HUD for a car
Robban
Posts: 124
i think i better write in english...
i am planning to create a Head-Up display for my car and want the display to be on the windshield...
I am planning to use a basic stamp for the data collektion such as speed,rpm,distance in reverse etc etc..
does anybody have any tips and tricks? please tell me
Robert
Post Edited By Moderator (Ryan Clarke (Parallax)) : 6/27/2006 4:07:56 PM GMT
i am planning to create a Head-Up display for my car and want the display to be on the windshield...
I am planning to use a basic stamp for the data collektion such as speed,rpm,distance in reverse etc etc..
does anybody have any tips and tricks? please tell me
Robert
Post Edited By Moderator (Ryan Clarke (Parallax)) : 6/27/2006 4:07:56 PM GMT
Comments
1. People don't have "head-up-displays" in their cars now. It might be a distraction.
2. Jet fighters, which DO have "heads-up-displays", don't actually project them on
the windshield, but instead on a flat, slanted piece of plastic in front of the pilot.
While you COULD mount such a piece of plastic in your car, it might take some cutting.
3. You can't really display something "on the windshield" -- it's curved, for one thing,
so distortion will be a problem. And it's glass, and clear. I don't think that's what's used
for a 'normal' heads-up-display.
4. Any 'projector' for displaying the heads-up-display will have to be in your
speedometer console. More cutting. More moving things around.
5. I'm not sure it's legal to put something 'distracting' in the middle of your field
of view of your windshield.
However, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying, you probably need to take these
things into account.
Oh, and 6. Since I don't think anybody's done this, there may not be any tips and
tricks already developed for it.
Here's one article...
http://www.autospectator.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4171
And yes, they DO project directly on the windshield. Yes, it's curved, but not as extremely as in a plane, and really, in a car, where you don't plot trajectories, does it matter?
And here's one about the Mercedes 'Night View Technology'
http://blogs.active.com/alv/2006/02/night-view-technology-new-mercedes.html
As for distracting, how long do you take your eyes away from the road every time you check the speed, engine temp, or the warning lights?
Move your eyes down, locate the needle, read out the number next to it, process the numbers, move your sight up and on the road again...
The best car I ever drove regarding to this was my old Citro
As for not being able to display an image on a windshield because it's curved...well, that's plainly not true. On a sunny day and if you're seated just right, you can see a portion of the dashboard reflected up through the bottom of the windshield. The fact that you can see it is because the light passing through the windshield from outside is reflecting off of the dashboard and back up into the windshield where a portion of the light is reflected back inside and the remaining light passing through the windshield. At the right viewing angle, you will see that reflected light and therefore, that brightly lit part of the dashboard. The windshield is curved, yes, but that doesn't affect it's ability to reflect light (which is a function of the refractive index of the material which is present regardless of the shape of the material)...you just have to be at an angle to see the reflection.
With a very curved windshield, the reflection may not be visible due to your seating position but you can change that by coating the windshield with a clear substance with a carefully choosen refractive index. The same principle is used to allow thin plastic lenses to do the job that used to require thick glass lenses (it's not the thickness of the material but the refractive index of the material...all the work happens at the air-to-material interface). The plastic by itself my not have a high enough refractive index to achieve the desired correction but the optical coating can be choosen to reinforce the plastic's refraction to the point where it does.
If you were to coat just a portion of a windshield with the right optical coating, that area would reflect light at a different angle than the uncoated surface which makes a heads-up display on a car windshield possible. A friend in college had a Nissan 240SX (mid-90's) that displayed the speed on a small "patch" of the windshield. The digits actually appeared to be "inside" the glass implying that the patch of reflective material/coating was inside the glass (possible if the coating was actually a laminate within the windshield itself).
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I wouldn't connect that if I were you...
Post Edited (aalegado) : 6/27/2006 2:38:17 AM GMT
http://www.radarbusters.com/support/speedlabs-2005/sportvue.asp
Post Edited (bennettdan) : 6/27/2006 2:26:11 AM GMT
That statement should pretty much just say it all. I think that a HUD display for vehicles would be more popular if there wasn't an obvious danger associated to them.
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Adoption rates would go up if the option was less costly OR if it was a standard feature (which would basically mean adoption is 100%). ABS (anti-lock brakes) used to be an option available only on expensive cars but now it's standard on many cars and since its cost is built into the car, people don't think of it as something to add or remove, it's just there.
We should probably move this thread to The Sandbox.
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I wouldn't connect that if I were you...
Post Edited (aalegado) : 6/27/2006 2:47:56 AM GMT
Agreed, but there is a certain maturity level and responsibility associated with driving that all too often is neglected. All I am stressing is to be careful, and use common sense.
If you are "testing" something on a car, bike, or whatever it is human nature to completely focus on the new toy or gadget and forget about the road. This is especially true if
it is something you have created yourself. The human nature side of this is something you can't avoid, so be careful!!
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
there are a couple of routes to go for the data you'd need.
Some guys build their own sensor systems and tie in to the existing cabling....if you have a new-ish car, it will probably have OBD2 (although, it's obvious that English is your 2nd language....so I'm not sure where you're from)....
What kind of car are you looking to use?
There are IC's out there that will allow a stamp to talk to the car and retrieve information from it (temperature/speed/rpm/trouble codes/etc...)
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Steve
"Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."
have a Saab 93 from 2000
with the SID 2 "carcomputer"
what kind of ic:s?
Over here we have On Board Diagnostics 2 (OBDII)....the newer vehicles to come out will feature CANbus.
You should do some searching for some DYI groups in Europe that may have interfaced to their cars already.
There's certainly a lot of aftermarket gear that plugs in to the cars' computers (for programming and monitoring) I'm sure that market isn't limited to Asia and North America....but maybe...don't know!
I can't tell you what IC's to look for, cuz I don't know what type of system is in your car.
Do some googling and see what you can find out!
cheers
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Steve
"Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."
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- Stephen
Take a Vacuum Florescent Display from parallax,
the LCD character generator to make right to left versions of text so the text/graphics appear correctly in the reflection
write your code for whatever
lay the VFD face up on the dash
place a small piece of not so dark window tint on the reflection
plug it all in
drive and enjoy
Oh and all that has to be done is google "HUD" and you can see how many have tried this before
a good (and cheap) scource for the factory versions is early '90's buick's, ~'89 Pontiac Grand Prix
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Definetly a E3 (Electronics Engineer Extrodinare!)
"I laugh in the face of imposible,... not because i know it all, ... but because I don't know well enough!"