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RacePak/ Aftermarket Digital Dash

t8fanning

8v are still cool, right?
Joined
Oct 10, 2010
Location
Vancouver, WA
I will be rewiring my car soon for MS3Pro. Eventually I want to use a RacePak IQ3S Dashboard, so I want to make my car ready for this when I rewire it in the next couple weeks. The dash will communicate to the RacePak through CAN, which is no big deal. However, according to page 34 of the manual:

http://iq3s.racepak.com/img/IQ3S-Manual.pdf

Oil temp, oil pressure, and fuel pressure can't be sent through CAN. It seems like I'd have to use multiple sensors or send the sensor signal to both RacePak and MS.

I also plan on keeping gauges in the stock 240 turbo locations because it'd look weird without them. So I need an oil pressure signal to three different places. I plan on using something like this to measure oil pressure:

http://www.aemelectronics.com/products/sensors-connectors-accessories/map-pressure-sensors/stainless-steel-psig-sensors


Can you guys see any issues with branching the wires from the oil pressure sender to put the signal three different places? Is anyone here using a RacePak dash?
 
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MSextra added "Simplified Dash Broadcasting" over CANbus roughly 2 years ago (maybe a bit earlier for MS3). See: http://www.msextra.com/doc/pdf/Megasquirt_CAN_Broadcast.pdf

I'd guess that the RacePak supports the default Simplified dashboard items directly. There are 2 "Generic Sensor" values supported by MS. I think these are mapped to the 2 "Custom" values in the RacePak table. You might be able to use these for your extra sensors -- you'll need to dig into the MS+RacePak docs, or call RacePak. MS also supports broadcasting of almost any of the internal values, but this would take much more support on the RacePak side.

For the sensors, I think the older 2-wire pressure sensors are resistive and can't be shared by multiple gauges. The newer 3-pin sensors (ground/power/output) may be sharable if all the gauge/ecu/dash connections are setup for 3-pin sensors.
 
Good to know. I'll look into what the RacePak can do a bit more.

I also did a bit more research. The pressure transducers I'm considering are 0-5V output, so sharing that signal should be no problem.

I still need to figure out a way to get the convert the information from a single NTC in the oil pan to multiple outputs.

EDIT. I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier. The gauge is just a stepper motor, so I will get the oil temp signal to MS, and then use a programmable PWM output to drive the gauge. Shouldn't be too hard.
 
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The newer 3-pin sensors (ground/power/output) may be sharable if all the gauge/ecu/dash connections are setup for 3-pin sensors
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The pressure transducers I'm considering are 0-5V output, so sharing that signal should be no problem.

Probably yes; but, maybe not. It depends on the burden associated with the devices that are connected to the sensor. However, that could be relatively easy to address by adding 3 buffers to the output of the transducer to isolate the transducer from the end use device. An op amp set up with a gain of 1 might do nicely.

If the oil pan sensor is resistive, it would be relatively easy to convert the resistive measurement into multiple isolated 0-5 volt outputs. If you need to convert it into multiple isolated resistive outputs, that is more complicated; but, doable. The immediately obvious way to do that would be to use three digital potentiometer chips to create the resistive outputs (there is probably a more elegant way to do it if I were prepared to think about it for a bit). You would use an Arduino or Teensy or something like that to convert the analog signal to digital and then drive the inputs to the potentiometer chip. The biggest problem may be finding potentiometer chips with the resistance range, current rating and resolution that you require.
 
I bought a Raspberry PI setup with a 7" touchscreen recently for this reason. Runs full version of tunerstudio and automatically boots and opens in gauge mode. If you've played with the tunerstudio designer mode you know the possibilities are pretty endless. There are some guys even selling some pretty fancy dash files for a few bucks. A wireless keyboard will even allow you to make tune adjustments with it too. Downside is you can either tune with a laptop or run the dash, not both. The boot time is also 30 seconds, annoying but I know a few guys are working on making it faster.. Pretty hard to beat for a few hundred bucks, just another option to think about.


https://www.facebook.com/pidashboard/?hc_ref=SEARCH
http://tunerstudiodashboards.com/megasquirt-dashboards.html
 
That does sound pretty good, but I've always wondered about durability of tablets. That, the annoyingly long boot time, and the dash or laptop only kind of turns me off toward tablets for this car because I daily drive it.
 
I run a dell venue 8 tablet in my LS car. With a wireless keyboard anything can be done

Just set it up so it does not automatically update. I even bought a USB devise that will charge and transfer data
 
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