New here!
skyrunner
Posts: 3
Hey guys,
I just stumbled upon your forum and I am super excited there is such an active community here! I am a software engineer, but I have played with embedded systems in the past and really enjoyed it. I would love to continue to do so on the side, but it is hard to find the time. I am hoping reading and talking to people on these forums will give me the motivation to "make the time". Mainly because I worked on a project a long while back that I got 90% completed and abandoned. I'd love to get back to it and update the project considering it looks like there are a LOT of better accessories and options available now, just by browsing what is available on this forum and the "Parallax Store".
I am a little embarrassed to share my project with you because I personally think it is pretty ugly and unfinished. Anyway, I have a really old write-up about it, that I placed on a website (that I no longer update either) and I thought I might as well let you check it out: http://turbo.bioneos.com/boost.php
The project was a digital boost gauge with readout + graph for my 3000GT. It is still in use in my car today! As I am more of a software guy I was able to get the software written pretty well, but the hardware design was Smile! I used a Crystalfontz graphic LCD (something like this: http://www.crystalfontz.com/product/CFAG12864S-TMI-VT) and a Microchip PIC (I believe 16f822 -- can't remember without looking). I wrote the code for the gauge in C and used some proprietary compiler to compile it into native code. The gauge works and I still use it, but never really got a chance to verify just how accurate it is, but I am confident that the accuracy must be reflected by the accuracy of the pressure gauge that I ordered (can't remember which) as it is a simple A->D conversion.
At some point in the past I wanted to get working on this gauge again and I had the idea that if I could find a higher resolution, smaller form factor LCD, I would be able to fit the graph + digital readout in a 60mm (or maybe even 52mm) gauge pod. At the time, I couldn't find a product that looked like it would work. However, I think I have found one on this site! I believe the uOLED-128-G1 might be what I am looking for! So anyway, I would love to get back to this project at some point, maybe you guys can give me a few good tips about where to start. I am not sure what controller would be a good controller for that OLED display, but I'm sure there is a better choice than the old Microchip PIC I used. Any suggestions? Any ideas, thoughts, comments?
TIA for any advice or interest. I have high hopes for getting back into this project now that I have found these forums!
Steve
P.S. Don't judge my design skills from that terribly out-of-date website! I actually am a fairly competent web designer now, just not back in the day when I made that site.
I just stumbled upon your forum and I am super excited there is such an active community here! I am a software engineer, but I have played with embedded systems in the past and really enjoyed it. I would love to continue to do so on the side, but it is hard to find the time. I am hoping reading and talking to people on these forums will give me the motivation to "make the time". Mainly because I worked on a project a long while back that I got 90% completed and abandoned. I'd love to get back to it and update the project considering it looks like there are a LOT of better accessories and options available now, just by browsing what is available on this forum and the "Parallax Store".
I am a little embarrassed to share my project with you because I personally think it is pretty ugly and unfinished. Anyway, I have a really old write-up about it, that I placed on a website (that I no longer update either) and I thought I might as well let you check it out: http://turbo.bioneos.com/boost.php
The project was a digital boost gauge with readout + graph for my 3000GT. It is still in use in my car today! As I am more of a software guy I was able to get the software written pretty well, but the hardware design was Smile! I used a Crystalfontz graphic LCD (something like this: http://www.crystalfontz.com/product/CFAG12864S-TMI-VT) and a Microchip PIC (I believe 16f822 -- can't remember without looking). I wrote the code for the gauge in C and used some proprietary compiler to compile it into native code. The gauge works and I still use it, but never really got a chance to verify just how accurate it is, but I am confident that the accuracy must be reflected by the accuracy of the pressure gauge that I ordered (can't remember which) as it is a simple A->D conversion.
At some point in the past I wanted to get working on this gauge again and I had the idea that if I could find a higher resolution, smaller form factor LCD, I would be able to fit the graph + digital readout in a 60mm (or maybe even 52mm) gauge pod. At the time, I couldn't find a product that looked like it would work. However, I think I have found one on this site! I believe the uOLED-128-G1 might be what I am looking for! So anyway, I would love to get back to this project at some point, maybe you guys can give me a few good tips about where to start. I am not sure what controller would be a good controller for that OLED display, but I'm sure there is a better choice than the old Microchip PIC I used. Any suggestions? Any ideas, thoughts, comments?
TIA for any advice or interest. I have high hopes for getting back into this project now that I have found these forums!
Steve
P.S. Don't judge my design skills from that terribly out-of-date website! I actually am a fairly competent web designer now, just not back in the day when I made that site.
Comments
-MattG
Welcome to the forums. Look into the propeller as a potential micro to drive your project with its 8 cores ( cogs) it is a great way to multi task with out the timing issues of interrupts. There are guys here doing touchscreen displays, canbus monitors, and much more. Check out the gcc alpha test link at the top of the propeller forum to see what is happening with ""C". If you dabble in asm the propeller has a very powerful assembly language.
Jim
That display already looks pretty neat, with different sized text and a graph and the figure 8 displays. Congratulations!
The little 4D uOled display would easily fit in such a small space, and do what you want. They have some new "Visi" software that I haven't checked out but will shortly, that should make what you want to do even easier.
I did a few layouts fitting into a circle like I think you're suggesting, I'll try and find them. The square 128x128 display worked well, there is a small offset from center.
The other nice thing with the propeller is that it can put out composite video, which means it can go straight into many of those DVD "slave" monitors available for headrests and roof mount. There are even in-dash monitors that kind of slide out and up from their DIN cavity, so lots of potential for adding crazy features.
Oh yeah and the 128 square uOled seemed to be able to 'scroll' waveforms quickly, unlike some of the other models. I asked about this and there was some kind of hardware feature that made it faster.
Thanks!! That is awesome. I had a feeling it would fit but didn't try to throw anything together. What did you make those images using? Prototyping my boards was always one of my slower parts of this project.
This could be really cool. I know a lot of people have DVD monitors in their center console. Of course, I'll just settle for getting the main gauge updated...
Cool, that was the one concern I would have had. You don't happen to remember the refresh rate do you? The LCD I used was actually pretty slow. Even the little PIC I used was able to max that thing out (although I had a few ideas about better ways to refresh the screen that I never fully implemented, the software certainly wasn't as efficient as it could have been).
Somewhere... I have a video of the sine wave scrolling on that display. I had a look but couldn't locate it in Picasa, sorry. I think it was something like 10 or 15 frames/sec but it may have been higher. How many points a second do you want to plot?
The drawings were done in Autocad. I'm not sure if the dimensions are exactly the same as the latest model, but they should be close.