Been a while since I redesigned the Griff dash...

[dnb]

So I thought I'd have another go:

I'm annoyed about the accuracy of the speedo, tacho and fuel gauge, and TBH the speedo is well passed its best since the odometer stops nearly every 1000 miles (when I get time to drive the car) and the speedo tells awful non-linear lies.

So the answer seemed to be a nice set of stepper motor instruments. The cost is considerable, and doesn't quite get me what I want. Plus they don't look quite like I want them to and have all the features I'd like.
So I decided to make my own. After all, how hard can it be...

An evening with a CAD package later, and I have the following:

Front:


Back:


Wireframe:


All parts are easily produced and assembled. The electronics should be fairly straight forward - a few counters and stuff in an AVR chip will suffice. Next step is to lay out the PCB.

[dnb]

Good idea. I haven't thought through all the elecronics features yet, but there is a lot of scope.

[dnb]

Unfortunately even reasonable pricing is probably going to be £450+ these days. And doing this sort of design project is more fun than just spending money. (I will remember them when my design doesn't work...)

[dnb]

Quam difficile potest esse?

[dnb]

It's been a while since I did anything much car related so Thought I'd better update this. For some reason work keeps getting in the way - specially when I get paid to go on sea trials in sunny parts of the world...


I got the pieces of dash laser cut at the end of last week. The picture shows the gauge assembly without the steel dash panel and gauge bezels in place. The PCBs are made and populated. "All" I need to do now is test the software, finish assembly and install them in the Griff.

Apart from the colours, it looks the same as the CAD drawing.

[dnb]

Yes. I did a lot of the detailed design in spare time while I was away working in the summer.


This shows the thickness. All told it is less than 60mm, and with a bit of additional design work could be reduced to 40mm.

Edited by dnb on Saturday 14th December 21:56

[dnb]

RichB said:

Very aeronautical looking...

I'll "live" with the aero look if the cunning plan for the aluminium bezels doesn't work out. I'd prefer to keep something approaching the standard look, but with modern integrated functionality.

[dnb]

Testing it fits in the steel dash:


Now not sure if I want to put aluminium bezels over the plastic or put stainless CSK machine screws in silver plastic bezels...

On with the electronics now I've finished work for the year!

[dnb]

Long overdue for another update now I'm not being side tracked by all the other projects.

The version 1 code is all written now and the basic functions of the dash all work.

I turned my attention to the gauge illumination. My first attempt was lousy, so here's the first time version 2 was powered. There's spaces for a couple more LEDs at the top that should even out the light a bit, but when all said and done, the light is fairly even with only 2/3 of the LEDs in place. Nearly ready to fit in the car now.