics
Rescued attachment beast.jpg

quote:

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Originally posted by gsand
A 5" TFT screen originaly made for a PLaystaion, this was the only real cost of the project and cost me $100 australian.

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that would be very interesting, you could have all your dash nice and flat right behind or to the side of the steering wheel! and all customiseable.
am i right in saying you could also put your ignition system into it as well? and also security protocols?

RUss.

I would be intrested in the power schimatics if it is for an inverter or transformer that gives all the nesasery voltages for a pc i.e. +-12v and +-5v

Some time ago I found this LINK and this Link.
Very nice software to make a dash.
I think the major problem will be the hardware and the interface.

AvonBelgium

I've thought about this too. It could be really neat and it can't be terribly difficult to hook up some home made electronics to the serial or parallel port.
I doubt blueshift would want to sacrifice his old laptop though and my P3 500 HP Omnibook is just a little too good to hack to bits to make a dashboard...

I considered using my Toshiba Libretto as an instrument panel - but even though it's an old machine now, I still find it invaluable for doing stuff on the train! (If you haven't seen one of these, it's a complete 75MHz Pentium PC in a case about the size of a VHS cassette)

What really pigs me off about all these OCX libraries is that very early versions of Visual Basic used to come with quite usable dial and gauge controls as standard - now you have to pay quite big money for them now.

David

imagine the police man

sorry officer i didn't realise i was speeding cause my dash board was booting

Yes!

A 'blue screen of death' takes on a whole new meaning...



David

Wonder if you could do it with a Sinclair ZX81
Cheers,
Bob

Splitrivet,

Z80 (processor from the ZX81) is not as silly as it sounds, it's used in loads of stuff but requires alot of support electronics.

I personally am planning put a LCD based dashboard in, but not PC based due to the booting time. I plan to use a PIC (RISC based microprocessor), running at 20Mhz and already having PWM modules, non-volatle memory & all the other things that you would need to do electrically built in. Plus a 100ms boot time makes it ideal.

My company produces lots of tools for the car OEMS based on these PIC's. we do even work with a copy called R3 that produces PIC based automotive interfaces for cars.

Anyone want more info just me an email I'll give you as much as you want.

Simon

PioneerX

what PIC/compiler are you using. I am presently using hitec C and 18 seris for my hobby stuff (i know ther are some sever limitations) pending what it is could I posibly get a coppy.

at work I am using a veriaty of motorola and other company chips for simaler embeded applications.

Blake

Ceebmoj,

PIC16F84 for hobby & small projects

PIC16F877 for anything that requires more power.

Compilers are CHBasic & C++.

Dont use the motorola as I'm not too familier with it.

Simon

Yeah a dash doesn't need an awful lot of grunt, a Z80 running 'C' would laugh at it. I made a monochrome graphics LCD dash 12 years ago for a "lotus elan" I was building and that used a 1MHz 6502 running BBC Pascal. Loads of spare power so it had clock, date, day of week & wee numbers 0-5 on the tachometer bargraph showing the revs at that speed for the different gears, a feature I've never ever seen since!
The FPGA based dash I'm doing now for my car uses a watch crystal at 32kHz, but the logic would be good for over 70MHz - ie the thing has the power to do 2000 dashboards,- there's the power of raw logic for you! To be honest it doesn't really even need 32kHz, but that gives me a 64:1 brightness range in the multiplexed LED displays so it ain't dazzling in the dark.
cheers
Bob C

Bob,

I planned to use 20Mhz, thought it would give me enough leftover processing power to other things too.

Looked at some of the MP3 decoding chips, with the PIC16F877 acting as IO controller at the same time as running the dash.

Baiscally software based dash ment I could set the speed reading (using a mapping table) to anything I need so giving me what I need for SVA. Plus being techy I wanted at least one CPU in there somewhere.

Simon

the 18F877 is what I genoraly use for my hoby stuff af it has more then enuf power for all most all projects.

I was using one a bit back as an io controler with aa mp3 decoder chip and a hard disk witch is a resnoble intresting project and ther are lots of resorces out the in the web as well.

the first nuclear bombs were designed on computers with less power than a pocket calculator, its todays software that makews us think everthing need loads of processing power, especialy win xp for christ sakes, all im doing right now is typing into a webpage and windows is running 33 processes to keep itself going.

simon, what other features are you planning on having? an mp3 player would be nice to have intergrated in there. will you be mass producing them at all? if so how much will i have to part with?


Cheers,


Russ.

Suparuss,

I know just what you mean. Bad code (poor programmers) make for power hungry programs. I'm not the best of programmers (I'm a database programmer) so I do require a little more power than programs by really good programmers, but I'll get better.

I fact when you consider the NASA saturn 5 rocket was all trasistor based (only on microprocessor on board) and the Shuttle is running on 8086 processors @ 0.5 & 1 Mhz. And now we have games that require processors at 2Ghz to run (2 billion operations a second).

Still back to original question, I have plans to use the 20Mhz I have to run the clocks, possibly MP3 player running from either IDE Hard Drisk or more likely IDE CompactFlash & the ultimate, I have been designing a variable supercharger system.

I can hear it now (tell me more aboutthe supercharger). OK then

Superchargers are basically designed to put more air in the engine by compression (basically an air pump). Now most superchargers are crank run which gives no flexability in the boost demand. Replace the crank supply with a geared electric motor and a speed controller. This means now I can use PWN (pulse width modulation) to vary the pump pressure. (Garrant are making electric superchargers for lorry diesels). Add to this a mircoprocessor & crack speed sensor. Put a map in the mircoprocessor so you can set the amount to boost you get an any RPM you want, makes the whole system totally configerable.

Let me know what you think.

Simon

Re: electric supercharger,
Loads of folk look at this & think why not. The reason why not is the amount of power going into the pump - for a car engine this would be typically 50hp or so. This is a SERIOUS size electric drive & you wouldn't want to run it from 12V!
A further major factor is the efficiency of the pump - turbos are best at around 70% peak, positive displacement types (most superchargers) are pants, less than 50%. So the air gets hot as well as compressed (this happens whether you like it or not, hence intercoolers) all this power has to be supplied by the electric drive (90% efficient if you're good), which is itself supplied by a <90% efficient alternator. Do the sums & work out the horsepower you'll need, then try to find an alternator, then give up & use a turbo.. ;^)
cheers
Bob C

Thought I'd better sanity check the 50hp figure (remembered from ages ago when I looked at this.....) & I might be a factor of 10 high - give me a few minutes...
Bob C

OK fag packet sums.....
1.6 litre engine @ 6000revs and 100% VE sucks in 1.6 * 6000 /60 /2 = 80litres/s of air.
To boost to 1 bar take 2 litres of air & squash it into 1/2 volume, work done = 50kPa * 0.001m^3 = 50joules (assumes 100% efficient)
80l/s * 50joules/l = 4kW

But your pump is 50% efficient so that's 8kW - about 11hp

8kW from 12V would be 670A!! ouch

At 0.5bar it looks quite a lot more do-able.

BTW with a bar of boost the engine will be twice as powerful, but you have to subtract the 11hp (+drive etc inefficiency) that go into the alternator/pump. And yeah the engine won't be twice as powerful because you'll have to reduce CR & back off timing etc. etc.

All good fun
Bob C

Bob,

To be honist not done the math yet. Looking at the Fag pack figaurs it would require quite some amount of power for modist return. I'm guessing thats why Garrant only make them for big diesels. Looking like the inefficentcies in the motor ESC and pump are just too much to overcome. Guess what we really need is something that can convert heat energy direct to electricity

I just wondering what the looses are in a turbo system, as the same amount of power is required for the pump so guessing it is just picking up some of the wasted kenetic energy in the exhaust gasses.

Still just thinking aloud. Wonder what else I would use the redundant CPU time for??????

Simon

quote:

---

Originally posted by David Jenkins
I considered using my Toshiba Libretto as an instrument panel - but even though it's an old machine now, I still find it invaluable for doing stuff on the train! (If you haven't seen one of these, it's a complete 75MHz Pentium PC in a case about the size of a VHS cassette)

---

WOW That pulled alot of questions.
So here goes.

TheGecko: I got it about 5 months ago at Electronic Beutique (??). They are around the country in most places. They *SHOULD* still have them in stock...

ceebmoj: A PC power supply is not just made up of 12v and 5v lines, it is much more complex. I have schematics for a 12v PSU somewhere, but seing as im lasy, ill prolly just use a 12-240v inverter


PioneerX: In regards to booting time, I musing a custom miniman install of Windows 98, and using my Celeron 600 boot times are less than 20 seconds.

One more thing, There is a company somewhere on the net that sells software and interfaces that enable you oto hook your PC up with any fuel injected engine. To ginve you All kinds of Stats.

/me goes to find the site

gsand,

Regarding the company that sells software to give engine stat. SPX Uk Ltd (the company I work for) produces this software directly for 90% of the OEM's. We also do ECU to USB intefaces, bluetooth wireless diagnostic equipment.

Simon

regarding electric superchargers, my thoughs on the subject were that they do need alot of power, it is only slightly more than a supercharger running off the crank, only the inefficiency of the altenator and motor make it worse. This is probably the main draw back. If two altenators were used, and a large battery, with some sort of cutout so it didnt run itself flat, it might work. The advantage of an electric supercharger is that it can use the power produced by the altenators when the engine is idling, cos the excess is stored in the battery. Not sure what happens to spare altenator output when the battery is full...

Do altenators charge much when idling?

There was a company trying to sell electric superchargers at the Donnington show a couple of years back.
I thought at the time the idea was totaly unfeasible as they consisted of a turbo compressor and housing of the sort of size used on a small lorry engine coupled directly to a small electric motor not much bigger than a heater blower motor, with a control box. Turbos dont produce any usefull output below about 75000 rpm and it seemed highly unlikely that a motor of the size used would provide that.
The idea would be good in principle if used just for short bursts of power and maybe using a seperate nicad or other high discharge battery driving a starter type motor with gearing to get the speed required, however as stated the horsepower required is very large to gain any boost, in a jet engine something like 75percent of the total energy produced is used to turn the compressor to keep it running and the same principle applys to turbos.
Paul.

quote:

---

Originally posted by JoelP
regarding electric superchargers, my thoughs on the subject were that they do need alot of power, it is only slightly more than a supercharger running off the crank, only the inefficiency of the altenator and motor make it worse. This is probably the main draw back. If two altenators were used, and a large battery, with some sort of cutout so it didnt run itself flat, it might work. The advantage of an electric supercharger is that it can use the power produced by the altenators when the engine is idling, cos the excess is stored in the battery. Not sure what happens to spare altenator output when the battery is full...

Do altenators charge much when idling?

---

Turbo speeds go over 100krpm - it's near impossible to make mechanics (eg gears) work at this speed - any lubricant just flies off!
Any motor going at this speed has to be small or it would explode!(F = mrw^2). I think a steel disk explodes at <10cm diam at 100krpm, but that really is a dodgy memory from long long ago...
cheers
Bob C
PS if someone has the real figures I'd be interested to know...

CAR PC SOFTWARE

For the media side of things...


Cheers


G

I earn my living designing ATMEL based embedded telemetry and control systems, including GPS, and writing the windows software to support them.

I will be using a digital Dash, I just haven't decided which method to use. I hadn't considered the idea of MP3, email etc. until I read this thread, but what bloody good idea.

The used laptop approach is quite practical, a cut down installation of Win98SE would boot fairly quickly. Solid state disk replacements that plug directly into an IDE socket are fairly cheap now and would be more practical than a HDD, in a mobile situation.

Small form factor motherboards are available (about 4" x 6" which require only a single 5 volt supply, and no fan.

A palmtop or handheld PC running Windows could be used. if you could get all of your gauges on a 4" screen.

Speaking of gauges, the prices quoted for some of the OCX controls are daylight robbery, I could write them for a hell of a lot less if there was sufficient interest, perhaps even the complete dashboard program.

Sensing the inputs is not difficult, I already sell ATMEL based products that do all of that, and provide a serial and LCD output. So long as you know the nature of the sensor's output, no problem.

Cheers
Bigfoot.

Oops, sorry about the smiley face in my last post, I seem to have a dislexic keyboard.