Anyone built instruments using OLED display?

[blitzracing]

This has been designed to interface a very old OBD 1 standard used on the Range Rover classic ECU's, but id think simular in basis to what you need:

http://code.google.com/p/rovergauge/

[Zad]

Super Slo Mo said:

Zad, have you noticed any problems with OLED's fading?

Very much so I'm afraid. This is similar to phosphor burn-in that you used to get on old CRT monitors (and to a lesser extent on plasma screens). Early OLEDs were horrible for it, 90 minutes use was enough to cause those pixels to visibly reduce their output, and even the manufacturers' data was only quoting 15,000 hours life before the emission was halved. Blue OLEDs degrade at approximately twice the speed of red and green, causing a yellowing effect as the panel ages. They have improved in recent years but the effect is still there.

[Super Slo Mo]

Zad said:

Very much so I'm afraid. This is similar to phosphor burn-in that you used to get on old CRT monitors (and to a lesser extent on plasma screens). Early OLEDs were horrible for it, 90 minutes use was enough to cause those pixels to visibly reduce their output, and even the manufacturers' data was only quoting 15,000 hours life before the emission was halved. Blue OLEDs degrade at approximately twice the speed of red and green, causing a yellowing effect as the panel ages. They have improved in recent years but the effect is still there.

That's interesting. Thanks for that, I'll pass it on to our engineers. Looks like we're going to be looking at TFT's again for some future products anyway, as they seem to have better performance in outdoor/daylight viewing situations. They're comparatively expensive though.

[robcollingridge]

Interesting solutions but, seem to be assuming OBD I interface to any Android tablet?

I'm not going to have this as I'm going to be using a bike engine, which is essentially a black box. I'll take tacho feed off the ECU but, everything else will be a bespoke loom and electrical interfaces to all the sensors, including A-D convertors.

Currently have a Digidash II in my Fisher Fury R1 and it's this that I'm trying to replace in my next car.

Rob

[Moogle]

Then yeah you'd have to go pretty custom I think since I'm pretty sure DashCommand is reliant on an ODBII interface.

[robcollingridge]

This is the kind of display technology I'm interested in:
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-flexible-oled-dis...

Rob

[robcollingridge]

Was at Goodwood Festival of Speed yesterday and noticed the BAC Mono has a display like I'm planning but, it is mounted on the steering wheel. Good to see that this is viable though:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--NU7XM6tV0I/Te0W2Cys9NI/...

Interesting to see that they are also using the same waterproof dash switches that I've used in my Fisher Fury R1 and plan to re-use again.

Rob

[JontyR]

Look at GEMs, they do a great screen...it is exactly what you want

[robcollingridge]

Hi,

Thanks for that, very interesting: http://www.gems.co.uk

The problem is it isn't exactly what I want :-( I've designed my perfect instrument layout and this is it:


The GEMS display are fairly low resolution. I've worked out that I can get away with 1280 x 720 or 1280 x 800 pixels.

[Super Slo Mo]

Have you found a suitable screen yet? I'm presuming you don't want to use a tablet of some sort?

The reason I ask is that we've hit a bit of a wall trying to source hi-res small screens ourselves. Having said that, we're looking for smaller screens than 7", and are currently unable to get hold of anything greater than VGA resolution.

It seems that all the hi-res stuff is being sold straight to the tablet makers, and not being made available to commercial users.

[robcollingridge]

I'm using a Google Nexus 7 tablet to test out the design and ergonomics (7" display at 1280 x 800 pixels). Don't have a view on the final display hardware yet.

[JontyR]

The GEMs display can be configured to do what ever you want...its just a case of configuring the picture you want to display. I do agree it is lower than expected on the resolution....but it is amazing in low light conditions!!

[Mr2Mike]

robcollingridge said:

I want to generate the whole display in HTML5 and it will be moving/animayed in HTML5 too.

That seems like pretty much the single most inefficient way you could generate a virtual display panel. Why on earth would you want to use HTML to do it?

[robcollingridge]

Main reason for HTML5 was that it was quick and easy to do, I created what I wanted in a few hours, including all the animations I needed and it seems pretty fast and responsive on quite low powered processors. Given that I am going to put bespoke processor and networking in my car for other stuff (data logging, etc.), it makes sense to me. It also fits with my preferred route (and experience) of using the QNX O/S and is also how they are doing stuff like this: http://www.qnx.com/solutions/industries/automotive...

I'm open to other suggestions and ideas though. Tell me if there is a better way to do it that is not restrictive to the dash functions only please.

Rob

[Mr2Mike]

robcollingridge said:

I'm open to other suggestions and ideas though. Tell me if there is a better way to do it that is not restrictive to the dash functions only please.

Rob

For an embedded application such as this I'd write an application to do the drawing using the native API rather than running something within a browser.

Do you want purely "drawn" instruments (i.e. vector graphics), or would you want to create arbitrary designs using a bitmap graphic or both?

Have a look at the Live For Speed virtual dashboard, it's open source and may do just what you need.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=64677

Sourceforge has a virtual dashboard http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdfcp/

Edited by Mr2Mike on Tuesday 10th July 12:35

[robcollingridge]

Well my Google Nexus 7 arrived yesterday, so I'll be testing out the ergonomics and readability of this over the this weekend. Have to say, the Nexus 7 tablet is brilliant. I've written a review on one of my other websites here: http://www.dreamgreenhouse.com/reviews/2012/nexus7...

Rob

[robcollingridge]

Related: Audi R8 e-tron to feature digital AMOLED rear-view mirror
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/11/audi-r8-e-tron-...



Rob

[The cape]

A number of manufacturers (Land Rover/jaguar/Toyota/Volvo) now do virtual dash displays. Could one of these be adapted to work with other cars??

[ajprice]

VW up! Maps and More: a removable sat nav that is connected to the car/ECU and gives extra dials, music player snd phone controls, parking sensors display and gear change display on the eco bluemotion model. When low on fuel, the sat nav tells you where petrol stations are.

[dern]

I don't know how techy you are Rob but I'm planning on doing something similar to what your doing over the winter for my ssc stylus.

My plan is to take an android 7" tablet like the one you've bought but mine is a cheap chinese job just to test the water. The dash will simply be images I draw in Gimp and they will be set as the background of an android app I'll write. All the app then has to do is draw the pointer and numbers.

The information driving this will be fed from an arduino adk board. I don't know how much you know about these things but they're basically a processor on a board with a load of digital/analogue inputs and outputs. The adk version of the board allows an android device to talk to the arduino board using the android accessory development kit.

My plan is that the arduino board does all the sampling/measuring and working out of the values to be displayed (i.e does all the smoothing and so on) because it's very fast and then makes the measurements available for the android tablet to read. The app then reads the data and displays it on screen.

I'm going to have a dashboard for the road with a tacho and speedo and so on and one for the track with a track timer using the gps and possibly a g-meter. I've written an android application called clockwork autologger which has all the g-meter and track timing stuff in it so I'll use that.

Can't guarantee that any of this will be available any time soon for you to use but thought the ideas might help.

Cheers,

Mark