Simple Dash on Arduino+LCD with GameDash

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added 10.05.2016

just realized all pic's links are broken, corrected.
changed wiring scheme to use A5 and 13 pins
changed sketch to 02a version

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Added 08.08.2015

Hi All!

I think Im done for a while with the project, so I wanted to describe functionality and made a small how-to guide

Dash has 2 screens for output information (switch by “Screen” button):
screen 1: RPM, Speed, Fuel left %, Gear, Lap, Fuel Burning Rate
screen 2: Water Temp, Oil Temp, Fuel left in Liters and %
RPM Lights and Engine warnings displayed in every screen.


You can tune parameters (“Settings” button):
RPM Min threshold - at which RPM leds begin to light
RPM Max threshold - at which RPM stripe is full and after that leds will blink
RPMAutotune - 0 or 1, details below
Water Temp warning - at this temp the water dash will showed in RED. The dash will showed in YELLOW at 80% of this
Oil Temp warning - same as water but for oil temp.
Fuel % and Litres warning - same as water but for % and Litres of fuel accordingly.


A few words about RPM shift algorithm:
- simplest and default mode is when dash "learn" max rpm for current session and simply blinks at 98% of it. This controlled parameter RPMAutotune=1.
- manual mode is when you can define min threshold (at which LEDs start to light) and max threshold (at which lights begin to blink). This should be useful for more fine-tuning RPM lights for different cars (RPMAutotune=0)
- and mode based on telemetry (like iRacings` ShiftPercentPct). Currently it works only in iRacing I guess, because I don’t think any other game use this method for rpm lights (output in %%, lights should blink on 60%). I hope I will add support for other games in the future.


Engine warnings in the form in which it exists also are iRacing only. For them, iRacing provided bit mask, which decomposes in the sketch as:
R - Rev limiter
W - Water Temp Warning
F - Fuel Pressure Warning
O - Oil Pressure Warning
E - Engine Stalled
P - Pit Speed Limiter


I make a vid for more clarity


I mount the dash in holes of my G27, this way:




Ok, now to technical aspects.

I’m using Arduino Leonardo, but UNO R3 should works nice too.

TFT LCD is this which has ILI9341 lcd driver, so I can use standard AdaFruit libraries - Adafruit GFX graphics core and Adafruit_TFTLCD. After download you need to rename them to Adafruit_GFX and Adafruit_TFTLCD respectively (read readme.txt!) and place this libraries to your documents/arduino/libraries directory.

NeoPixel strip is this, which works with Adafruit_NeoPixel, also need to rename folder to 'Adafruit_NeoPixel' and install in Arduino Libraries folder.

I bought buttons in local store for less then $0.5 each. So total cost for the project for me is Ard ($10.25) + TFT LCD ($9.89) + NeoPixel Strip ($6.26) + 6 buttons (6*$0.5) = $29.4

Wiring is pretty simple, the diagram is below:



I.e.:
PIN A5 - “Screen” button
PIN 11 - “Settings” button
PIN 13 - “Increase” button
PIN 12 - “Decrease” button
PIN “Reset” - “Reset” button
PIN 10 - NeoPixel strip DIN


GameDash settings:





Arduino sketch is attached.


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Original post 22.05.2015
Hi all!

decided to make small project using LCD and NeoPixel strip.
Arduino sketch based on excellent work by soraz (thanks for it!)

still wip, tested only in LFS so far. I'm in desperate need of a iRacing plugin, begin to write the plugin by myself but not a big progress yet.
in TODO list - second screen with more info and buttons
Arduino sketch attached, if someone interested
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Hi @TOPMO3
Great project!
Do you know that you can gather the dash data via Game Dash? The iRacing plugin does not export any dash data but it could be added fairly easily.

Looks pretty nice, bookmarking it! I will probably get into building a dashboard once I finish my sim. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks guys!!
really appreciated

Yes, I'm using GameDash, I can't attached screenshots, but settings are:
BitsPerSec - 115200
Data Bits - 8
Parity - None
Stop Bits - 1

Interface Output - R<Dash2>G<Dash3>S<Dash1>F<Dash6>
R - RPM
G - Gear
S - Speed
F - Fuel
Shutdown Output - Z0000

Hi all!

Well, I don't know how, but finally somehow I managed to write working iRacing plugin.
I attached it, it will be great if someone else tested it!
Zip file contains file iRSDKSharp.dll, which needs to be manually placed to plugins folder ( something like C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\SimTools\GamePlugins)

Also I have some weird behaviour in gamedash - it shows actual value of water temp insteed of dash's name "Water". All other dashes are showed nice. Made screenshot for more clear explanation of this.
But anyway I can live with it some time.



I believe plugin works only in 64bit game (how guys is it possible to set 2 different const _ProcessName in plugin?) and gather only dashboard telemetry.
Dash_1 - Speed,m/s
Dash_2 - Rpm
Dash_3 - Gear
Dash_4 - Fuel Remaining, %
Dash_5 - Fuel Remaining, Litres
Dash_6 - Lap
Dash_7 - Oil Temp, C
Dash_8 - Water Temp, C
Dash_9 - Players last lap time, s
Dash_10 - Delta time for best lap, s
Dash_11 - Delta time for optimal lap, s
Dash_12 - BlinkRPM

I'm happy boy now and returning to progging my little arduino!
See you later!

@yobuddy, thanks a lot for your help! Source code is attached.

Thanks for this! Been working on a f1 style wheel and this will work perfectly!

Yes, it works fine this way, thanks!
And yes, its just my draft plugin and it only works for dash stuff

Nice work, @TOPMO3! Well done

I posted an update here.

Thank you very much, Thomas!


just want to share the little progress I made.
I developed 3 screens,
1st one shows - RPM, speed, fuel remaining in %, gear and lap
2nd - water and oil temps, fuel remaining in % and litres
3rd - last lap time, session best lap time, delte to best lap, gear and lap
RPM LED stripe works in every screen.

short vid (sorry for ugly quality and mouse driving guys! )


Now I'm need to take a deeper look to RPM shift lights algorithm.
Cheers!

Just short update
programmed 3 different algorithms for RPM LED lights:
- simplest and default mode is when dash "learn" max rpm for current session and simply blink at 98% of it
- manual mode is when you can define min threshold (at which LEDs start to light) and max threshold (at which lights begin to blink). This should be useful for more fine-tuning RPM lights for different cars
- and mode based on telemetry (like iRacings` ShiftPercentPct). This will work only if game can provide
appropriate telemetry of course.
and wired 4 buttons for ability to easier changing the settings (brightness, thresholds for RPM LEDs and warning colors. etc)


But there is a problem which I can't resolve yet. Everything working nice only after first start of GameDash. If I quit a game and then start it again - arduino no longer sees an input data and in Task Manager I see hang process of GameDash which I can't kill.
Is it possible GameDash open a new serial connection for new game start? Should I handle Startup - Output and Shutdown - Output, i.e. open a serial connection for Startup - Output and close it for Shutdown - Output in arduino sketch?

@yobuddy: Can you help?

Hi All!

I think Im done for a while with the project, so I edited the first post adding small tutorial

Hello !

After the TM1638 dashboard I made, I'm making a new one based on your great design. I have some issues with the LCD I got from DX
If I use the lib from adafruit you mentionned I just get a white screen. If I use the modified lib from here it improves the situation a bit: now the LCD shows garbage caracters but I cn spot Fuel, RPM spped, and other strings. When sending data to serial, it sometimes displays the value (like S0000) but most of the time crashes the sketch?
With this updated lib, the sample graphicstest works nicely. It reports a ILI3941 as show below:

FT LCD test
Using Adafruit 2.8" TFT Arduino Shield Pinout
TFT size is 240x320
Found ILI9341 LCD driver

I also added the testtext function from the example to your code in the setup and it worked.
Any hints ? I' a bit stuck for now.

Bonus question: what do you use to have this carbon-fiber look ?

Thanks

3M makes "3d/4d" carbon wrap you can buy in any shape/Size you need for relatively cheap.


http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...bon+.TRS0&_nkw=4d+carbon+fiber+vinyl&_sacat=0

Hi @vthinsel

you can see Fuel, RPM, etc strings (ie "titles"), but no actual values, do I understand you right?
Do they in correct places like in my video? If so I expect you find correct library for your LCD and issues only with data from GameDash.
Garbage chars is most likely for Gear
Ok, can you fisrt check that GameDash shows correct values in itself? Then try to output only one dash value (for example Speed or Rpm) from GameDash and see how its shows on LCD. If it works than try to add another value and so on. Such sequental approach can tell you what value crashed the ard.

And what game do you using? I tested the sketch only in LFS and iRacing, so it can be easer to troubleshoot in these games. GameDash settings in the OP are for iRacing, if you need those for LFS I can make screenshots of them when I will be at home

@Nick Moxley is right, I used cheep carbon tape. Front panel of my dash consist of two slices - there is thin aluminium plate with carbon tape placed on it under the plexiglas one

Hello,
I haven't tried yet with a game, just using the serial console to send data and see how it behaves. The screenshot below is after sending "S0000" through the arduino console windows, which made "83" appear.


If I send something like 'S0200' it crashes and reboots.
I'm using arduino 1.6.5r5, with different libs as explained earlier. Really strange......

Thanks for the carbon tip, I looks very nice and pro. I just odered some