anyone played with boxster gauge cluster? Options

[skeates]

Hey guys - I'm not sure if this is a subject that has been beaten to death before (I certainly wasn't able to find any threads on it), but has anyone here ever attempted to make use of the boxster or cousin 996 gauge clusters in a conversion? I was able to find a pin-out diagram for the boxster cluster which makes it look doable. Just curious if there was any fancy shmancy communications between the cluster and the ECU that would need to be worked around?

[stugray]

Great work!

On a slightly related note:
Just today I got my arduino datalogger working.
It can read 8 analog voltage inputs, rpm (from a standard points setup or MSD 12V tach signal), and serial data from an innovate system.
It then logs data to microSD, and outputs it over USB to be displayed by a droid phone.

It also can control one "alarm light" and a shift light.

So with what you have reverse engineered here, you could easily plug that instrument cluster onto my arduino DL and drive all of the interfaces on the cluster while logging data...

hmmm.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif)

[skeates]

The link on wiki has some suggestions for driver chips, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I have faith that you will be able to get the stuff you have to work. I likely have the guts from a stock fuel gauge if you end up going that route. No need to destroy a good one.

Thanks for the encouragement (and the parts)! Not sure anymore if the stock fuel gauge guts can be made to work since it's a stepper motor? I'm sure that there's got to be a pretty snazzy hardware solution to this.

Great work!

On a slightly related note:
Just today I got my arduino datalogger working.
It can read 8 analog voltage inputs, rpm (from a standard points setup or MSD 12V tach signal), and serial data from an innovate system.
It then logs data to microSD, and outputs it over USB to be displayed by a droid phone.

It also can control one "alarm light" and a shift light.

So with what you have reverse engineered here, you could easily plug that instrument cluster onto my arduino DL and drive all of the interfaces on the cluster while logging data...

hmmm.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif)

That sounds way cool - and totally doable! The gauges/motors are all mounted on a separate plastic frame which can be separated very cleanly from the circuit board. The only thing you'll loose are the LCD displays if you chuck the board. That said, the other gauges were really easy to make work without any ECU trickery (just standard signals). The fuel gauge is the only "problem" piece to this whole puzzle. So - you might be better off keeping the Boxster cluster electronics in there and just isolating the pins on the fuel gauge. That way you can keep the digital speedo, clock, and odometer.

And, on that note, I had a breakthrough this evening and now have things worked out to control the fuel level using a potentiometer! The motor itself is still controlled by an arduino which takes as an input the voltage across the potentiometer. Added a rudimentary smoothing function to try and smooth out the signal, but as you can see in the video there are still some bugs in the software. One thing I'd like to figure out is whether or not there is a way to" zero" the motor without bumping it off its bottom stop. I the long run I can live with it, but It would be nice to not have it do a bouncy jig at the bottom of the gauge every time I turn the ignition on. Anyways - concept is there, now comes the fun bit of converting the concept into a practical application.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfSpp4YkERY